A Michigan organization with significant labor backing appears to have been caught fabricating a quote in a news release pushing for a minimum-wage hike. The Detroit News reports:

Supporters of a petition drive to hike Michigan’s $7.40-an-hour minimum wage to $9.50 undercut their grassroots message Monday when they announced their initiative.

The first press release sent out by Raise Michigan — a coalition of groups including Michigan United and the Restaurant Opportunities Center-Michigan — included a poignant, if canned quote.

Said Raise Michigan’s statement: “My family can’t survive on $7.40 an hour,” said WORKER, “It’s not fair that I work full-time, and be living in poverty. Everyone who is working full-time deserves to live with dignity.”

RAISE Michigan, the group behind the news release, is “a front group for a conglomerate of liberal groups, worker centers and labor unions,” according to the Center for Union Facts.

The sloppiness of fill-in-the-blank quote attribution is a bit embarrassing from a PR perspective. But it’s perhaps consistent with the underlying ideology, which favors setting compensation for workers without any consideration for variation in individual performance.  

— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. She is also a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum.