Coalition Confident of Getting Wage Initiative on the Fall Ballot

Ready for a raise?

For many workers--especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder--pay increases have been hard to come by in recent years.

To try to change that, a union-financed group known as the Liveable Wage Coalition is hustling to put a measure on the November ballot in California that would boost the state’s minimum wage for the first time since 1988.

Currently, under both state and federal law, the minimum is $4.25 an hour. The proposed ballot measure would boost it to $5 next March and to $5.75 in March 1998.

Richard Holober, manager for the campaign, said the measure would boost the income of an estimated 1.9 million workers now earning less than $5.75 hourly. Moreover, another 900,000 workers making just over that amount would also probably see their wages rise, as the higher minimum ripples through the lower-paid echelons of the labor market.

Holober said raising the minimum wage has broad appeal among voters, if not business groups, who claim it would eliminate jobs. At the same time, backers said, the initiative will help frame the election-year political debate and will provide a major political payoff by bringing extra liberals and low-income workers to the polls. “It’ll force candidates across the board to tell voters whether they’re for or against working people,” Holober said.

Meanwhile, a flock of other Western and Midwestern states are considering or working on similar ballot initiatives. In Los Angeles, union and community groups this spring are expected to work on a separate lobbying campaign to push for higher minimum wages and health-care benefits for workers at companies receiving city subsidies or contracts. Moreover, the AFL-CIO plans to hold “America Needs a Raise” town hall meetings over the next two months nationally to highlight the plight of low-wage workers.

But for California’s Liveable Wage Coalition, there’s a key deadline coming up. By April 19, the campaign needs to deliver its petitions to election officials so the signatures can be reviewed and the measure qualified for November’s ballot. With 446,000 of the hoped-for 750,000 signatures already gathered, Holober expresses confidence that the deadline won’t be a problem.

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Just head over to an airport terminal most days and it’s plain to see that more men than women are flying off to business meetings in other cities. But one of the widely held notions of the reason for the gender disparity--the theory that women are more likely to avoid travel because of child rearing and other family responsibilities--has been grounded by a new study.

The authors of the study found that men are more than twice as likely to take overnight work trips than women. And that’s true even when the comparison is made between men and women in the same jobs, age categories and educations, and who have similar views on child raising and family life.

Gender discrimination appears to be the culprit, said Harriet Presser, a University of Maryland sociologist and co-author of the study. Bosses, she theorizes, are less likely to award precious travel opportunities to women.

And while many people would rather not take on out-of-town assignments, Presser argues that the lack of such travel could damage women’s future earnings and opportunities for promotion.

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It’s your turn next, boss.

Amid all of the attention given to the elimination of good blue-collar jobs and the layoffs of middle managers in recent years, what sometimes is lost is that being a chief executive isn’t the sweet, secure deal it used to be.

One of the main reasons is the high level of corporate mergers. “Last year there were more than 8,000 mergers,” noted James E. Challenger, president of the Challenger, Gray & Christmas outplacement firm. “Since each new company needs only one CEO, what happens to the other 4,000?”

What’s more, many management experts feel that in an increasingly competitive economy, CEOs ought to be replaced every so often to keep a fresh perspective at the top of the organization. In a survey by Challenger Gray of 195 human resources executives, 58% said CEOs lose their effectiveness after five to 10 years.

Still, not everyone’s heart bleeds for the deposed bosses. Being ousted as a CEO--and getting a lucrative “golden parachute” to break the fall--beats being sent to an outplacement program or unemployment office.

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Intensified labor strife is likely to surface soon, on several fronts, in Southern California. A major union contract expired a week ago at GTE, and other big labor pacts lapse at the end of March at Southern California Gas and Kaiser Permanente. At least initially, look for the unions to avoid strikes and opt for publicity campaigns attacking employers’ cost-cutting schemes. AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, while visiting union officials last week in Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland to map a strategy against Kaiser, said he wanted to avoid disrupting patient service. Without divulging specifics, Sweeney said unions representing Kaiser workers are looking at using their clout as consumers--one-quarter of Kaiser’s subscribers are from families with a union member--to pressure the company to back away from plans to eliminate union jobs.

Times staff writer Stuart Silverstein can be reached at (213) 237-7887 or via e-mail at stuart.silverstein@latimes.com