OPINION: Nebraska voters already said minimum wage earners have value. Remember that

Even though Lancaster County District Judge Lori Maret pumped the brakes on Lincoln setting its own minimum wage, the story is more than an accounting of dollars and cents. It also includes whether voters’ voices are being muted or which branch of state government gets to decide.

Another narrative, this one about the principles of what we call “work,” runs parallel to the numbers and the politics. In short, it’s because minimum wage workers have and provide value. Nebraska voters have already said so. 

The backstory begins at the ballot box and, to date, has stalled in a courtroom. Maret issued a temporary injunction against the Capital City from going forward with its plan to raise the minimum wage for all workers to $15 an hour. 

State Attorney General Mike Hilgers took Lincoln to court, arguing that it cannot defy a state law. Four years ago voters overwhelmingly passed the Wage and Hours Act, raising the state’s minimum hourly wage to $15 effective Jan. 1, 2026. The Legislature tinkered with the results of that vote, changing rates of increase and creating exceptions for young workers. 

Writing about work and workers for many years, my experience is that most of us do work hard or at least earn our keep. Sure, you can always find a few who lean on the shovel more than they use it, who quit quietly or who “back bench” in Congress. 

Over 20 years ago, I did about a year’s worth of field research, too, which brought into clear relief the way Nebraskans approach the “job,” even the minimum wage ones. After writing a series of stories about how Nebraskans see their communities, a recurring theme emerged: The outsized role of work. To explore this connection between life and work, a focus group helped me identify 12 jobs that stretched across a variety of skill sets and qualifications. I made arrangements to work at each full time for a week.

I then wrote several pieces about each “job,” detailing its demands and how my “coworkers” saw their contributions to society. Over the course of a year, I worked as a grocery store checker; an attendance clerk at a high school keeping tabs on the whereabouts of 2,000 students; a street maintenance worker filling in cracks with hot tar; a hospital food service employee delivering food to hospital patients and washing dishes; a carpenter’s helper building an addition onto a home; a tech in a physical therapy hand clinic; a receptionist at city hall; a seasonal worker on a seed corn farm; an a.m. drive radio disc jockey; and even a priest … well, kinda. 

Obviously, constraints applied to some of my duties because of training and insurance. I did, however, deliver three homilies one weekend. Nor were any students lost during my week on the front lines. I’m also happy to report the addition to the house still stands. 

Even though I worked each job full time for a week, I still had to file my regular four columns each week for the newspaper where I actually did work. That meant I also got a little better understanding of what those who have two jobs to make ends meet experience.

No one can truly capture another’s work life in a week, so my “on-the-job” project had some limits applied to my insights. I did recognize that in more than half of the jobs, workers started at minimum wage. Many of the men and women I worked with had been on their jobs for years, well beyond probationary or minimum wage periods, which was $5.15 back then.

But not all. What I learned was that while the paltry pay was one thing, “minimum wage” as an idea was another. It usually signaled a beginning, an entry level, but could also herald an end, a terminus, as many retirees — especially today — get back into the workforce, laboring at minimum wage jobs. AARP reported in February of 2026 that 7% of retirees had “unretired,” which was before war and gas prices over $4 a gallon.

Aside from a beginning, “minimum wage” can also carry the stigma of the work lacking in value or merit. If you think about how we reward “work,” some of our highest paid gigs are those that simply make money, those that entertain us or those that heal us. At the other end of the spectrum, those with the lowest pay have jobs that serve us or care for us. In between are millions of other data points of value.

That’s the point. Each has value. As we litigate the numbers of minimum wage, we should remember that those who will start or end there are providing exactly that … value.