Chris Christie Vetoes Minimum Wage Increase Bill

Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have raised New Jersey's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Christie vetoed Assembly Bill No. 15, which would have raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour by the year 2021.

Three years ago, Christie noted, New Jersey residents voted to raise the minimum wage to $8.25, along with annual adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index. This bill would have made New Jersey only the third state to adopt a $15 minimum wage, he said.

“Despite having a constitutional mandate in place, the legislature now wants to increase the minimum wage by almost 80 percent just three years later,” said Christie.

The measure would have raised the minimum wage from $8.38 to $10.10 on Jan. 1, 2017, and then by more than $1.25 an hour annually until 2021. After that, the minimum wage would increase annually based on changes in the consumer price index.

“While this bill’s proposed increase surely is responsive to demands from Democrat legislators’ political patrons, it fails to consider the capacity of businesses, especially small businesses, to absorb the substantially increased labor costs it will impose, killing jobs and erasing gains of more than 275,000 private sector jobs since 2010," he said.

Business owners would face added expenses from this substantial wage hike through increased payrolls, taxes and supply costs, leaving them with these undesirable options: laying off workers; reducing employee hours; raising prices; leaving New Jersey; or closing altogether, Christie said.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat, has said the hike would be done out of economic fairness and human dignity, saying the current minimum wage forces many New Jersey residents to live in poverty.

Assembly Deputy Speaker John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, said the veto shows that "disappointments continue with this governor.

Raising the minimum wage would have given those residents who work hard, but must supplement their low wages with assistance from the government, the boost needed to be financially independent, Wisniewski said.

"This veto punishes hard-working residents who simply don’t earn enough to make ends meet, and exacerbates the burden on our economy by making it harder for them to wean themselves from that dependency," he said.

Christie also said other states and cities ramping up to a $15 minimum wage – California, Seattle and Washington, D.C., for example – are already seeing those negative economic impacts, from fewer jobs to increased costs for goods and services on college campuses, in restaurants and in the manufacturing sector.

In a news release, Christie said similar outcomes in New Jersey would be a significant step backward on the road to economic recovery and an affront to all of the accomplishments of the state's private-sector businesses over the past six-and-a-half years.