Here’s a ray of hope for people working at Eureka’s Taco Bell. Or Wal-Mart. Or any other business* in the city that pays workers as little as the law will tolerate:
A petition to boost Eureka’s minimum wage to $12 an hour has received enough valid signatures to be presented to the City Council at its March 19 meeting. And if the council shoots it down, as proponents predict it will, the measure will be placed on next year’s ballot.
Eureka City Clerk Pam Powell announced earlier today that the “Eureka Fair Wage Act” was signed by 1,635 qualified voters, easily clearing the threshold of 1,370 signatures (10 percent of the city’s voters in 2011) needed to be deemed legit.
If the measure succeeds, it would give Eureka the highest minimum wage in the country by a fairly wide margin. The mark is currently held by San Francisco, where the lowest wage is $10.24 per hour. Minimum wage in Eureka (and most of California) is $8 an hour. President Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $9/hour.
*CLARIFICATION: The act would only apply to employers with 25 or more employees.
This article appears in Unleashed.
Congratulations to a small group determined to prove, once and for all, what an informed electorate can do.
It will take tens of thousands of dollars slathering local media to return public opinion against its own interest.
Would this apply to all businesses or just businesses with over a certain number of employees?
If local print/TV media routinely covered this story everyone would be well-aware of all the details Goldie!
They’ve been gathering signatures since Summer, 2012, and the only media coverage occurred AFTER it qualified for the ballot, and still, NOT ONE word about the positive economic impacts of 80 years of minimum wage history in the U.S.!?
Who says media doesn’t create its own scandalous news?
The Initiative applies to all employers of 25 or more employees only if they refuse to collectively bargain!
As long as the big boxes want to ship their profits out of town, at least they can pay their employees enough NOT to qualify for social services.
The Fair Wage Act was written by the same people sitting on the courthouse lawn who spent months loitering, vandalizing public property, drinking, and getting high as a way of ‘protest’. It is an anti-big buisness (mostly just anti-Walmart) proposal, plain and simple, but it won’t just ‘stick it to’ big-box stores — local businesses like Eureka Natural Foods and Pierson’s will be hit much harder than Target or Costco because they have less capital to begin with than a corporation does.
Raising the minimum wage the way that the ‘Fair Wage Folks’ suggest will mean less jobs for low-end workers and teens just getting started with their working lives, since every unemployed person within 100 miles will flock to Eureka to compete for the few numbers of jobs available. Businesses just over the cut-off will either fire people to get under 25 employees or cut everyone’s hours in order to accommodate for their increased overhead. That or they’ll raise the price of goods to accommodate, which then transforms a 4-dollar hike in minimum wage into a 4-dollar hike in inflation. Within a year it’ll feel just the same as it does now.
A new business or company wanting to open up shop in Eureka will be dismayed over having to pay more for entry-level employees and just go someplace else. That or they will sue in court for equality, since small businesses will have a financial advantage, having to give out less of the money they make — and who do you think has more money (ergo could get better lawyers): big-box stores or local businesses?
LOL please keep driving companies out of Eureka and Humboldt, I can’t wait for the complete colaspe.
Colaspe?
we do anticipate what we call compression right around that inflection point of 25.
For instance, a company with 25 employees, but 10 of them part time, may choose to convert 2 part time jobs into one full time job. Naturally this will discomfort a few part time workers in this town (there aren’t that many businesses around 25 employees, there are clusters at 19 and 49 probably due to tax incentive constrictions) but that will be balanced by having more full time jobs in the community. The gross amount of employment will not change.
As far as applying it more broadly, we agree that all workers should make a living wage but if you read the “Tiered Minimum Wage” post it explains why we are exempting Mom and Pop businesses. Politically the tiered minimum wage is much more popular and has far less opposition than a flat minimum wage. It is a historic compromise between regulation and deregulation. In this case, the large businesses are regulated, while the Mom and Pops are deregulated.
We understand that the number 25 is an arbitrary number. So is the tradtional age of majority at 21 in our society. It is an arbitrary number. Some people are clearly ready for adulthood at 17. Some clearly aren’t ready for adulthood even at 25. But we use the arbitrary number of 21 for all. While we don’t want to take the analogy too far because we don’t believe in corporate personhood, we consider the number of 25 employees to be the number of majority for businesses. Under 25 employees, and you are a young growing business that needs flexibility. 25 employees or more and you are an adult business, with adult responsibilities in the economy, including paying a decent wage to your employees.