Not Exactly Waging War : Other Initiatives Detract From Campaign to Raise Minimum Wage

The ballot initiative to raise California’s minimum wage, once expected to trigger fireworks between business and organized labor, has turned into an unexpectedly quiet skirmish.

Employers have put up a surprisingly halfhearted fight against Proposition 210, which would eventually raise the state’s minimum wage to $5.75 an hour. And the union-sponsored coalition backing the measure, despite enjoying a big lead in the polls, isn’t getting as much political and publicity mileage out of the campaign as it once imagined.

The initiative’s symbolic value and economic consequences were deflated by the big national victory that organized labor scored this summer when Congress increased the federal minimum wage. Meanwhile, in California, other November propositions have grabbed the media spotlight.

Even so, the Proposition 210 campaign appears likely to bring unions a significant victory while providing an example of how the labor movement can tap into a popular cause to energize itself politically.

“This will only make them stronger,” acknowledged Sean Garrett, spokesman for the anti-Proposition 210 effort known as the Alliance to Protect Small Businesses & Jobs.

“It’s an arrow in your quiver to be able to say, ‘We’re the guys who want to raise the minimum wage.’ ”

Organized labor says it has raised just over $1.5 million to promote the initiative. It has strengthened its political base by drawing support from a spectrum of unions, along with religious and consumer groups, which say they are trying to help the working poor.

The business alliance opposing Proposition 210, on the other hand, has reported receiving only $723,000, although a late fund-raising push is helping narrow the gap. Still, the business group has garnered scant money outside of the restaurant and hotel industries.

For the most part, big California employers with money to spend on politics are more concerned about other ballot measures. The prime example is the $36.7 million that pro-business forces have contributed to try to defeat Proposition 211, a measure that would make it easier for stockholders to sue public companies for securities fraud.

If 210 had been on the ballot by itself, “it would have had much larger funding, but people are looking at 211 as a huge threat and see the need for stopping it. They want to stop the bigger threat,” said Julianne A. Broyles, a lobbyist for the California Chamber of Commerce, which is urging voters to vote against 210 and 211, along with five other initiatives it has branded “job killers.”

Moreover, big employers tend to have relatively few--if any--workers earning just the minimum wage. Small employers are the most likely to be pinched by a Proposition 210 wage increase, and they are the least able to finance an election fight.

Employer groups and some economists, to be sure, lament that Proposition 210 would disrupt small businesses by imposing federal and state minimum wage increases in rapid succession, eliminating many entry-level jobs and otherwise damaging California’s economic recovery.

But when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are, “many elements of the business community have concluded this is an unwinnable fight,” crowed Stephen K. Hopcraft, a spokesman for the Liveable Wage Coalition, the labor-financed group behind Proposition 210.

That view was underscored by a Los Angeles Times Poll taken in September showing Proposition 210 with 71% support among likely voters.

What’s more, the emotions on both sides of the battle have been cooled by Congress’ passage last summer of a two-step increase in the federal minimum wage. The first part of the federal increase took effect Oct. 1, boosting the minimum from $4.25 to $4.75, and the second installment coming next September will raise the standard another 40 cents to $5.15.

So, even if the two-step Proposition 210 increase passes, the minimum wage for Californians will ultimately go up only 60 cents more, to $5.75, in March 1998.

Consequently, many employers appear to have decided it isn’t worth risking the public relations damage of fighting such a politically popular measure.

Cautioning supporters against overconfidence, Richard Holober, campaign manager for the pro-Proposition 210 effort, said the other side has “billion-dollar corporations that can write million-dollar checks any day of the week.” Still, he added, any fast-food or hotel chain with the money and inclination to make a major last-minute contribution could find itself “branded a poverty-promoting employer, and it could cost them millions and millions of dollars in bad publicity.”

Holober also acknowledged that the federally mandated increase makes Proposition 210 “less of a burning issue” to the public and the news media. Referring to the initiative to repeal affirmative action programs in California, he added, “I wish we were getting the coverage that [Proposition] 209 is--that’s the hot populist issue, and I think we would have been right up there if it hadn’t been for the federal increase.”

Still, unions have taken the fight seriously, in California as well as the other places where voters in November will consider minimum wage measures: the states of Oregon, Montana and Missouri and the city of Denver.

From the outset of the effort late last year to place Proposition 210 on the ballot, labor leaders have regarded the campaign as a potential moral and public relations triumph that would cast unions in the popular imagination as effective advocates for the working poor.

Moreover, unions have hoped that minimum wage campaigns would bring to the polls voters who might support other labor-friendly issues and candidates.

In fact, labor organizations such as UNITE, the garment industry union, have used the Proposition 210 campaign over the last year to push citizenship drives and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Minimum wage workers trying to support themselves and their families “have a reason to vote now. They can give themselves a raise,” said state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte), chairwoman of the advisory committee for the pro-Proposition 210 group.

Yet a Times Poll of 1,290 registered voters taken Oct. 17-21 found that only 1% say they are being motivated to head to the polls because of Proposition 210, compared with 13% for Proposition 209 and 11% for Proposition 211.

Hilda Padilla, a UNITE activist who has solicited support among Spanish-speaking workers for Proposition 210 both at her garment factory and in her South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood, said the proposition “has awakened much interest” among potential voters. But Padilla added that no one has told her they’re going to vote solely because of Proposition 210.

Still, flushed with the prospect of success Nov. 5, labor leaders and others supporting the proposition talk about keeping their coalition of unions and religious and consumer groups together for future efforts to help the working poor.

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How Pay Would Rise

If California voters approve Proposition 210, it will increase the state’s minimum wage in two steps to $5.75 an hour. Combined with the two-step increase in the federal minimum wage passed by Congress during the summer, it would mean four increases in the minimum wage for California workers and businesses over 17 months. Here is the schedule for those increases:

Oct. 1, 1996: Federal minimum wage rose from $4.25 to $4.75. The state’s minimum wage had been $4.25 too, so the federal increase also boosted the minimum for California workers to $4.75.

March 1, 1997: If Proposition 210 is approved, California’s minimum would rise to $5.

Sept. 1, 1997: The second installment of the federal increase will boost the minimum wage to $5.15.

March 1, 1998: Proposition 210’s second increase would boost California’s minimum to $5.75.