By Zlati Mayer and David Jesse
Detroit Free Press, April 2, 2014
On his way to his speech Wednesday at the University of Michigan, President Barack Obama had his motorcade stop off at Ann Arbor’s Zingerman’s Deli for a working lunch.
The president spent about an hour at the delicatessen feasting on one of its famous Reuben sandwiches and chatting with three workers he had invited to lunch to talk about the topic that’s high on his agenda these days — raising the federal minimum wage. ...
Obama told them the reason they were at Zingerman’s was that co-owner Paul Saginaw paid his workers above minimum wage.
“If workers are being paid well, they are spending more money, and businesses have more money,” Obama said.
It was the same argument Obama was trying to drive home an hour or so later during his speech at U-M, where he urged people to get behind his proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 a hour, from the current $7.25.
“There are always going to be folks who do critical work, who bust their tails every day — airport workers, restaurant workers, hospital workers and retail salespeople — who deserve an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. They’re doing necessary jobs. They should be able to make a living,” he said.
Obama said a higher minimum wage would raise more people out of poverty and extend the American dream to more Americans. “You can give America the shaft or you can give America a raise,” Obama said ...
Obama pointed out that a century ago in Michigan, Henry Ford helped create America’s middle class by raising his workers’ pay to the then unheard of $5 a day. That allowed the workers to buy the cars that they were making, he said.
“We believe that everybody should have a chance at success. Everybody. And we believe our economy grows best not from the top down, but from the middle out, and from the bottom up,” the president said. ...
The minimum wage is also a hot topic in Lansing, where the group Raise Michigan needs 258,000 signatures to put the question of raising the state minimum wage by 2017 to state legislators. If the Legislature takes no action within 40 days, it goes to voters. ...
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