“Whereas, the increases in the rate of the minimum wage scheduled to take effect over the next 4 years could have a detrimental effect on the economy of the State; and Whereas, in the judgment of the Legislature, these facts create an emergency within the meaning of the Constitution of Maine and require the following legislation as immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety; now, therefore, be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:”

That is the legalese preamble to LD 1757 which Governor LePage hopes will offset the supposed threat created by the electorate’s approval of 2016’s Ballot Question 4. That vote immediately raised the state’s minimum wage, heading it in the direction of eventually becoming an actual livable income and incrementally eliminating the even greater injustice of separate sub-minimum pay for those hardworking individuals additionally challenged because they are employed in a tipped work position.

Thanks to a lack of resolve on the part of Democrats in negotiating a state budget, those tipped workers were ultimately thrown under the bus in the name of “compromise,” when what was compromised was the clearly expressed will of the people to finally have all employers and workers treated the same.

Ideologically direct in its intent, LD 1757 is transparently named: “An Act To Protect Maine’s Economy by Slowing the Rate at Which the State’s Minimum Wage Will Increase and Establishing a Training and Youth Wage.”

Hiding there in plain sight is its coattail establishment of yet additional sub-minimum wages.

Obscured by its preamble’s opaque language is the gambit that its premise of necessary urgency hangs its hat on the words “could have” in the first sentence but somehow suddenly becomes “these facts” in the one that follows.

A more likely motivation for “emergency” passage is to buy some bottom line time before increased bottom wage implementation disproves any alleged doomsday scenario.

If passed, the bill would again undermine what remains of Ballot Question 4. This June’s wage elevation to $10 per hour would be reduced to $9.50. Annual increases of $1 would be cut to 50 cents and the goal of reaching a near livable wage of $12 per hour by 2021 capped at $11 dollars. The cost-of-living adjustment to the minimum wage would be eliminated. Suppressed wages would be established for 18 to 20 year old workers “in training” and workers under 18 would be subject to a “youth minimum wage.”

Proponents of LD 1757 argue that the underlying basis for a wage is skills and Question 4 forces Maine employers to pay workers more than their value in a “fair market.”

The more just question is: “Fair to whom?” That America’s world dominant marketplace can’t provide sufficient wages for the basic needs of all full-time workers can hardly be described as fair.

Those opposed to raising the minimum wage protest that “artificially raised” wages at the bottom increase overhead. Without a mitigating growth in productivity or sales, businesses running on the margins must reduce costs and the first victims are the very same low-wage low-skilled workers that an increase in the minimum wage intends to help. That feigned concern didn’t even stand the test of 2017. Employment actually increased.

Now some in Washington want to take tips away from workers and award them to the employer. For those conservatives, what was once beyond the pale of even extreme partisan politics is merely another drop in the bucket of a greed-driven total absence of compassion.

Despite all the partisan spin over recent Conservative changes to America’s tax laws, class warfare continues unabated from the top down.

Comparing my own take-home pay before and after, I’m now receiving just $10 per week, or $520 per year, additional cash in hand. How that modest padding of my paycheck will play out in the long game isn’t readily apparent. What is clear is that such relative chump change, though appreciated in its immediacy, is nothing comparable to what those so much better situated in the game of financial reward will receive, and for much longer.

So, though having turned their backs on the most progressive part of 2016 Ballot Question 4, that of eliminating sub-minimum wages, it’s heartening that Maine Democrats, at least in committee, have now voted against passage of LD 1757.

Physics 101 states that “Work equals weight times distance.” The gravity of that reality is often lost on those that have never experienced real labor, but the hardship of real work is something those at the lowest income remuneration know all too well. There’s no such thing as “unskilled labor.” Such essential yet often discredited work requires skillsets and discipline many in management or ownership could never acquire or perform adequately themselves.

Both sides of the aisle often seem unaware that someone has to clean that aisle and maintain the chambers in which the fate of hardworking Mainers is sometimes so cavalierly decided according to political gamesmanship, and where employer interests are represented far more favorably than the workers that actually make an employer’s dream a reality.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.