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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 2016)
PAGE 10 | April 1 , 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Fight for $15: The Right Wage for a Working America From Page 4 once. Anywhere. We took seri- ously every potential critique. Is it going to increase youth or mi- nority unemployment, or unem- ployment for people with low skills and less than a high school education? Is it going to disad- vantage minority businesses? Is it going to cause businesses of any sort to go out of business? Is it going to make people relo- cate their business to a lower- wage jurisdiction across a mu- nicipal border? And we looked at every credible study we could find — not projections, not neo- classical economic modeling, but actual studies based on ac- tual data where it had already happened. So when Santa Fe raised their minimum wage over 60 percent above the surround- ing counties, they actually expe- rienced a growth in employ- ment. When San Francisco raised theirs above the surround- ing California counties, they ex- perienced greater growth in em- ployment during periods of economic growth and they lost jobs more slowly during reces- sions. We looked at border towns like Spokane, Washing- ton, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: What happened when Washing- ton increased their wages and Idaho didn’t? Guess what hap- pened? Businesses didn’t go to Idaho. Workers came to Wash- ington. To apply for jobs. We looked at the classic study from the early ‘90s between Trenton and Philadelphia, when New Jersey’s wage went up and Pennsylvania’s stayed the same. And then we looked at every federal minimum wage increase since 1937 when we first passed a federal minimum-wage. In 82 percent of the cases, a minimum wage increase correlated with growth in employment. In 18 percent of the cases, it correlated with no meaningful change in employment. And in 0 percent of the cases did it correlate with the loss of employment. Zero. So this is a lie perpetrated by the organized right — because they are ideologically opposed to government interfering in the private sector, and because they simply are greedy and they want more money for themselves. I assume you’re familiar with what just happened in Ore- gon. What do you think of Oregon’s three-tiered raise that was just passed by the legislature? Listen, every juris- diction has kind of got to figure this out for itself. I am for the most progressive policy that you can count votes for in any juris- diction around the country. Do I think that $12.50 for 10 percent of Oregon workers is good pol- icy? Not really. But in practice, by the time it gets phased in, no one’s really going to be at $12.50. Because those 10 per- cent of workers are going to have labor market options out- side of that geography. So em- ployers in whatever counties of the state have the $12.50 rate are going to end up having to pay $13.50 just to compete for workers, if they don’t want them to drive into the next county and find a job for a dollar an hour more. So it was a question of what was politically possible in the legislature. And I have to re- spect that, because you have to count the votes. But I think in reality, by the time it’s all phased in, no one is going to be earning less than $13.50 in Oregon. How do you think other cities and states can pull off what happened in Seattle? It’s just about organizing. It’s harder in some places because of state laws that preempt local deci- sions, like you had in Oregon. But it didn’t make it impossible in Oregon; it just meant that it was a state fight and not a city fight. This is not that hard. It’s about workers going on strike, marching, demonstrating, show- ing up at City Hall, electing the right people. It’s hard in that some of those things are hard to pull off, but it’s not hard to un- derstand. Americans want higher wages. It’s actually only controversial along elites. Rank- and-file Republicans think there ought to be higher wages. Inde- pendents, Democrats, black, white, brown, born in America, immigrants, refugees … you cannot find a demographic ex- cept for rich white men that is opposed to a higher minimum- wage, and even they are rela- tively split on the matter. Do you see a larger lesson for unions about winning through political means what collec- tive-bargaining no longer seems to be able to deliver? America’s enterprise-based col- lective-bargaining system was a weak model to begin with. Think about what enterprise- based bargaining entails. It’s one union bargaining with one com- pany. So companies are highly incentivized to remain nonunion, or to bust the unions if they’ve got them, or to mini- mize their bargaining demands because of the perception that they will be put at a competitive disadvantage on price or flexi- bility with their competition. And trade associations are in- centivized to prevent the expan- sion of or reform of labor laws. What does it mean to have a right that’s optional? I don’t have to vote to establish the right of free speech. My neigh- bors and I don’t have to come together all at once and agree that we want the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. I don’t have to campaign to be allowed to own a rifle. Those are rights that are guaranteed. But collective bar- gaining is a right that you have to opt into by a majority vote on a workplace by workplace basis. So only a minority of workers will ever benefit from it, which means by definition it will never have the political support for its own expansion. Labor law re- form has failed continually for five decades. We need a better model, and one such model is something that looks like re- gional or sectoral bargaining mediated through state or local political institutions. That’s es- sentially what we did in Seattle. FREE CLASSIFIED ADS HOUSING WANTED ROCKAWAY OCEAN FRONT rental http://rockawaybeachrental.com; sleeps 13. 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Ads should be 15 to 20 words, all in lower case (NO CAPITAL LETTERS). Ads must include a phone number, including area code, or they will not be published. No commercial or business ads. HOW TO SUBMIT A CLASSIFIED AD Broadway Floral for the BEST flowers call 503-288-5537 1638 NE Broadway, Portland Indicate which union you are a member of, and send your ad to michael492@comcast.net or by mail to PO Box 13150, Portland OR 97213. We publish the first and third Fridays of each month, and the deadline is one week prior to that.
