Hundreds of thousands of Arizonans are in line for a salary increase come January.
Arizona voters approved Proposition 206, which will raise the minimum wage to $10 next year and then gradually increase it to $12 by 2020, while also requiring some employers to provide three days of paid sick leave.
Preliminary results show it won on a margin of close to 3-to-2 in Tuesdayโs election.
The business community mounted only token opposition to the measure, raising less than $40,000 for the campaign at last count.
Proponents, by contrast, collected close to $4.3 million.
Pro-206 campaign manager Bill Scheel has figured there are about 779,000 Arizonans now earning below $12 an hour, or about a quarter of the state workforce.
He also estimated about 934,000 Arizonans are in jobs where there is no paid sick leave.
Proposition 206 is an outgrowth of a 2006 voter-approved law that established Arizonaโs first-ever minimum wage, setting it at $6.75 an hour when the federal minimum was $5.15.
The 2006 law also requires annual inflation adjustments, which have pushed the minimum now to $8.05 an hour; it would have gone up another dime automatically in January.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
Explaining why the Arizona Chamber of Commerce didnโt mount a stronger campaign against the new measure, which it claims will result in job losses, spokesman Garrick Taylor said:
โUnfortunately, when these things get on the ballot across the country, theyโre likely to pass.โ
