‘Living Wage’ Plan Faces First Test in Council

After months of emotional debate and political maneuvering, a bitterly contested “living wage” measure will undergo its first real test in the Los Angeles City Council today.

The showdown, which pits blue-collar labor leaders and council liberals against Mayor Richard Riordan and most of the business community, will come when the council decides whether to include Riordan-backed amendments that living wage backers say would gut the measure.

Today’s debate will shape the final version of an ordinance that has already been revised and scaled back through months of public hearings. Nonetheless, the impending decision is being widely watched, and the next step in a national campaign by coalitions of labor, clergy and community activists is to secure wage and benefit improvements for bottom-tier workers, city by city.

It is a movement that advocates say will enable workers to support their families and get off public assistance. In Los Angeles, however, critics say the measure would do little to improve the lot of the working poor, while sending a chilling message to business in a city still trying to recover from a long recession.

As proposed, the Los Angeles ordinance would require private firms holding city service contracts of more than $25,000 to pay their workers at least $7.25 an hour with specific benefits, including health insurance and paid days off, or $8.50 an hour without benefits. The measure also would apply to firms that receive substantial amounts of city financial aid.

City officials estimate that less than 0.5% of workers in the city would be affected: about 3,800 would get wage increases and 4,800 would receive improved benefits.

“We have gone through a really intensive process during which we have made huge compromises,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio of the Living Wage Coalition, which has pushed hard to get an ordinance on the books.

“The ordinance is so modest. It’s a first step and a statement about where the city needs to go,” she said.

But Riordan, who campaigned on a promise to improve the city’s economic climate, and a broad segment of business leaders say that even the scaled-back version goes too far. Noting that the mayor supported recent raises in both the state and federal minimum wage rates, his office issued a statement Monday saying that the “mayor shares the goal of a living wage for every Angeleno” but reiterated his desire for two key changes.

Riordan wants the city’s three semiautonomous departments--Airports, Harbor and Water and Power--dropped from the measure. He also wants to eliminate the provision that applies to firms receiving city subsidies--”an obvious disincentive for job-creating businesses to invest in Los Angeles,” his statement said.

“If a living wage ordinance passed by the council contains this provision, he will veto it,” the statement added.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the measure’s principal architect, believes that she has the votes to fend off such amendments--including one that would leave out the airport workers, many of whose jobs were threatened when concession contracts changed hands two years ago.