- photographs by denis c. theriault
- Nick Caleb lost his council race. He’s still attending Living Wage Wednesdays outside Portland City Hall.
Last night could have been dispiriting for Nick Caleb, the Concordia professor who ran to keep Dan Saltzman from a fifth term on the Portland City Council, after he managed only 18 percent of the vote and watched as the incumbent sailed back into office with something close to a supermajority.
But that’s not how Caleb says he sees it. His call for a $15 minimum wage reached more than 10,000 people in a little more than two months—despite his campaign raising only $5,000 and knocking on, he says, zero doors. And the morning after his loss, Caleb was back outside city hall, where he’s been every Wednesday since launching his campaign, calling for a minimum wage hike.
This time, he had company. One of the city’s most restive public employee unions, Labors International Union Local 483 had turned out a sea of members willing to lend their voices to Caleb’s call. And that they did, loudly. Loud enough that city commissioners could clearly hear their chants of “15! Now!” while their meeting this morning plowed on and on.
Caleb’s campaign isn’t over. It’s maybe only the beginning.
“This is still happening,” he says.
Of note? Saltzman’s chief of staff, Brendan Finn, was on hand to watch for a spell. Saltzman has embraced the call for a higher minimum wage, if not precisely $15 and immediately. He’s lobbied the League of Oregon Cities to, in turn, lobby Salem to lift the state’s pre-emption on local minimum wage ordinances.
But union involvement could be interesting. Because the state’s pre-emption doesn’t forbid cities from paying their own workers and contractors a living wage higher than the statewide minimum wage. LIUNA represents workers in a handful of city bureaus, including the parks bureau, and also reps temporary workers at the zoo, governed by Metro.
It’s not hard to see LIUNA adding calls for a $15 wage to their wish lists in labor negotiations.
1) The day before the city proposes a giant tax hike doesn’t really seem like good timing for arguing the city should move to pay workers more.
2) Dan Saltzman is in favor of the wage hike because there is zero political risk for him – because of the state law, he literally can’t do anything about it other than send a couple cheap letters to Salem half-heartedly lobbying for it.
3) I thought Caleb was more than just a one-trick pony? If that’s true, than isn’t it disingenuous to count every single person who voted for him as being in favor of the hike?
As much as I would like to see a higher minimum wage, it is kind of pathetic to see the Merc pretending this issue isn’t functionally dead for the foreseeable future.
I’m sure the Union’s would love a 15 dollar minimum wage. Two 15 dollar an hour workers would be more way expensive than one Union job at 20 an hour.
I think you’re missing the most salient point here: What the hell is that inflatable thingie in the second photo???
Looks like a fatcat banker stranglin the workin man, Stu. Duh.
It’s ridiculous that we live in an era of record profits, and yet the economy is completely bust for the working class. A $15 living wage is long overdue. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since the sixties, we’d have a ~$25 minimum wage — and we probably wouldn’t have had this constant series of recessions, brought on by… drumroll please… people not being able to buy anything in a consumer economy because they’re broke.
15 an hour for a teenaged fry-cook just ain’t right.
I’d still like to see Caleb try his noble experiment on the city he grew up in, K Falls, first – and watch what happens.
I’m all for better pay for the masses, but this feel-good attempt is just plain laughable.