"Livable wage" scores victory, picks up steam

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the June 22, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - On June 13 Jersey City joined the list of cities raising the minimum wage firms doing business with the city must pay their employees. Under provisions of a "living wage" ordinance adopted unanimously by the city council on June 13, contractors must pay employees at $7.50 per hour and set aside another dollar an hour for health and other benefits.

In testimony prior to passage of the measure, housing activist Lee Barile told the city council the living wage ordinance was "the beginning of the struggle to shift priorities away from profits over people to people before profits."

Barile said the minimum wage was the product of struggle and should reflect what it takes for "a worker and his/her family to live." The minimum "is not for all time, but changes with historical conditions," she told the council.

Jersey City now joins Baltimore in enacting a living wage ordinance, while the state legislatures of Vermont and Delaware raised the minimum wage earlier this year.

Living wage campaigns are underway or are planned in 20 cities and at least three states. Jerry Husgen, legislative and political director of Teamsters Joint Council 13 said he was confident that an initiative measure to raise the Missouri minimum to $6.25 an hour in 1997 and by 25 cents each year through 1999, will secure enough signatures to make the November ballot.

"We plan on collecting 120,000 signatures in order to guarantee the needed 85,000 by July 5," he told the World in a telephone interview. Husgen said the situation was "made more difficult" by the requirement that at least 8,500 valid signatures had to be collected in each of at least six congressional districts."But we'll make it," he added, "we've begun attracting attention lately."

Husgen said some of the attention had come from Allied Industries, a business organization in St. Louis. "They're telling people that Council 13 is bankrolling the effort - that we put $10,000 into the campaign. That's not true," he said, indignantly. "It's $20,000. Make sure you quote me correctly!"

Like others interviewed by the World, Husgen says the campaign for a livable wage "dovetails with the AFL-CIO's "America Needs a Raise" campaign and is a "component of the fight to break the right-wing stranglehold on Congress.

In Montana, collecting the required 21,000 signatures on the initiative measure to raise the state minimum wage 50 cents a year through the year 2000 is no longer a problem for Don Judge. "We've already got them and the deadline is July 15," Judge, executive-secretary of the Montana State AFL-CIO, said.

Judge said he expects the vote on the initiative to impact on the careers of a number of members of the state legislature. "An increase in the minimum wage was defeated twice in the legislature and polls show that 75 percent of Montanans support an increase - so yes, I expect some tie-in between the two." he told the World.

The most ambitious effort - an initiative measure to raise the minimum wage to $5.00 an hour in 1987 and $5.75 in 1988 - is in California. There the State Labor Federation is heading up a coalition that turned in 775,000 signatures in April, nearly double the needed 438,000 valid signatures.

Deanna Mason, manager of the Livable Wage Coalition office in northern California, and a veteran of initiative campaigns said she had never seen people "line up to sign petitions like they did with this one."

Minimum wage/Living wage campaigns fall into two categories: State-wide efforts to raise the minimum wage for all workers as in California and local campaigns to establish a minimum for contractors doing business with local government as in Jersey City, Baltimore, Milwaukee and a number of other cities. In many instances - the three cities mentioned, for example - local living wage efforts have been been "legislative campaigns," i.e., forcing city councils or county commissions to pass ordinances.

In other cities - Albuquerque, Denver and Houston and the states mentioned above - the issue is being taken directly to the people by use of ballot initiatives to put the measure on the November ballot.

The Rainbow Coalition lists several arguments for the initiative approach to winning the battle for a living wage obstacles: 1) It is popular. 2) It bypasses legislative and increases overall political pressure on a key issue. 3) Ballot measures on progressive economic issues can "re-connect" with working class voters, increase voter turnout on "our side" and redefine the political landscape.