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ASBURY PARK PRESS :: MONMOUTH EDITION

Fighting for a better life

Asbury Park man has used boxing to change his whole world. 1C

04.10.16

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Minimum
wage hike
a threat?
Business owners say $15
an hour would be hardship

ROCK ROLLS
ASBURY PARK MUSIC IN FILM FESTIVAL

City venues packed with movie and music fans

ALEX GECAN STAFF WRITER

Doomsday, to hear some New Jersey

business owners tell it, may be just
around the corner.
The threat, as they see it, is the $15
minimum wage. New York just OKd a
phased-in new minimum, which would
hit $15 in New York City in 2018. California also jumped on the economic bandwagon, adopting its own phased-in $15
floor.
In New Jersey, proponents have set
their sights on $15 as well never mind
that Gov. Chris Christie has promised a
veto.
All this gives Joe Bilotti pause.
My yearly payroll is about
$150,000, said Bilotti, who owns the
Surfside Motel in Point Pleasant Beach.
If the minimum wage is raised to $15
per hour, it will raise my employee expense to about $225,000.
That $75,000 increase, he said, would
be impossible to make up without raising rates, and he has no room to lay off
staff.
Moreover, he doesnt believe his
workers merit $15 an hour, the target of
a well-coordinated campaign orchestrated by labor and anti-poverty groups
in communities across the country.
First of all, it requires no brains to
work in my motel. And its not people
that are supporting families, Bilotti
said. My girls are all single or young,
you know, college kids. The front desk is
like a second job. I know you cant support a family on $10 an hour but who
works at McDonalds and supports a
family and is married and has a couple
of kids? You cant do it.
That is precisely the point, according
to proponents and some public policy
analyses.
The left-leaning New Jersey Policy
Perspective group contends that the
Garden States current minimum wage
of $8.38 an hour or $17,430 a year if a
resident works 40 hours a week every
week of the year doesnt go nearly far
enough.

PETER ACKERMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Colin Hay watched the documentary about his life by filmmaker Nate Gotham, answered questions from the audience with Gotham and
performed several acoustic numbers at the House of Independents as part of the Asbury Park Music in Film Festival on Saturday.

CHRIS JORDAN AND ALEX BIESE

@CHRISFHJORDAN AND @ABIESEAPP

Just getting by
By the groups estimation, the hourly
wage needed for a single adult full-time
worker to afford basic needs in New
Jersey is at least $13.78, or $28,662 a
year more than one and a half times
higher than the current minimum
wage.
If enacted, a $15 minimum would
boost take-home pay for one in three
workers, including 724,000 who earn
less than $11.05 an hour, according to
NJPP. About 87 percent of those workers are adults aged 20 years and older;
more than half (56 percent) work fulltime; and nearly half (44 percent) attended or graduated from college.
About 1 in 4 are parents raising about
288,000 children.
I think the one thing we know is that

MARK R. SULLIVAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Shelli Sonstein and Josh Braun address the audience during the Business of
Music and Film panel discussion at the Wonder Bar.

SUNDAY BEST

Writing
for Rihanna
Meet the Shore musician who wrote a song featured
on singers new album. STORY, 1E

Federal lab regulators unveiled a website to publicly

track safety of biolabs. 1B

See FESTIVAL, Page 12A

To see videos, photo galleries and much more from the lm festival, visit APP.com

See WAGES, Page 7A

@ISSUE
BUSINESS
CLASSIFIED
LOCAL
LOTTERIES

Who can it be now?

It was Colin Hay on stage at a
packed House of Independents on
Cookman Avenue as part of the Asbury Park Music in Film Festival.
Hay, formerly of the group Men at
Work, took questions from the audience and performed after a screening
of his documentary, Waiting for My
Real Life.
I never really liked to give the audience members
the (blanking) microphone, Hay joked.
Youre looking for trouble, a fan asked
No Im not! Hay quickly replied.
Waiting for My Real Life depicted Hays post-Men
at Work career, the highs and lows, that followed hits
like Who Can It Be Now.

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VOLUME 137
NUMBER 86
SINCE 1879

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