THE DIGNITARIES LEAVING Mayor Charlie Hales’ State of the City speech at the Sentinel (née Governor Hotel) on Friday, March 14, had a choice.
They could duck through Jake’s Grill—the esteemed see-and-be-seen eatery on the first floor—and maybe stop for a drink on their way out the doors on SW 10th. Or they could strut through the hotel’s grand lobby along SW 11th and bask in the sunlight while waiting for the valets to fetch their cars.
State Representative Jessica Vega Pederson, a Democrat from East Portland, chose the latter. But she had some company.
A dozen activists had spread up and down the curb in front of the hotel, all waving cheerful red placards showing a large “15.” They’d come with Nick Caleb, a newly declared Portland City Council candidate, on a mission to visibly promote perhaps the most important issue in his campaign: raising the city’s minimum wage to a nearly unprecedented $15 an hour.
And Pederson—someone with the power to do something about that—was precisely the kind of captive audience member they’d been hoping to engage. She smiled at them while they shouted Caleb’s name to passersby. Then, when her black SUV pulled up, she got in and drove away.
Pederson, at least, was pleasant. Most people walked right by.
“There was one lady waving at us,” says Caleb, an attorney and Concordia University professor, “like we were smelly.”
That’s not to say either Caleb or the minimum wage issue he’s seized on will go away any time soon.
In announcing an insurgent bid against City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, Caleb has shaken awake an otherwise sleepy re-election season. And he’s done it by forcing Portland, and by extension the rest of Oregon, to finally take part in a debate that’s not only washed over the White House, but also our biggest neighbor to the north, Seattle.
Winning that debate won’t be easy. It might be impossible. Oregon law—shaped by business interests deeply opposed to minimum wage hikes—prevents cities from passing their own comprehensive living wages. And that means Portland’s fight is just as much Salem’s.
But even if Caleb loses—distinctly likely in a city where incumbents clutch power like monarchs—he’ll have planted a flag.
Saltzman has since come out publicly in favor of an increase—risking the ire of the business interests who’ve traditionally funded him. He’s even looking to lobby Salem to do something, anything.
Maybe we won’t get $15 an hour. But we might get something.
At the dinner hour on the day of Hales’ speech, customers inside the McDonald’s at NE Weidler and Grand stared out the glass doors, leery.
The sidewalks outside the restaurant are dingy and often crowded. On this evening, they were packed with tambourining humanity. Drivers heading north after another workweek laid on their horns, spurred on by signs ordering them to “Honk for $15 Now,” telling them “Portland Needs a Raise.”
“I got a question,” a woman headed into the restaurant said to one of the sign bearers. “What is ’15 Now’? What is that?”
The real answer is longer than what the woman got. It starts with the obvious: The 25 or so people rallying outside of the McDonald’s want a $15 minimum wage. Now.
Spurred on by Caleb’s call to arms—and emboldened by successes elsewhere in the Northwest—Portland activists were finally ready, on March 14, to rally for higher wages.
To say our progressive city is late to the party doesn’t quite capture how far we’ve trailed the rest of the nation.
Low-wage employees in cities around the country have been clamoring for better pay since fall 2012. In New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee, workers held protests demanding better pay and the right to unionize. Some employees walked off the job. Managers, too.
By December 2013, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had joined the fight, sparking more walkouts and pickets in dozens of cities. And, at some point in between, the fervor reached Seattle and caught fire.
Seattle, in fact, has everything to do with Portland’s newfound conscience about the minimum wage.
Caleb has cribbed much of his campaign—and strategy—from Kshama Sawant, a socialist, economics instructor, and former Occupy organizer who shocked the nation last year by unseating an established Democratic incumbent in a hard-fought race for Seattle City Council.
The rhetoric that sent her to office included doing away with “corporate politicians,” lowering rents, and raising taxes for the rich. Most of all, though, she pushed the $15 minimum wage.
Sawant and her political organization, Socialist Alternative, first grabbed hold of the $15 figure early last year—taking the baton from fast-food workers in New York, who claimed they couldn’t survive in that expensive city without at least that much. Socialist Alternative had previously advocated a $12.50 wage.
But $15 has taken root in Seattle like nowhere else.
As Sawant won her council seat last November, voters in the industrial suburb of SeaTac approved a $15 minimum wage for all but the smallest businesses. By that time, Seattle mayoral candidate (and now mayor) Ed Murray had promised he’d push the wage if voted into office. Today, the entire city council publicly backs an increase.
“We’ve won the public debate,” says Ramy Khalil, a Socialist Alternative organizer and activist with 15 Now, the group pushing the $15 minimum wage in Seattle. “Similar things can be done in Portland.”
Roughly a month ago, Khalil and others organized Portland’s first-ever Socialist Alternative chapter. It’s small, members say—about seven members. But it’s that group that organized the March 14 McDonald’s rally.
“We’ve been waiting to start a branch of our membership in Portland for a long time,” Khalil says. “It wasn’t until we got one of our members elected to Seattle City Council that we got the interest.”
Caleb, while mulling over his own city council race, says he chatted up Khalil and other Seattle activists who’d been in town organizing. Since announcing, Caleb’s continued to speak with them. His platform, after all, is rife with the values that propelled Sawant to office.
Beyond a higher minimum wage, Caleb is pushing strong unions and better environmental protections. He’s advocating for a more compassionate approach to homelessness, stemming gentrification, and better police oversight. Plus, Caleb’s vowed to forego a full council salary and accept only what an average Portland worker makes (almost $50,000, compared to more than $100,000).
“One of the primary responsibilities of political leaders is to actually have politics,” Caleb says. “We need movement building.”
After some extended consideration, Socialist Alternative’s Portland branch formally endorsed Caleb. The group had been conflicted because Caleb—a registered Green Party member who speaks candidly about his disillusionment with Democrats—hasn’t declared war on establishment politics.
