With voter approval, Colorado's hourly rate will rise to $12 per hour over three years

By Kyle Harding
Centennial Citizen, November 17, 2016. Also Littleton Independent

... But Littleton resident Michael Kessler, who owns Sanyork Fair Trade in Denver and worked on the Business for a Fair Minimum Wage campaign, thinks the increase is long overdue.

“We feel that $10-or-under an hour is not a living wage, especially in this economy and in Colorado,” he said.

In the Nov. 8 election, Colorado voters favored Amendment 70's incremental minimum wage increase by 55.2 percent to 44.7 percent. The wage will jump from $8.31 per hour to $9.30 on Jan. 1 and it will rise to $12 per hour by January 2020, with 90-cent increases in 2018, 2019 and 2020. ...

Sanyork Fair Trade imports goods from Peru, Mexico and Guatemala and has five employees, all of whom make above the $12-per-hour threshold, said Kessler, who believes the minimum wage would ideally be $15 per hour but understands not all businesses can pay that highly. ...

The current minimum wage amounts to about $17,250 a year before taxes for a full-time worker. The wage in place on Jan. 1 will earn that employee $19,344, while the $12 per hour in 2020 will equal just shy of $25,000 per year. ...

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