St. Cloud Chamber President Talks About $15 Minimum Wage Possibility

ST. CLOUD -- The two men running for Governor in Minnesota have been sparring this week over whether they support raising the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Meanwhile, the President of the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce says some local governments have already taken action to raise their own minimum wage.   Teresa Bohnen says most employers are already paying their workers at least $15 an hour. But, she says one area that could be impacted the most is the service industry.

If you pay a server $15 an hour and they get tips on top of that, now you have to restructure your entire pay system so that the kitchen workers are at least near what the servers are making, or else you have chaos in your organization.  So I think the $15 an hour thing we'd be willing to talk about if we could get a tip credit.

On Democrat Tim Walz' website, he says he wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Republican Jeff Johnson says he does not support a $15 minimum wage.

Minnesota's current minimum wage is $9.65 an hour for large employers.