“We really like his platform,” Khalil says. “The only big issue is he hasn’t said clearly whether he’s going to be independent from the Democratic Party. We see the Democratic Party as a trap.”‘
But mainstream politicians have come around to a wage hike, too. Democrats are flogging the notion of increasing the federal minimum wage as the November elections approach. President Barack Obama proposed increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 in his 2013 State of the Union Address, but has since joined the call for a $10.10 wage.
That measure has so far been delayed by Republicans, who claim an increase would kill jobs and/or harm small businesses. So Obama’s done what he can; he signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their employees at least $10.10 an hour.
There’s movement among the states, too. In September, California lawmakers agreed to set a nation-leading $10 minimum wage by 2016. New Jersey voters bumped their minimum wage $1 in January. It’s now $8.25. Activists in other states are circulating petitions.
“I don’t believe elected leaders have an appetite for any big social change, frankly,” says Felisa Hagins, political director for SEIU Local 49, which represents thousands of hospital, custodial, and security workers. “It’s up to the grassroots folks to change that appetite. Obama didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘You know what would be awesome? Raising the minimum wage.’ It was workers standing up.”
Oregon deserves a round of perfunctory applause for doing something only 10 other states have managed: In 2002, we approved Measure 25, a ballot initiative that raised our minimum wage some 40 cents and then built in annual increases so that new minimum would keep pace with inflation.
Washington State’s minimum wage leads the nation at $9.32. But Oregon is now right behind it, at $9.10. That’s less than $19,000 a year for a full-time worker, not enough to keep a family of three above the federal poverty line. It’s also a far cry from $15, which works out to $31,200 a year. Or the $10.10 figure being tossed about nationally ($21,000 a year).
And even Measure 25 wasn’t without controversy.
“People said all kinds of things would happen: mass unemployment, businesses shutting down,” says Hagins. “None of that came to fruition.”
Chuck Sheketoff of the progressive-leaning Oregon Center for Public Policy said not only did raising the minimum wage not have a “negative impact,” but that “poverty would be worse if we didn’t have it.”
“It’s been good for Oregon and good for Oregonians,” he says.
But Oregon’s bold leap forward followed a little-known policy secret.
More than a year before voters approved Measure 25, the Oregon Legislature sent Governor John Kitzhaber a bill that pre-emptively stripped away local governments’ ability to set their own minimum wages.
That legislation, HB 2744, was the brainchild of the Oregon Restaurant Association—the powerful lobbying group for the state’s restaurateurs. It meant Oregon, for better or worse, would have just one minimum wage—even if more progressive towns, like Salem, Portland, or Eugene, might heartily support something higher.
The lore today is that the two policies were connected as part of a compromise—the pre-emption traded for annual increases. That’s how Saltzman and others initially described it. Bill Perry, the restaurant group’s top lobbyist then and now (it’s since merged with the hotel industry’s trade group to become the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association [ORLA]), insists that isn’t the case.
“They were separate,” he says, arguing the pre-emption was driven by the fear of a patchwork nightmare of local wage laws.
“It’s too hard to do business in that environment,” he says. “We were saying this is a statewide issue.”
Perry’s version of the origin story seems to be borne out in Oregonian clips from the 2001 legislative session. Neither Measure 25 nor the general notion of an inflation-indexed minimum wage appear in stories chronicling HB 2744’s rise to law. The patchwork argument did. So did fear of the growing living-wage movement—and brewing talk that cities might take minimum wage matters into their own hands.
“I see it coming,” Perry candidly told the Oregonian in April 2001. “I’m just trying to stop it.”
Measure 25 was never seen as a panacea.
“We indexed our minimum wage 15 years too late,” says Hagins, arguing that keeping the minimum wage mostly stagnant before 2002 had already sapped it of the purchasing power it had years ago.
But in providing for automatic annual increases—letting lawmakers off the hook—it’s effectively quashed any serious talk about a more dramatic hike.
That might change in an election year that’s seen Democrats across the nation go lockstep in raising hell over income inequality—and in the shadow of a decisive populist victory by a radical like Sawant.
In Oregon, until Caleb made himself the local face of the $15 movement, that public conversation had mostly been led by Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian. Avakian’s been everywhere talking up the minimum wage—telling a forum of Democrats in Marion County last month, for example, that he’d rather index it to the federal poverty line for a family.
And, for what it’s worth, prominent political polling firm DHM Research told the Mercury it couldn’t comment on how a minimum wage fight might play in Oregon because it’s actively working on the issue.
The wage fight has been slower, however, to penetrate the veils of power in the Oregon Legislature.
Talk about income equality and workers’ rights has focused more on issues like paid sick time, affordable housing, and income disparities for women and minorities. Those issues may yet loom larger during next year’s session.
“There should be room for a variety of progressive causes,” says Hagins, calling the minimum wage “wildly important.”
Even if legislative leaders do create that space, it’s unclear what a minimum wage fight might look like.
If it’s framed as a fight against the state pre-emption on local minimum wages—prompted by agitation in Portland—that may not impress rural and suburban lawmakers loath to let Oregon’s biggest city get its way. Plus, lifting a pre-emption on any subject is a tough sell: Multnomah County has tried for years to win permission to raise its tobacco tax in order to better fund health programs.
“If we can’t allow Multnomah County to raise a cigarette tax, then I don’t know how you’ll get them to allow anyone to raise their own minimum wage,” says Joe Baessler, political director for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees of Oregon. “The ‘patchwork’ argument is something a lot of legislators fall back on as an excuse for not wanting to do this stuff. It’s a very frustrating argument.”
Not fighting over the pre-emption could still leave a debate over a statewide increase. And even that comes with questions: How much? Should we keep the inflation index? Should legislators approve it themselves? Or should they punt to voters?
