SB 193: When a Good Bill goes Bad

Small business to lobby against minimum-wage provision, tomorrow

(NFIB/Nevada) – Carson City — Representatives from Nevada’s largest small-business association will ask the Assembly Committee on Commerce & Labor to remove a job-killing provision from a bill it would desperately like to see passed, when the committee convenes tomorrow, April 22, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 4100 of the Legislative Building in the State Capitol. (The hearing can also be seen live by video conference in Room 4406 in the Grant Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas.)“Senate Bill 193 was originally drafted to change Nevada’s uniquely silly overtime law,” said Randi Thompson, Nevada state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, America’s voice of small business, “but an additional provision to raise the minimum wage was added along its legislative journey, which we will strongly lobby the Assembly to remove.”

“Senate Bill 193 was originally drafted to change Nevada’s uniquely silly overtime law,” said Randi Thompson, Nevada state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, America’s voice of small business, “but an additional provision to raise the minimum wage was added along its legislative journey, which we will strongly lobby the Assembly to remove.”

What Senate Bill 193 seeks to do is remove the provision that any hours worked over eight qualify for overtime, even if the employee only worked 30 hours that week. It also removes that provision that anyone can only work eight hours in any 24-hour period, which limits a worker’s ability to stay late to cover a co-worker who is sick or needs to attend to an ailing parent or child, as the overtime rule would kick in. It also limits part-time workers from picking up shifts that work with their school schedules. In fact, if the Legislature were to remove the overtime barrier, it would allow part-time workers to work more hours and subsequently make more money in the free market without the artificial propping up of wages.

Nevada is the only state in the nation with this 24-hour clock restriction, and no accounting payroll system accommodates for this rule, which makes it’s bad for workers and employers. Small business has long advocated for a new law that fits a modern society, and wholeheartedly supported SB 193 in its original form.

Adding a provision that would increase the state’s minimum wage rate to $9 is nothing more than politically self-serving. “Any argument in favor of the minimum wage is emotional and anecdotal,” said Tim Wulf, a retired economics professor who now owns a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop in Reno. “Four decades of research have shown that raising the minimum wage hurts teens, unskilled workers and part-time workers the most.”

Wulf, a leadership council member of NFIB/Nevada, will testify tomorrow that his shop will need $390,000 in additional sales to pay for the minimum-wage increase called for in SB 193. As with many small-business owners across the Silver State, what cannot be made up in additional sales will have to be met with by freezes in hiring, cutbacks in overtime, and reduced shifts for full-time employees.

For more than 70 years, the National Federation of Independent Business has been the Voice of Small Business, taking the message from Main Street to the halls of Congress and all 50 state legislatures. NFIB annually surveys its members on state and federal issues vital to their survival as America’s economic engine and biggest creator of jobs. NFIB’s educational mission is to remind policymakers that small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses; they have very different challenges and priorities. For more information, follow NFIB/Nevada on Twitter at @NFIB_NV.