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It’s 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and Chris Drinkall of Caribou has about an hour before he starts his evening shift at McDonald’s.
“Quit work,” pleads his precocious 5-year-old daughter, Allicia, wrapping herself around her father’s arm and resting her cheek on his shoulder as he sits at the kitchen table.
“Quit work?!” he playfully replies to the child, who just an hour ago arrived home with her little brother, Jacob, who is busy pretending to cook dinner on a toy stove nearby.
“We could have more time together, but it would mean you would have nothing to wear and no place to live,” he gently reminds the girl, who seems to accept the answer and runs off into her bedroom to put away her clothes.
Drinkall’s job as a cashier pays $6.65 an hour – less than Maine’s new minimum wage of $6.75 set to take effect in October. In October 2007, the state’s minimum wage will rise to $7 an hour.
In a few ways, Drinkall typifies the worker that will benefit from the increase approved by the Legislature earlier this year.
First, he lives in far northern Maine, the labor market in which the increase likely will have the most impact, experts surmise.
Second, Drinkall, 28, is not a teenager. National statistics suggest that about 70 percent of minimum wage earners are 20 or older.
And third, the 10-cent raise he stands to receive in October, he acknowledges, won’t change the fact that he – like many low wage earners – must work multiple jobs to pay the bills.
“It’s a day by day situation,” he said.
“Even with two jobs, it seems like you’re barely making it.”
Drinkall’s primary income, about $900 a month, comes from his full-time job in the kitchen at a local nursing home – a job he has had since his days at Caribou High School. The part-time fast food job, which he has held for about two years, brings in another $300 a month.
Before heading to work on this recent day, he longed for the day he could get his license to drive a dump truck. That job, he said, would pay more than what he’s currently making, offer health insurance – something he doesn’t have now – and give him more time to spend with his children.
As it stands, Drinkall’s time with Allicia and Jacob is limited, even though both children live with him in his small house just off South Main Street.
And, for the Drinkall family, any given day is a busy day.
In the early morning, just before Drinkall heads to work at the nursing home, a babysitter comes to watch the kids for a few hours until their mother, who shares custody of the children, picks them up at about 9 a.m. She keeps them until about 2 p.m. and then brings them back to Drinkall’s house.
On the three nights he works at McDonald’s, Drinkall sees the kids for about two hours before he packs up their dinners – on this night it’s chicken, green beans and macaroni and cheese – and takes them to his mother’s house, where he will pick up the now pajama-clad duo sometime between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
“Just enough time to give them a bath and put them in bed,” he said.
Keeping pace
Drinkall counts himself a supporter of any effort to boost the minimum wage. However, $8.50 an hour would be more realistic, he said, in order for a full-time worker to make ends meet in his area.
The increases workers like Drinkall stand to receive over the next year-and-a-half might be modest, supporters of the increased minimum wage say. But they send a message.
“It won’t ease anyone’s financial burdens,” said Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, who argued for the increase on the House floor, where the measure squeaked through this spring in a largely party-line vote. “But it tells workers they are worth more than the ridiculous federal minimum wage.”
Maine is one of 23 states in which its lowest paid workers make – or will soon make – more than the federal minimum wage of $5.15.
Although Maine has raised its minimum wage every year since 2002, its current hourly minimum of $6.50 is the second lowest among the six New England states. Only New Hampshire, which uses the federal wage, is lower.
Even when Maine’s minimum wage reaches $7 next year, it is still likely to remain second lowest in the region with Massachusetts lawmakers recently brokering a deal to raise that state’s $6.75 minimum wage to $7.50 next year and $8 in 2008.
In Maine – like almost every other state that has broached the issue – opponents have focused their arguments on the increase’s potential impact on local businesses.
Paul LePage, the general manager of Marden’s Surplus & Salvage, said that politics -more than compassion – was the driving force behind the latest wage hike.
“It’s nothing more than a political feel-good during an election year,” LePage said. “It certainly does nothing to show that you are business friendly.”
