Minimum Wage – Page 5

Report: Unions Avoid The Minimum Wage

December 19, 2014 By Connor D. Wolf 3 Comments

Unions love raising the minimum wage, so long as they are exempt.

A new report, “Labor’s Minimum Wage Exemption,” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found many labor unions are exempt from the various local minimum wage laws they support for everyone else.

“Not all minimum wage increases come in the same form,” the report notes. “Some local ordinances in particular include an exemption for employers that enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union.”

The report explains that these sort of “escape clauses” are often designed to encourage unionization because they make membership a low cost alternative for employers. This, explains the report, raises questions about who these minimum wage laws are actually meant to help.

The report cites the experience of one union after the city of Los Angeles included an exemption for unions when they raised the minimum wage for the hotel industry.

“Local 11’s membership increased from 13,626 in 2007 to 20,896 in 2013,10 while its revenue increased from approximately $7.5 million per year to nearly $12.7 million,” the report details.

The same thing happened for UNITE-HERE Local 2 when San Francisco passed a minimum wage ordinance with a union exemption in late 2003.

Another notable example is when the city of SeaTac, Washington passed a living wage ballot initiative in 2013, known as Proposition 1. At the time the initiative established the highest minimum wage rate in the country of $15 per hour with an annual adjustment for inflation.

Proposition 1 also included an exemption for unions. The report explained, “Supporters of Proposition 1 spent more than $1.7 million, with union spending accounting for 98.4% of that amount.”

San Francisco’s move to raise its minimum wage to $10.55 per hour, which gained national attention, also included an exemption for unions.

According to the report, minimum wage laws passed in Oakland, San Jose, Long Beach, Milwaukee County and Chicago all included an exemption for unions.

“Many advocates for a higher minimum wage portray it as a means of improving the lives of workers, putting more money into the economy, and increasing growth,” the report concluded. “So, it is surprising that some minimum wage ordinances include an exemption that potentially undermines all three goals.”

This article was originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Chicago, Minimum Wage, san francisco, unions

Hyperliberal UC Berkeley Won’t Pay Higher Minimum Wage

December 8, 2014 By Blake Neff 2 Comments

Famous nationwide as a bastion of liberalism, the University of California-Berkeley has chosen to ignore a local ordinance raising the minimum wage, claiming an exemption as a state agency.

California’s minimum wage is $9 an hour for all workers, but on October 1 the city Berkeley implemented a local ordinance raising it to $10, seeking to improve conditions for low-skill workers in a city with a high cost of living. However, the city cannot compel state government entities to pay the higher wage, and so UC-Berkeley, the city’s largest employer, has exploited its state affiliation to keep paying 25 percent of its student employees less than the city minimum, according to a report by Inside Higher Ed.

The school isn’t alone. Several other cities in California, including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose have approved local statues increasing their minimum wage above the state minimum. In San Francisco, where the minimum is $10.74, San Francisco State University has used its exemption to keep 44 percent of student employees paid less than that.

Not all colleges are avoiding the minimum wage hikes, however. Both San Jose State University and the City College of San Francisco have complied with heightened minimum wages.

Berkeley city council member Jesse Arequin told Inside Higher Ed that while the city couldn’t compel UC-Berkeley to do anything, “We were hoping they would follow the letter and the spirit of the law.”

“$10 an hour is not enough to support yourself in Berkeley or the Bay Area,” he said.

UC-Berkeley has been famous for the liberalism of both students and faculty ever since the days of the campus’s Free Speech Movement during the 1960s. In 2012, individuals associated with the University of California (which Berkeley is the flagship campus of) were the biggest bloc of donors to President Obama’s reelection.

The school has defended itself, telling the local East Bay Express that “budget constraints” require that it keep student wages down. However, the UC system has recently given big pay boosts to some of its top executives, leading many to criticize its claims of a money shortage. For example, earlier this year, UC-Berkeley vice chancellor and provost Claude Steele received a pay increase of $75,000, raising his base salary from $375,000 to $450,000. That raise could have paid for a higher minimum wage for 220 student employees working 20 hours a week over a 17-week semester.

This article was originally posted on the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Liberalism, Minimum Wage, UC Berkeley

Minimum Wage Truth and Consequences: Who’s Listening?

October 13, 2014 By Joel Fox Leave a Comment

Let’s hope that voters become more engaged in the minimum wage debate than some elected officials.

Voters will be subject to counterarguments in the minimum wage debate. Raising the minimum wage will undoubtedly make things better for minimum wage workers – more to spend, raising some out of poverty. At the same time it likely will cost some minimum wage workers their jobs and raise costs for all consumers, including, of course, those minimum wage workers who get a raise.

California cities are in the forefront of the debate. San Francisco voters will consider raising the minimum wage from $10.74 an hour to $15 by 2018. Oakland voters will be asked to raise the minimum wage from $9 an hour to $12.25 by March 2015. San Diego faces a referendum in two years over a minimum wage increase passed by the city council over the mayor’s veto.

In Los Angeles, the mayor is proposing a $13.25 minimum wage with future increases tied to inflation. The L.A. City Council couldn’t wait. They already passed a $15.37 minimum wage for hotel workers and some councilmembers want to introduce a minimum wage increase to $15.25 for all city workers by 2019.

The Congressional Budget Office laid out the consequences of raising a federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. Most workers would receive higher pay, some would lose their jobs, and the share of low-wage workers who are employed would fall.

There is the additional concern of setting off some inflationary movement as costs go up putting pressure to raise wages across the board.

Many businesses worry about continued government dictates to business. Small business in particular is worried how raising the minimum wage will affect their ability to hire new employees or even to stay in business.

The job loss threat should be considered real. When the Los Angeles City Council passed the minimum wage for hotel workers, economist Christopher Thornberg opined in the Los Angeles Times after studying the matter for the council that the results of his study “strongly suggest that such a steep increase in the minimum wage could result in a sharp decline in the number of jobs in the hotel industry.”

More troubling was Thornberg’s assertion that the council didn’t bother to look at his findings. Thornberg wrote, “But the City Council never seemed interested in really examining the potential economic consequences of the ordinance. We got our instructions about what questions to address just two weeks before the vote, and we were surprised to learn that the council intended to vote on the day after we turned in our final analysis, which suggests none of the members spent time looking at our findings.”

Further, Fernando Guerra, head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount College said of the message sent to the business community opposing the hotel minimum wage increase, “This decision seemed to say: ‘Not only are you going to lose, we’re not going to listen to you. You’re a non-factor.’”

Will those members of the business community who oppose the minimum wage increase have any better luck with the voters? History indicates that voters tend to support minimum wage increases.

Importantly, will the voters be willing to listen to arguments about the consequences of raising wages and balance that against any pluses that come with the government order?

A possible outcome of the minimum wage debate may produce a third way. Call it job wage classification: for example, increasing pay for some minimum wage jobs but keeping a lower cap on other jobs for new workers so they can enter the job market.

Job wage classification may occur because the one size fit model doesn’t satisfy all companies, especially small businesses. But be wary and concerned about such a move. Job wage classification for minimum wage is more micromanaging government interference with businesses.

This article was originally published on Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Joel Fox, Los Angeles, Minimum Wage, san francisco

VIDEO: Jerry Brown’s false narrative of a California recovery

August 20, 2014 By Videos 2 Comments

American Conservative Union board member Jim Lacy, author of Taxifornia, on Varney & Company discussing Governor Jerry Brown’s false narrative of a California recovery.