REUTERS NEXT-Higher minimum wage is the way out of the pandemic, says payments co CEO

"When you invest in your people, your company succeeds," Price said. He said he doubled the pay of customer service agents and receptionists, which had exponential impact on employees when it came to financial security.

Raising wages will help businesses recover from the pandemic, said Dan Price, the CEO of a Seattle-based credit card company Gravity Payments.

Price, who took a pay cut in order to increase salaries at his own company to $70,000 a year, argued that raising wages was necessary to keep great talent in a panel at the Reuters Next conference https://reutersevents.com/events/next on Wednesday. "When you invest in your people, your company succeeds," Price said.

He said he doubled the pay of customer service agents and receptionists, which had exponential impact on employees when it came to financial security. "We had a 10x increase in the number of people buying homes for the first time, which is a huge financial security in our current economy," he said.

Employees also paid down debt, he said. A third became debt-free and "doubled" and "tripled" their retirement savings. Price said the company's turnover was also cut in half. Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a national organization of service workers and restaurant employers fighting for fair pay, said that employers can't do it alone. It would take federal legislation to increase pay in the United States.

"Almost 2000 restaurant owners who are working with us are going to Congress ... saying we need policy to signal to millions of workers, these are permanent wage increases, and it's worth coming back to work in restaurants," she said. Jayaraman feels hopeful about the future of service workers if minimum wages rise.

"We need to institutionalize changes we've seen success in," he said. "If we do that, we'll have a stable, growing economy that puts the worker at the center of the possibilities."

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