LePage is quick to note that starting pay at Marden’s is already $7 an hour. But he said that doesn’t mean his company, which employs about 850 people, won’t feel the effects of the increase. He predicted the company likely would adjust its entire pay scale in order to keep its veteran workers.
“If you increase the minimum, you’ve got to increase everybody,” said LePage, describing what is known in economic circles as the “spillover effect” of a wage increase. “People want to maintain their distance from the minimum wage.”
Just how many Maine workers will benefit from the new minimum wage is not easy to determine. The latest numbers come from 2004, at which time about 5 percent – or 21,000 – of the state’s hourly wage earners were at or below that year’s minimum wage of $6.35.
Taking into account the “spillover effect,” a recent Economic Policy Institute study forecasted that about 54,000 Maine workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $7.25. In Maine – and more precisely, Bangor – 47-year-old Samantha will see a jump in her $6.50 hourly wage.
On a recent day at the bottle redemption center where she works, Samantha, who asked not to be identified, got her paycheck.
The $214 she takes home every two weeks for sorting glass bottles into cardboard boxes won’t go far, said Samantha, already faced with a $700 repair bill for her rapidly aging truck.
“Oh, it’s always something,” she said, smiling.
Two Maines, two wages
In at least one way, Samantha is a typical minimum wage earner. She, like 62 percent of those earning their state’s lowest wage, is a woman.
But in most ways, her situation is anything but typical.
Samantha, who has a mental illness, is a client at Community Health and Counseling Services, a social service agency that runs the redemption center.
Her minimum wage job is part of the agency’s program to give clients – many of whom have spotty employment histories – some work experience.
Samantha has bounced around the state during the past several years, holding low paying jobs while attending local colleges. Her illness and criminal history, she said, have prevented her from landing a higher paying job.
“You do what you have to do, I guess,” she said over the din of a giant fan cooling the bottle drop on a sticky summer morning. “You just can’t give up on yourself. You have to believe there’s somebody out there who’s going to give you a chance.”
Although she will benefit from the coming wage increase, she worries the additional cash actually could hurt her financial situation by lowering the housing and food assistance she receives along with her disability check.
“They always find a way to keep you down,” she said.
The wage increase’s effect on the state’s least employable workers is also a concern for Jim Cyr, a Portland-based social worker who has dealt extensively with adult addicts.
Originally from Aroostook County, Cyr said he feared that increasing the minimum wage could limit entry level employment possibilities particularly in northern Maine, where jobs are scarcer.
“It’s a moot point down here,” said Cyr, contending that most employers in the competitive southern Maine job market already pay higher wages than the state’s minimum.
“It’s just another example of southern Maine sticking it to northern Maine,” said Cyr, noting the bill’s prime sponsors in the Legislature were from the south.
Although there’s little data to show the wage’s regional impact, economists by and large agree that the minimum wage increase will be less evident in southern Maine. A recent swing through South Portland’s Maine Mall, one of the state’s largest retail centers, seemed to bear out that theory.
“I don’t know a single person who makes minimum wage,” said 24-year-old Anthony Rosa of Portland, perusing a newspaper while waiting for customers at a jewelry kiosk in the mall.
Around the corner in the mall, Tom LaPlante manages a sunglasses booth. Although his company already starts new employees at $7.50 an hour, he said the increase in the minimum wage could benefit his business.
“It’s going to help us attract people who want to work,” LaPlante, 23, said, predicting the increase would result in his company boosting its starting pay even higher.
While critics of the new wage bemoan its potential effect on small, rural businesses, supporters point to data showing that past increases to the minimum wage have actually helped low-wage economies such as those found in many remote areas of the state.
Nearly 300 miles north of Portland in Cyr’s hometown of Presque Isle, Judy Collins, a retired bookkeeper, lives on Social Security and the check she receives working part-time at a local laundry.
Collins, 68, already makes $6.75 at her job, so she’ll have to wait until next year to see any state-mandated increase.
Although she wasn’t counting the days until her raise, she’s not going to turn it down.
“Every little bit helps,” she said.
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