“There needs to be a conversation,” says Tom Powers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Diane Rosenbaum, one of the leaders behind Measure 25. Powers says his boss has been talking to Avakian. “We’re definitely hearing about this more than we have in the recent past.”
Portland may not be as powerless as it thinks.
Saltzman has come out for a wage between $10 and $15. But he initially threw up his hands when we spoke to him, citing the pre-emption. Now, he says, upon further reflection, Portland should target that pre-emption when it drafts its legislative lobbying agenda next year.
And in case lawmakers are turned off by the notion that this is a Portland-only problem, he also wants to take it before the League of Oregon Cities, which could push it at the statewide level.
“I’m definitely interested in both,” he says.
Saltzman’s embrace of the issue is canny: He’s tied it to his longstanding advocacy for women’s and children’s issues. And he pointed to existing city policies—under a loophole in the pre-emption measure—that force contractors to pay certain workers more than the minimum wage. He wouldn’t vote for the Portland Timbers stadium deal in 2009 unless the Timbers agreed to pay their concession workers about $11 an hour.
“I’ve been talking about it for quite a while,” he contends, taking pains to stress that he advocated for a minimum wage increase in a Portland Business Alliance candidate questionnaire. “It’s no secret. I just haven’t been talking about it publicly. I’ve been thinking about it since the president’s State of the Union. A lot of people have been thinking about it more.”
(The Mercury asked the Portland Business Alliance, small business lobbying group Venture Portland, and several small business owners for their reflections on what a higher minimum wage could mean. Only the PBA responded, declining to comment.)
Caleb, when he first proposed a $15 minimum wage, didn’t realize there was a state pre-emption until told by the Mercury. “It took me a whole 30 minutes to come up with a plan,” he joked at his first campaign rally. “We can be creative.”
Caleb’s proposal is to tax businesses who aren’t paying their workers $15 an hour, then use that money to create a city fund that would subsidize employees’ pay.
“We’re pre-empted from raising a minimum wage,” he says, “but we’re not pre-empted from creating a penalty system for people who won’t pay a living wage.”
Saltzman’s support, as the presumptive favorite in the city council race, has encouraged at least one of his colleagues on the council to join him. And that makes things even more interesting.
Nick Fish, a former labor lawyer also up for re-election this spring, tells the Mercury he’d back a fight against the pre-emption, as well as a broader effort to raise the statewide wage.
“As a consistent champion for reducing inequality and helping struggling families,” he said in a statement, “I fully support legislative action to provide a living wage for Oregon workers. It is unacceptable that people working at Walmart still qualify for food stamps.”
Dana Haynes, a spokesman for Mayor Charlie Hales, says an earnest dive into the city’s legislative agenda won’t start until after the city’s budget is approved this spring. But he says Hales’ chief of staff, Gail Shibley, and Martha Pellegrino, the city’s top lobbyist, are interested in taking a deeper look.
“There was nobody who said, ‘Nah, we don’t want to talk about it,'” Haynes says.
That all presumes the Oregon House doesn’t flip Republican this fall. Because ORLA—traditionally a generous supporter of the GOP—clearly doesn’t want to talk about the minimum wage.
“It’s a political diversion,” says Perry, the ORLA lobbyist. “There’s no proof that it helps or hurts anybody.”
It’s true a higher minimum wage isn’t rocket fuel for the country’s recovery. Economic policy is far more nuanced, and the purchasing power and stagnating pay of the broader middle class must also be addressed.
But it’s also important to note that today’s minimum wage is a shadow of what it used to be. From its apex in 1968—when the $1.60-an-hour minimum was worth the equivalent of $10.69 today—the federal minimum wage has been only sporadically increased. And it hasn’t remotely kept up with inflation.
At the same time, the Great Recession has made lower-paying jobs more prominent. Research shows that medium-wage jobs shed in the fallout have been largely replaced by low-wage work. Regardless of what Congressional Republicans tell you, it’s not just industrious teens working the McDonald’s counter these days. More and more, it’s people looking to support themselves, and maybe their children.
A recent parsing of census figures from the data wonks at fivethirtyeight.com found that more than half of Americans earning less than $10.10 an hour are trying to live off those wages, as opposed to roughly 39 percent in 1990. “Back then, nearly a quarter of low-wage earners were teenagers, compared to just 13 percent today,” the site found.
And a 2013 study found frontline fast-food workers’ families are enrolled in public welfare programs, which is more than double the rate of the entire workforce.
But disagreement has been a hallmark of the wage debate. Proponents say a raise is valid and useful, while opponents fret it would imperil businesses and workers alike. Such contradictions are front and center now that the discussion’s gone national.
Consider a recent study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): Cheered by opponents of an increase, the report predicted some 500,000 jobs (0.3 percent) would be lost nationwide. The White House and a number of prominent economists called that number ridiculous.
The CBO also predicted 900,000 workers would be lifted above the poverty line. But that pales to the number put forward last year by a University of Massachusetts Amherst economist, Arindrajit Dube: 4.6 million people out of poverty.
And people on the same side of the issue sometimes disagree on details. The White House claims a raise to $10.10 would affect 257,400 Oregonians. A report from the Economic Policy Institute, which has helped lead the call for an increased minimum wage, puts that number at 269,000.
That’s all before you talk to economists, and find yourself beset with nuance.
“It’s a real mistake to believe that raising the minimum wage creates unemployment,” says Mary King, a Portland State University economics professor. King is one of a handful of local economists who signed her name—with about 600 others nationwide—to a recent letter supporting a federal wage hike.
Then there’s Tony Rufolo, an economist and professor emeritus of urban planning at PSU—one of roughly 500 experts who signed another letter, arguing against an increase. A raise in Portland’s minimum wage, he says, might send businesses scurrying over city lines. He also says it might hurt low-skilled workers, since employers who pay more are likely to be choosier.
“The people who are most negatively impacted are those you’re trying to help,” Rufolo says.
Then again, giving workers more spending money might help with the slow-going economic recovery.
“If you’re going to do a minimum-wage increase,” says PSU economics professor John Gallup, “now is the time.”
Even advocates admit, though, that the minimum wage is a clumsy instrument if all you want to do is tackle poverty. The president’s proposed wage hike would reach more people above the poverty line than below it, the CBO report found.
But as Dube, the Amherst economist, noted in a paper, support for a higher minimum wage goes “beyond reducing poverty. The popular support for minimum wages is in part fueled by a desire to raise earnings of low and moderate income more broadly, and by concerns of fairness.”
A minimum wage increase can address those things, studies show. With fewer Americans impoverished at the end of the day.
“This is responding to huge declines to relative earnings for people with low levels of education,” says University of Portland associate professor Todd Easton, a labor economist. “We’re rich, right? We ought to do more for people at the bottom of the wage distribution.”
But Easton’s not sure a $15 minimum wage is the answer for Portland. That would be a 65 percent increase on Oregon’s current minimum, after all. None of the economists the Mercury interviewed were familiar with a study that tackled a hike like that, though a recent study from the University of California, Berkeley, found “no measurable effect” on employment for an increase to $13.
Of course, Seattle is in the midst of investigating. With a $15 minimum wage likely there, two separate commissions are exploring how it might affect local businesses.
They’re also strategizing how best to enact the policy: Should corporations have to bump pay to $15 right away, while smaller businesses take their time? Should an employee’s total compensation—including health benefits and vacations—be included? Or strictly their hourly wages?
These are questions Portland and Oregon will have to ask—if our leaders are serious about having the discussion.
We’re also a different city than Seattle, with lower mean and median wages, and a lower cost of living. That suggests the effect of a $15 wage would be more dramatic here, Easton says.
“If you just think about the disruption it would represent to businesses, the increase in costs, it would be bigger,” he says. “If you think about the cost of living, the rationale is weaker.”
On the evening of the McDonald’s rally, a cashier named Kevin rang up a long line of customers at the Walgreens across the street.
“So what do you think of the protest?” he asked, unprompted. “I’m against it, actually.”
Walgreens, in Kevin’s opinion, isn’t nimble enough to cope with a two-thirds increase in Portland’s minimum wage. “I’d lose my job,” he said.
A middle-aged man waiting in line grumbled sarcastically: “Why wouldn’t they just make it $25 an hour?”
Back across Weidler, McDonald’s employee Israel David was just getting off his shift. Or so it seemed until he approached the gathered activists.
“You guys picked the perfect day to do this,” the 17-year-old high school senior said. “I just quit my job.”
David held down the position for four months. He’d been planning to quit that day, anyway—only when his shift was done at 11 pm, not in the middle of the dinner rush, as he did. The McDonald’s gig conflicted with his studies.
“And it’s not enough pay, anyway.”
David walked off up NE Grand, raising his hands in the air, yelling: “Freedom!”
SUPPORT CALEB FOR COUNCIL: https://www.facebook.com/caleb4councilpdx
I am unsure why some establishment economists would be concerned that we could create too much justice for workers by going to $15 an hour — only $30,000 a year. With corporate profits and worker productivity both at record highs, does anybody seriously doubt Corporate America can afford to pay non-poverty, living wages? Part of the progressive poverty-wage-penalty-tax proposal could go toward small business subsidies to allow them to compete and pay their workers higher wages as well. We could raise small business exemptions for taxes at the same time. Supporting local workers can go hand-in-hand with supporting local small businesses.
Nicholas Caleb talks 15 Now, social and environmental justice, and police accountability: https://vimeo.com/89880650
All of the opposition to $15/hr that I have heard has boiled down to ideology and thought-experiment — some people’s idea of “what must probably happen” if we do this. They make it sound like we’ll be fighting in the streets over scraps of meat if we pay people enough to pay their rent & buy groceries.
Meanwhile, empirically, we see time and again that minimum wage increases are good for literally everybody. Paying the underpaid means that they’re spending that money, which means increased revenues, which — historically speaking — has led to higher employment.
It’s nice to finally see a candidate that’s connected to reality!
If Seattle and Chicago can pay $15, so can Portland.
Of course, Saltzman and Fish pay lip service to the idea, but we all know what they do in City Council. Time to end the corruption! I’m voting for Caleb and a living wage for those who need it most!
https://www.facebook.com/caleb4councilpdx
Glad to see some good arguments in favor of the higher minimum wage from all corners in this article.
Too often, I see criticisms of a minimum wage hike on very vague theoretical grounds with no references to real-life results. Even conservative academics at this point know that our minimum wage (federal and state) isn’t tracking cost of living and is bound to be out-of-date often. As Caleb says, there are creative ways to fight the prohibition on wage raises within the state–and if we add our voices to the growing national dissent, maybe state law can change in the near term.
We don’t need to rely on fanciful free-market ideology to tell us what might happen if we raise the minimum wage. The subject has been studied extensively.
Economists at UC Berkeley conclude:
“Our studies show that the impact of these laws on workers’ wages (and access to health care) is strong and positive and that none of the dire predictions of employment loss have come to pass.” (nyti.ms/1g1HnjN)
What’s more, raising the minimum wage would very likely increase overall demand.
A study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research puts it this way:
“Since the minimum wage transfers income from employers (who generally have a high savings rate) to low-wage workers (who generally have a low savings rate), a minimum-wage rise could spur consumer spending.” (bit.ly/IsoKwj)
Nick Caleb — Smart man, smart ideas, for a smart, ethical, and livable Portland. Vote Caleb!!
Seems foolhardy to me.
