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The passage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage in New York and California may have come as a shock to the Council of State Chambers, the umbrella group for America’s notoriously anti-worker state chambers of commerce. But in a recent video briefing by LuntzGlobal, a Republican polling firm, the group got an even bigger shock: 80 percent of C-suite business executives surveyed by Luntz supported raising the minimum wage.
That’s not all: 73 percent of those execs supported more paid sick leave for workers—and 82 percent supported mandatory, paid paternity leave. Among state chamber members, support for mandatory paid paternity leave was even higher, at 89 percent.
During the call, a recording of which was obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, Luntz Managing Director David Merritt attributed the findings to “empathy.”
“What do these results have in common?” he asked. “Well, quite frankly, they are all empathetic. If you ask about them in isolation, of course we want to take care of people who are caring for a loved one. Of course we want to give folks more benefits or more leave or more income.”
But the people who actually run state chambers of commerce don’t feel this way—at least not always. So Merritt went on to give “a few helpful hints on how to actually, um, combat these [feelings of empathy] in your state.” Check it out:
