Voters to Decide on Minimum Wage Hike

Appointees of the governor have always been the ones to decide whether to increase the minimum wage for hundreds of thousands of California workers.

With Proposition 210, for the first time, it’s the voters’ turn to make the call.

And despite some complications to sort out, a majority of voters appear to be convinced that it is time for California’s rock-bottom wage earners to get a raise.

A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed a hefty 71% of likely voters in favor of Proposition 210 and 22% against it.

But both sides say the fight is not over, and in scouting for campaign ammunition they point to these tricky complications.

Among them is the fact that no matter how Proposition 210 fares Nov. 5, the minimum wage--now $4.25 an hour--will have already risen thanks to a federally ordered increase kicking in Tuesday.

At that point, the nation’s lowest paid workers--fast-food servers, retail clerks, manual laborers and others, numbering more than 700,000 in California--will be earning $4.75 an hour, and in September of next year, $5.15.

Staggered between the federal increases are those called for in Proposition 210: a hike to $5 an hour March 1, and a further bump to $5.75 in March, 1998.

Proponents, led by a resurgent organized labor movement, contend that the federal raise represents only a “down payment” on lifting minimum wage workers from poverty.

Those opposed, including many California business owners, call the measure overkill, saying they not only face the prospect of significantly hiking minimum wages, but also increases in associated costs. Such a burden, they say, can only be borne by layoffs or increased costs passed on to consumers.

Backers contend that it is time for a substantial increase in a rate that has remained unchanged for eight years. There was a time, they say, when California’s minimum wage rose with the cost of living.

The state Industrial Welfare Commission, a five-member panel appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate, authorized minimum wage increases annually in the early ‘70s and ‘80s, but there has been no increase since the current rate of $4.25 was set in 1988.

If only the federal increases take effect, said Proposition 210 campaign manager Richard Holober, “that still leaves a family of three children $2,500 a year below the poverty line.”

Holober, an official of the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO, said, “We’re not claiming Proposition 210 is a magic wand that will eliminate poverty, but it will help put food on the table.”

Cecilia Rivas, a minimum wage home care worker, says she could use that kind of help.

There are days, she said at her rent-subsidized apartment near downtown Los Angeles, when all she can give her 10-year-old son for dinner is milk and cookies.

“It makes me feel so bad, sometimes I cry,” Rivas said. Each year in the 10 years she has been a minimum wage worker, she added, it gets a little worse.

The task facing opponents, said Sean Garrett, a spokesman for the No on 210 campaign, is to rally comparable emotion “to our side in the rest of the campaign.”

His side, said Garrett, will tell “the real story” of small business owners faced with the prospect of raising minimum wages four times in 18 months.

Among those is Sheldon Grossman, owner of a Long Beach carwash who is quoted by opponents in the official ballot pamphlet.

“We’re talking about a $150,000 increase a year,” he said about paying his 20 minimum wage employees $5.75 per hour plus associated increases, including raises he feels he must give his non-minimum wage workers out of fairness.

For example, Grossman said, besides higher payroll taxes and insurance costs, “I’ll probably be paying $6 an hour to the guy now getting $5” and so on through his 42-member staff.

Grossman said he will survive the increase, as he has others in the past. He said his own “comfortable” lifestyle will be maintained, along with the hard day’s work he and his wife put in running the business.

But his basic $7.95 carwash may have to be increased by as much as a dollar, he said, causing him to lose customers.

Conflicting studies by economists--Nobel laureates on both sides--differ on the effect the wage hike would have on the economy and business.

Proponents cite an upsurge, rather than a decline, in employment after the minimum wage raise from $3.35 to $4.25 in 1988. In response, Garrett said the surge would have been greater had it not been for the mandated wage hike.

With the full range of increases approved, California could be headed for the highest minimum wage in the nation, opponents contend, at a time when the state’s economy is still recovering.

As the odds-on favorites, proponents of Proposition 210 are nevertheless working up a heavy-hitting campaign in the remaining weeks before election day.

With organized labor leading the way, Holober promises a Yes campaign reaching “10 million registered voters on a repeated basis” that will include television, radio and direct mail appeals.

The other side, with low poll numbers, have more modest plans.

“Less than a couple of million,” will be spent, Garrett said, mostly on television and radio ads, paid for with “bits and pieces from small business owners.”

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Proposition 210 at a Glance

This November ballot measure would raise the minimum wage in California to $5 an hour on March 1 and to $5.75 on March 1, 1998. That would be higher than the federal minimum wage, which increases from $4.25 to $4.75 on Tuesday and to $5.15 in September 1997.

SUPPORTERS

California Labor Federation AFL-CIO; Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy leaders; California League of Women Voters; Consumer Federation of California; Congress of California Seniors.

OPPONENTS

California Chamber of Commerce, California Restaurant Assn., California Hotel and Motel Assn., California Manufacturers Assn., California Farm Bureau Federation, Gov. Pete Wilson.

WEB SITES

Campaign for: https://www.prop210.org

Campaign against: https://www.prop210no.org