Of course, I’m all in favor of increasing the minimum wage, but to such a jump?
In the end, it’s all relative, right? Relative to the cost of living.
There just happens to be that pesky thing called INFLATION, which would be bound to happen as these raises work there way up the food chain.
The worker slaving away at 15 now would certainly want a raise now that these less skilled folk are making the same as he is, and so on, and so on, up the ladder of pay.
This whole drastic approach seems to me more of a feel-good measure, rather than grounded in reality — which makes me think Caleb is not yet ready for office.
The worst part is he is trying to get elected by filling the impoverished with false hopes.
@ Frankieb
Looks like you were the only one commenting here who wasn’t holding a sign on the sidewalk downtown. I’m no economist and I’m all for people making a decent wage but I agree with your take on reality.
Not only is there inflation but there is also the purchasing power of your currency. People seem to have very short memories but in the recent past I could buy a gallon of gas for under two dollars, rent a house or an apartment for $300-400 less, get a good sandwich somewhere for under $8, and buy a couple bags of groceries for $20. Giving everybody a raise is great and all but from my own personal experience prices of goods and services appear to be inflating at a much more rapid rate than the wages for unskilled workers. I don’t know how exactly to fix the problem other than focusing on a more robust economy that produces its own goods and services rather than sourcing everything from giant companies who import goods, export labor and hide their profits in off shore bank accounts. This whole feel good bullshit about raising the minimum wage is a placebo and a very temporary fix at best. I fail to see how it will have any appreciable lasting effect on the creation of more local economic activity. If anything it will merely drive the cost of basic necessities higher as retailers keep inflating their prices to compensate for their higher cost of doing business. I remember when the minimum wage was $4.15 an hour. The minimum wage is now higher than double that but people who make minimum wage are not living a higher quality of life. If anything it is probably worse.
$15 minimum wage??? Are you nuts?
1) Maybe in NYC that makes sense. No way in Portland.
2) I took out loans and went to college so I didn’t have to work a minimum wage job the rest of my life. They can too.
3) It defies the laws of supply and demand. You know why those jobs pay like shit? Because they are easy and anyone can do them.
4) Have you ever run a business? You know how companies will handle this? This will raise a key component of their expense significantly. They can try to raise the price to make up for it. Maybe they can pass it on to consumers, maybe not (what the economists call price elasticity). Are customers going to pay $8+ for a fast food burger? If so, customers are paying for it. That’s you and me, not the 1%. If they can’t pass it on, it means employers have to cut their expenses in other ways – the main way being cutting staff.
5) Businesses have enough to worry about right now with the implementation of The Affordable Care Act and paid sick leave in Portland. Do we really want to hit them with something else right now?
P.S. I am all for higher taxes on the rich and I think high corporate CEO pay is a travesty.
Senator Merkley may be espousing the old business-as-usual Democrat maxim:
“Politics is the art of the possible” but his campaign platform of $10.10 as a new
minimum wage for workers who’ve lost ground against Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)
despite workplace corporate productivity gains for 35 years simply will not cut it.
Not in a changing political world where $15.00 Now is the Socialist Alternative in practice.
As today’s PORTLAND MERCURY feature article makes clear: $15.00 NOW
is what its going to take to rouse the electorate screwed over by ObamaNation
& the Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder,
Penny Pritzker (Corporate Welfare Queen named by Obama Secretary of Commerce!)
“reform team” we elected twice. Otherwise if Jeff & the Demos don’t find any Republican oligarchs to lose to, they may find the electorate staying home or Protest Voting the Socialist Alternative that has already delivered for Sea-Tac municipal workers…
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/ba…
http://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX…
Jeff is the most decent of the Dem lot left, but if he plays by the DNC playbook, he may be surprised. I’m sure gonna work hard to see that our newly-elected and see-no-evil, hear-no-evil congressional rep Suzanne Bonamici (the U.S. Dem Rep from NikeTown) is smoked out of the Wu bunker she’s been holed up in since telling OPB’s THINK OUT LOUD that she sees no Crony Capitalism in U.S. politics or the corporate world from her vantage point! After Tiger Tot Wu we elect ‘reform candidate’ Sgt Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes!
Good to hear of those with paying jobs backing Senator Merkley.
I’ve been doing it for free and educating local voters as to why
Jeff Merkley offers hope for true financial reform since his first campaign.
I am 4 years out of my job as Consumer Advocate
in the Executive Office of Wells Fargo Card Services
first in Concord, CA then when Wells Fargo saw the tide turn
they moved our team up to “WORK AT WILL” state Oregon.
Within another 4 years of my 11 year tenure as Regulatory Complaint Case Worker
and commended as a Consumer Advocate who “well balanced the interests of our
most valued customers and the enterprise” in late 2009 as I turned 50 years old
I was let go by Wells Fargo, which took its federal bail-out money and with a wink & nod
from Treasury was allowed to acquire Wachovia Bank on the east coast, whose deposit
portfolio (reputedly bulked up for decades by narco-laundering of funds in Wachovia Miami)
was deemed suitable to protect the expected write-down in bad mortgage and brokerage paper.
And so Wells Fargo’s only Consumer Advocate in the Consumer Lending Group of Kevin Rhein
(who first commended me in 2006 with a MISSION & VISION AWARD then let me go without any severance as I turned 50 and achieved all the benefits due to an 11 year veteran in the complaint trenches) the same Kevin Rhein, Wells Fargo’s Chief of Consumer Lending Group, was photographed with newly elected ‘reform’ President Obama in the Oval Office. Why should I have been surprised when the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton’s DNC that sold out federal regulators, sold out middle class workers, sold out the U.S. manufacturing base by removing tarrifs that were the only way in the history of Global Trade to protect
domestic markets that had been the envy of the world.
