Business owners, single moms and full-time students can all agree on one thing: If passed, State Question 832 — which would raise Oklahoma’s minimum wage to $15 an hour — will change their working lives.
Chase Davis has been at PetSmart for the last two years and makes $14.15 an hour as a full-time employee.
“75 cents doesn’t sound like a lot, but it definitely is,” Davis said. “It can be the difference between having to forego certain expenses, like food or gas.”
Oklahomans take to the polls June 16 to decide on increasing the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2029. It’d become $12 as soon as next year before reaching $13.50 in 2028.
Dylan Ramer, who makes around $13 an hour at Buffalo Wild Wings, echoed Davis’ support for increasing the minimum wage.
Ramer attends Tulsa Community College and, like Davis, lives at home to minimize student loan debt.
“Financial stuff is a very big stressor,” Ramer said. “That’s why a lot of people these days drop out of college due to just straight financials.”
Given their current hourly rates, neither would see a pay increase for another couple of years if SQ832 passes.
Ramer’s first paycheck goes almost entirely toward expenses like car payments and health insurance. Meanwhile, Davis said he spends $200 each month on food and $60 on gas every two weeks.
Opposition: Higher wages lead to higher customer costs
But other Tulsans don’t back a higher statewide minimum wage. Paul Kottler, a manager at Mexicali Border Cafe in downtown, has been in the restaurant business for most of his working life. He said people misunderstand how the industry works, and believes raising the minimum wage will lead to higher costs for consumers.
“A lot of people are going to get priced out of business,” Kottler said. “The profit margins that we deal with are already incredibly difficult, and everything’s just increasing in cost, and if we have to increase the price on labor, the menu prices are going to go up.”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mexicali has increased their menu prices twice. The restaurant employs about 45 people, 30 of whom are full-time.
“I know most of my servers make well over $15 an hour in tips. They probably don’t want a higher wage, because then they’re going to get less money every week,” Kottler said.
Rhondrea Gardner has worked at Mexicali for nearly three decades. Unlike her boss, she thinks a hike in minimum wage could be good for her. While it may mean fewer dollars in tips, she’d appreciate the consistency of her paycheck.
“No matter what service you are — if you’re the little old lady working at the Waffle House, if you’re the little old lady pouring coffee at the mom and pop’s — it’s going to help you as well because now you can make up to $15 an hour, which is great,” Gardner said.
The Tulsa Regional Chamber issued a statement outlining concerns about the automatic annual inflation-based increases built into the state question.
Chamber leaders, like Kottler, believe increasing wages will make the state less regionally competitive over time and translate to higher prices. Arindrajit Dube, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the data doesn’t back that up.
“The reality is that in the modern literature, most impacts of minimum wages that most studies tend to find tend to be small, sometimes close to zero, sometimes even positive,” Dube said.
When employers pay a higher wage, they tend to have an easier time recruiting and retaining workers so they may have fewer vacancies, he says.
Melodie Coulter operates under that same philosophy. She and her husband opened Meadow Market Books on Cherry Street this year, and hired two part-time employees at $15 an hour.
“I think resting on the minimum wage is just like an easy way out, and at the end of the day, if you want your business to be successful, you need people who feel like they are valued and appreciated,” Coulter said. “Otherwise, you’re going to have a lot of turnover, and that creates a lot of difficulty.”
Oklahoma has not increased its minimum wage since 2009. The state has also had one of the highest unemployment rate increases since April 2025.
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