[VIDEO BELOW] TRANSCRIPT: Despite having the constitutional mandate in place, the Legislature now wants to increase the minimum wage by almost 80% just three years later. Approval of Assembly Bill 15 would not only bring New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021, but under the ill-advised constitutional amendment put into place three years ago it would also continue to rise annually there forward based upon the CPI, which is why I believe we never should have put the CPI in in the first place. This bill would make New Jersey only the third state in the nation to adopt a minimum wage of $15, and it would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable. So, today in consideration of the current constitutional mandate to increase the minimum wage annually based upon the Consumer Price Index, the high taxes and the often overwhelming regulations that New Jersey businesses have been subjected to in the past and could be subjected to again, I am vetoing Assembly Bill 15, absolutely. While the bill’s proposed increase surely is responsive to the demands of Democratic legislators’ political patrons, it fails to consider the capacity of businesses, especially small businesses like Pennington Market, to absorb the substantially increased labor costs it will impose. For instance, we met with a small businessman who owns two gas stations and a convenience store in Bergen County. He told us that the minimum wage increase would nearly double his payroll from $380,000 to $680,000. Wendy’s Restaurants have already announced that it will roll out self-service kiosks and reduce its number of employees. There is a Wawa down the road here on 31 that I go to and have gone to for all the years that I’ve been Governor. When I first became Governor, before the last minimum wage increase, there were four registers you could check out in and each one of them was manned by an employee. There are still four there now. I just stopped there to make sure on the way here. There are still four there, except only one of them is manned by an employee and the other three are self-serve. Those are three employees who used to work there, who don’t work there anymore. If you go to Panera, you see now that the minimum number of people are employed there and only those people, one person at the register and most of them, and the rest of them are people who are preparing food, and the other ones are self-serve kiosks. That’s the wave of the future, if we continue to do this type of really radical increase in the minimum wage.

Sweeney Responds

Senate President Steve Sweeney today issued the following statement criticizing Governor Chris Christie for his veto of legislation that would have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Jersey’s hardest working residents by raising the minimum wage.

“This move is unproductive but sadly predictable. We gave him a chance to do the right thing by putting this bill on his desk even though we knew the chances of him standing up for low-wage workers were slim.

“That the Governor chose to veto a responsibly phased-in increase in the minimum wage, in front of the very types of employees that desperately need this economic lifeline, makes it all the harder to stomach.

“While I’m disappointed the Governor has once again turned his back on the most vulnerable participants in our economy, Senate Democrats stand ready to continue our march for economic fairness for all New Jerseyans.

“We will do the right thing and introduce a constitutional amendment to incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by the year 2021.”

Speaker Prieto, Disappointed with Christie’s Veto, Vows to Continue Fighting for a Livable Wage in NJ
Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, the lead sponsor of legislation (A-15) that would have increased New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next five years to help working families, expressed his disappointment Tuesday over Gov. Christie’s veto of the measure, a move that will now force the Legislature to take the question to voters.

“Creating a livable minimum wage is a key component in the comprehensive strategy we’ve been working on since last year to combat poverty,” said Prieto (D-Bergen/Hudson). “That makes the Governor’s veto all the more disappointing, though not unexpected. The age-old rhetoric he is relying on also ignores the evidence – a substantial minimum wage increase will help lift countless families out of poverty, decrease government dependency and boost commerce by pumping more dollars back into the economy.

“Today’s minimum wage does nothing short of tear families apart, forcing them to work multiple jobs just to live hand-to-mouth, while relying on government assistance to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the wealth continues to trickle up, not down.

“Unfortunately, as we said earlier this year, this decision now forces our hand. We gave the Governor the opportunity to do the right thing, but unfortunately he declined. Moving forward, we will turn to voters to let them decide if a fair and just livable wage is the one they want for New Jersey. As a compassionate and progressive state, I am confident that New Jersey residents will eventually right this wrong.”

Prieto noted that more New Jersey residents are living in poverty now than in the past five decades according to a report by Legal Services of New Jersey. The agency estimates about 2.8 million adults and 800,000 children lived in poverty in New Jersey 2014. That’s 40 percent higher than it was before the 2008 Great Recession.

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