Yes, Bill Clinton balanced the budget (on the backs of the welfare mothers he joined Republicans in mocking) but he deepened the U.S. Trade Deficit with NAFTA as Obama will deepen it further with the secretive TPATPP.
And this 54 year old MISSION & VISION Award winner at Wells Fargo in 2006, let go in late 2009 has only found work in WORK AT WILL Oregon for minimum wage.
Thank you, ObamaNation & Jeff!
Thank you former Labor Lawyer & former Gov. Kulongoski for demanding a costbenefit analysis on just how many more jobs migrated to Oregon thanks to Work-At-Will regs that allow employers to let any worker go without notice for no just cause (except for federal regs barring racism or age-ism and try proving that) and how long those companies that moved here actually kept those jobs before outsourcing them!
If the Senator has a paying job on his Team Merkley that pays more than the $9.10 per hour minimum wage I earned parking Senators Merkeley & Wyden’s staff cars at Portland’s World Trade Center, where the parking concession formerly owned by the Goodman Brothers of Portland was purchased via Private Equity by the Teachers Pension Fund of the Province of Ontario in Canada last year and yes the new Canadian owners have been even more willing to squeeze the minimum wage staff of City Center Parking (dba PMC new dba Imperial Parking Vancouver, BC Canada) to service the Private Equity debt and make sure the Canadian teachers who deserve good retirement benefits that U.S. educators and workers can only dream of, so that they can retire in even more luxury. have Team Merkley call me and I’ll work for his proposed $10.10 per hour that will be paid to staff in town who service the Team Merkley staff!
Warmly (until I am evicted as my life savings dwindle)
Mitchito
Bravo to Socialist Alternative, SEIU, the Kshama Sawant campaign and to the Nick Caleb campaign for pushing for the $15 minimum wage. Corporate profits are obscenely high while more and more people are struggling just to survive. Other politicians claim to be raising the minimum wage issue, (except not in public, or when their challengers take a clear stand). Notice how Fish and Saltzman carefully avoid mentioning the actual amount for a minimum wage increase? Having conversations about a minimum wage is NOT the same as advocating for a $15 minimum wage. We need bold action, now. PS: Who wants to talk about cutting tax breaks for corporations?
Always happy to see this kind of solid journalism coming from the Mercury. Dirk does an excellent job giving everyone a lay of the land here. I’m proud to be living here in Portland while this movement is taking off. We need an authentic and unified justice movement. Rather than having the enviros and labor folks and public health advocates and immigrant justice and advocates for the homeless working separately in their silos, we need to come together and speak for all of our issues with one voice. Nick Caleb has shown us that he can be that unifier and the $15 minimum wage is just one of many, many things that we can do to push ourselves closer to being the equitable and just city we claim to be. We have a long way to go, but there are passionate advocates coming out in droves. We will win this fight.
Where is that money going to come from? If it is just passed on to us, the consumer, you and me, it is just going to inflate the price of everything, and in the long run none of us are going to be better off. What is more important is the relative difference in wealth between the owners/executives/managers (highly paid) and the front line troops (low paid). It is a structural thing.
It’s the relative difference that is important, not an absolute difference.
Unfortuantely, that is much harder to change. It requires a change in values, regulation, and tax policy. Not just a simple rule to bump up X to X+1.
see here for a great article:
Is Surging Inequality Endemic To Capitalism?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/book…
It sure is easy to extort more money out of people when it’s not your money.
I agree that there are bigger problems that need to be addressed and of course we as a nation need to figure out how to deal with mass globalization and how to promote local manufacture and sales.
However, in the mean time, this is something we CAN do. As JRRTRollkien highlights above (albeit toward a different point), “the prices of goods and services appear to be inflating at a much more rapid rate than the wages for unskilled workers.”
Exactly. People–all kinds of people–are really struggling to adjust to cost of living, especially rent, in cities all over the country, and Portland is having this problem more than most in the affordable housing area because of the rampant desire to move here from elsewhere.
Nobody said raising the minimum wage was an end-all be-all solution for all economic ills. Other measures need to be taken, but this would be a firm step in the right direction. Workers need to have money to pay rent and buy food, plain and simple–it’d be better if they had money to afford (gasp!) schooling for their children, medical care, etc. Right now, they’re spending increasing amounts just to stay alive.
I kind of resent a couple comments I see above saying that you “went to college and took out loans” so that you wouldn’t have to work a minimum wage job and that others should do the same. Maybe you should do some research. There are thousands of us now who did the same thing you did…and we’re still struggling to stay alive in minimum wage jobs, or maybe twenty to fifty cents extra per hour. Don’t turn this into an us vs. them.
Is it really that crazy that everyone who has a job should be able to count on $30,000/year? That’s still a very low yearly salary.
“Where is that money going to come from? If it is just passed on to us, the consumer, you and me, it is just going to inflate the price of everything, and in the long run none of us are going to be better off.”
There’s no historical precedent for this happening (that I’m aware of). If you can point to an example, please provide it. Competition actually keeps prices low while raising minimum wage puts more $ into the economy (low wage workers tend to spend most of their salary). In contrast, deregulated market speculation (AKA our system) on commodities drives prices up extremely fast as banks and hedge funds create artificial scarcity in markets. In Portland, rent prices are skyrocketing with no commensurate rise in wages or rent controls. This is a formula for displacement.
“What is more important is the relative difference in wealth between the owners/executives/managers (highly paid) and the front line troops (low paid). It is a structural thing.”
I agree. Looking to solve this problem is also important and not separated from the fight for a living wage. It’s all relative in the end.
“It requires a change in values, regulation, and tax policy. Not just a simple rule to bump up X to X+1.”
Agree. The fight for $15 is a demand for a change in those values. Not the end all solution, but an important part of the struggle.
Hmmmm, so says the Economist.
Oh wait, you are a Lawyer.
