The ‘facts’ will match the narrative.
Newly-discovered emails between Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s office and researchers at the University of California-Berkeley show an intimate level of coordination in planning the release and press coverage of a minimum wage study. The study they released found Seattle’s minimum wage raised wages for workers without raising unemployment.
Berkeley released their study on June 20, which was just six days before the University of Washington published their study. UW researchers found that low-income workers’ wages raised 3 percent, but their hours dropped by 9 percent — meaning the average worker lost $125 per month since the hike.
The studies’ close releases were not by chance. The Seattle City Council contracted an unbiased UW research team in 2014 to study the effects of a $15 minimum wage. However, the council cut UW’s funding when they saw an early draft of the UW study found negative results. The council then contacted researchers backing the $15 minimum wage to publish a left-leaning report before UW’s was published.
Murray hired Micheal Reich, a $15 minimum wage advocate, whose six studies found higher minimum wage to be beneficial to low-income workers.
Emails obtained by the Seattle Weekly through a public disclosure request found that Michael Reich, the lead author of the study, repeatedly contacted the mayoral office, a think tank advocating for a national $15 minimum wage, and a New York PR firm to plan the release and distribution of the report.
More emails obtained by Fox News show that Reich was to finish his report by Murray’s deadline — the three-year minimum wage-hike anniversary, and before the UW study’s release.
“Hope it’s in time for your Tuesday [minimum wage] event.” Reich emailed Murray’s office on June 18.
“The Seattle Mayor’s office would like to release the report tomorrow,” Reich wrote in an email on June 19. “I am still making some last-minute changes to the report itself. […] I’ve been working morning to evening every one of the past seven days to complete this. The timetable moved up over the weekend.”
Murray’s office told Reich to omit the UW study’s findings from his report.