Maine advocacy group backs $12 minimum wage, pays $10

The Maine People's Alliance (MPA) is working to raise its state's minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020 — and it advertised to hire phone canvassers at $10 per hour to help make it happen.

The discrepancy was discovered when the advocacy organization posted a job listing Tuesday offering $429 every two weeks for 42.5 hours of work. That works out to an hourly wage of just $10.09, an embarrassment MPA's communications director, Mike Tipping, attributed to a math error and confusion over a discontinued training wage.

The MPA ad has been updated to offer $12 per hour, or $510 every two weeks. The group can perhaps take comfort in knowing that they are hardly the only minimum wage supporters to offer lower pay than they seek to mandate. Last summer, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders found himself in hot water for backing a $15 national minimum but paying interns $12. In October, a California advocacy group offered $12 to "Fight for $15," and in 2014 the Freedom Socialist Party of Seattle listed a job paying $13 while advocating $20.