Typical liberal understanding of a complex economic situation. Have a widening gap of wealth inequity that just seems to be getting bigger? Simple, just enact a government mandate to force businesses to pay more. Who needs comprehensive knowledge of any one company’s salary and overhead requirements? Just get more money!
Have savings being eroded by systemic government inflation? Simple, have government legislation make it possible for “tax-free” retirement plans and easy loans to heard previously unfathomable amounts of money into the stock market, making Wall Street the over-valued behemoth, with little relation to the real economy, that it is today.
Of course, seeing as how our country’s way of dealing with its own economic woe’s is to have the Fed hand over $80 billion dollars of interest free money every month to the banks coffers to hoard as they purge their balance sheets of the toxic derivative garbage they created, maybe the ideology of “give me stuff for free” is understandable.
And isn’t it interesting how the Occupy Wall Street people have shifted their focus onto issues like 15 Now, instead of keeping the focus on the absolute fraud perpetrated by the major US and international banks that sank the economy in the first place. But hey, why punish the banksters like they did in Iceland when you could punish businesses instead?
Sadly, if by some remote miracle the minimum wage in Portland gets ratcheted up to 15 an hour, I don’t think the support gravy train is going to last very long when the majority of folks who have worked for years to get to a point where they earn $15-20 dollars an hour realize they’re now earning the equivalent of less skilled, entry level workers. Unless everyone on the chain gets a 5 dollar raise. But that would never increase prices, right?
The Capitalist’s Case for a $15/Hour Minimum Wage
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013…
And I could pull three links out of my ass:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-30/g…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-05/o…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-05/g…
It’s interesting how no one in the 15 Now fad seems to want to actually ask any Portland businesses how they feel about the practicality of raising the minimum wage to 15 an hour.
“An arbitrary hike in the price of a product does not benefit sellers, it drives away buyers.” -ZeroHedge
Agreed.
There is nothing arbitrary about a raise to $15. A minimum wage that does not keep pace with standard equity metrics such as the regional CPI (which Oregon does index), regional housing costs, the regional median income, and measures of worker productivity, is going to be continually eroded. Compared with corporate profits and worker productivity, the minimum wage has quickly lost ground to ever increasing skilled work necessary for even the lowest paid jobs with the ever increasing use of automation and machines which are leading to more and more productivity.
Introducing automation should not lead to all of the profits from the machine going to who paid for it or designed it (and I design such machines). They who skillfully operate such machines deserve a corresponding pay increase, recognizing the complexity of the machines.
Failure of businesses to increase wages to share gains in worker productivity is bad public policy because it overcompensates the introduction of machines and leads to increasing income inequality. Overall, rising income inequality hurts the long term sustainability of the economy and prevents further economic gains and security that would otherwise happen from expanding quality of life and having more of both disposable income and personal savings for retirement.
I run and have run small businesses and am part owner in a startup business. So is GreenCPA. I am surprised that some people think businesses do not like good public policy. We all live here and have neighbors we want to see succeed as well.
Very few things in economics are true zero sum games.
It takes a lifetime of propaganda against this basic recognition that we live and work in an actual community to train people to think what is solely good for one business is good for the community. It turns out what is good for the community is still good for the community, even today under capitalism. Who would have guessed?
As far as a perceived shift away from the banking sector, that is nonsense. Political candidates from the Occupy crowd (outside the duopoly party candidates funded by bankers) have and continue to want money moved out of the national banking system and into local credit unions and state banks. Unfortunately at the local level, as any follower of ZeroHedge should know already, banking policy is not all done locally, but is handled by the federal reserve.
Currencies are not where most of the economic system’s assets are stored. The money supply is only one means of creating liquidity, and the money supply needs to be managed to target economic expansion, unemployment, and inflation. We do not want a currency that incents hoarding and want some inflation. People and businesses must hold both liquid and harder assets, but mostly the harder assets that create or preserve actual productive output. Blaming the entire economy on the money supply and its management is only targeting one part of the economy. That the Occupy crowd is dealing with a wide variety of issues is a positive development in the Occupy story.
Indeed, raising the minimum wage to keep pace with metrics I pointed to above is how a local entity can bring fairness to a system that manages the money supply in a way that inflates slowly such as we have without needing to get permission from federal entities. In this way it is exactly aligned with an Occupy-style analysis of the problems with our current national and international banking system. It is thinking globally and acting locally.
Down Twinkles.
Occupy was a notable failure. At least those damn Tea Party idiots were able to get people elected and attempt some change, even if it was change most of us didn’t care for.
That the Occupy crowd is now looking at this 15 as being an issue seems at least somewhat related to their original core issue.
Their “dealing with a wide variety of issues”, and failure to make grounds on any front, shows a lack of discipline and understanding of how the political process works.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for raising the minimum wage, and more importantly, eliminating such extreme highs and lows in distribution of wealth in our country – but you put a Occupy label on just about anything and it is doomed to fail, as they don’t know how to realistically deal with the problems we face.
Much like this 15 Now campaign.
Two side notes: absolutely nothing has changed with the law and concept of pre-emption. Mr. Fish, Esq. had the same pre-emption arguments today that he had four years ago. Obviously Fish is “reactive” and not “pro-active” on a city minimum wage.
In fact, when you think about the fact that Fish is a labor lawyer- it is a little surprising that he did not understand the issue “chapter and verse.” Labor law is full of pre-emption issues. Labor lawyers are paid to analyze pre-emption and other issues and argue them before a judge or arbitrator.
On to Salzman v. Caleb: I just visited Caleb’s Facebook page. Something tells me that he may be a formidable candidate.
I believe that Salzman and Fish are going to have trouble motivating parts of their base, and that Caleb and Maxwell will do better than expected. Some of votes will be “for” the outsider candidates, some voters will be strongly motivated by their dislike of incumbents. Two powerful forces. I see both outsider candidates peeling away the progressive vote. Between minimum wage issues and water bureau woes,- I think we will have an interesting May.
“Caleb, [apparently a fucking attorney and professor] when he first proposed a $15 minimum wage, didn’t realize there was a state pre-emption until told by the Mercury.”
This is all insanity. I’m personally in favor of a hike, but what’s the point of debating this when state law clearly forecloses it? Are we so stupid we would elect a single-issue candidate who can’t even affect his single issue and didn’t even fucking know that fact before he declared?
Any study cited from UC Berkeley-give me a break, you guys in Portland are so far up California’s rear end.Like the state has something to boast about. Truth be known,it’s Bush’s fault.
Colin – far from a single issue candidate: http://calebforcouncil.com/issues/.
Per achieving a living wage in Portland, there are a few ways of doing it without raising the minimum wage as mentioned in the article. You can use tax policy to achieve the same result as raising the minimum wage. It’s actually probably better because can enact a progressive tax on higher earning employers to subsidize lower earning small businesses that might otherwise have a hard time adjusting at first. Despite the focus on $15/hr, it’s only one of the issues that needs to be addressed to keep a Portland that people can afford to work and live in.
Guys this is basic. I understand compassion and wanting to help others. But let’s actually think this through:
* IT IS A ZERO SUM GAME !
* The money has to come from somewhere. Only the federal government gets to “create” new money.
* Will the business owners take it out of their profit? Not likely. They will try to pass it on.
* Will consumers want to pay it? That is a value judgment for every individual consumer.
* If consumers don’t want to pay it, the business owner must cut costs some other way. This includes cutting staff.
* If the cost is successfully passed on to consumers, then wealth is being redistributed from the lower and middle-class (assumption here that they are the primary consumers) to the lower class.
* Will this redistribute money from the wealthy to the lower class? Answer: Not much.
* Will it in effect be a tax on every one else? Answer: Yes.
So what we have here is a compassionate but misguided attempt to help the poor that does little to change the real systemic/structural issues our country has with economic inequality. What we need are changes to our tax system (how about taxing capital gains and carried interest the same as regular income, for example) and regulation of executive compensation.
I can understand a $12.50 minimum wage in Oregon, $13.50 in CA, $15+ in NYC. But $15 does seem like a lot starting in a entry level type job, especially somewhere like here. There are teachers making $19 an hr in Beaverton, OR. Does a Mc Donald’s worker really need $15 an hr to survive with some dignity?
Now, maybe there could be adjustments in pay based on need and age. I am unsure what would be a fair means of doing this, but it might open more opportunity for teens needing jobs PT in high school. Say, living at home as a dependent, wages starting at $10.00 an hr? Once you are not a dependent, the wage is increased to $12.50 an hr. Seems reasonable to me. There is generally less living expenses while living with your guardians. Now, would that mean better paid entry level workers ending up not receiving jobs due to young kids being the competition? Not sure? I know plenty of folks that needed to take a $10 an hr job that might have been seen as a high school job back in the day. They HAD to.
There is so much inequities out there. Where does it all end? I wish for free continued education, health care, and a minimum income paid to keep people afloat. If these health and education entitlements were in effect then there would be less need for $15 an hr wages, $12.50 would be within reason.
Just removing the cost of dealing with benefits for businesses seems like a way to allow an increase in wages. I don’t see why an employer has a bit of business in my ability to see a Doctor. It is actually semi creepy IMHO. Slavery like. Single Payer is common in most developed countries because it just makes sense. Health Care should not at al be about profits, it is only about the people.
In the end, if we just made sure there was a subsidy for all, there could be less need for social programs and more room for folks to go back to school (that would be an option due to the high tuition being removed) and stimulate the economy by having more spending power. Less stress from not being in fear they cannot even see a physician if they get sick, or if they did.. it would mean debt that cannot be paid back.
This will only lead people to work for less than minimum wage under the table, or black market labor. When governments make it illegal or infeasible for people to make arrangements on their own terms, they do it anyway, out of view. While the black market is free from government coercion, it’s also illegal, making it unlikely for an employee to seek justice from the government concerning a breach of contract. This is the governments job: to protect people from getting screwed over based on what individuals have agreed to with each other, not based on an number that a politician thinks is just for his subjects, I mean constituents.
If there is a mandate to double the starting wage in my business, here is a likely scenario. Those starting jobs are now more desirable. From the larger pile of applications on my desk, I will choose the candidates who have experience in my industry and are worth that higher wage. It is unlikely that I would hire a high school kid or other low skilled worker. Those folks, unfortunately, have been priced out of the market.
Municipalities considering higher starting wages should look carefully at the economic consequences of doing so. It is quite possible that the folks they are trying to help will have fewer chances to enter or even to remain in the job market.
Sunday’s DOONESBURY comic strip shows Garry Trudeau to be on same wave length as the working and wanna be working grunts in the expanding minimum wage class we now call THE WORKING POOR: Read it and have it accompany the MERCURY cover story you mail and otherwise send to our fellow campesinos: http://doonesbury.slate.com/strip/archive/…
Only way to make it count is to send it to the one-party Democratic candidates whose policies during these Blue State years of domination look startlingly like the Red state
know-nothing years: Only 4 other states in U.S. spend less on their college students than Oregon tax payers. Corporate tax breaks & subsidies among the highest in the union, with flat job growth to show for it. Oregon remains a WORK AT WILL state that becomes a dumping ground for multi-national corporations that want to leave states that actually have laws protecting their work force from termination without cause and without notice. This also creates permanent instability in the job market that has bad effects on business climate, although that is harder to measure than the savings that come from letting go of older workers who’ve earned seniority benefits and hiring the desperate college-debt burdened young workers at lower cost to the employer.
Like the French say in their charming language: “Those who don’t do politics, get done!”