LIVING WAGE COALITION IN THE NEWS

Landslide Voter Approval for San Francisco City Minimum Wage Adds Momentum to Living Wage Movement!!

Voters in San Francisco approved an $8.50 city minimum wage by a 60%-40% margin in November of 2003. When it takes effect in March 2004, the new ordinance will apply to almost all businesses in the city, raising pay for 54,000 low-income workers. With the recent vote, San Francisco joins Santa Fe and New Orleans as cities that have approved city wide minimum wage increases as part of the living wage movement (Washington, D.C. also has its own city wide minimum wage that is one dollar above federal). While business groups sued to overturn the New Orleans measure and are threatening to do the same in Santa Fe (though it appears unlikely they'll succeed), California law very clearly protects the San Francisco measure.

The initiative was placed on the ballot by a grassroots signature gathering campaign organized by ACORN, which this summer collected more than 20,000 voter signatures in just two weeks. The campaign was successful with help from living wage proponent and small business owner Barry Hermanson, the Young Workers Project, Chinese Progressive Association, Central City SRO Collaborative, a host of groups in The Mission, SEIU 790, HERE Local 2, and others.

Like more than 110 other communities across the country, San Francisco in 2000 enacted a living wage ordinance establishing a higher minimum wage for businesses receiving city service contracts or benefiting from the use of city property. The new law extends that ordinance to help more low-income families.

Thanks to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU for their quick and expert drafting of the ballot initiative. The law includes no tip credit (which means waiters and waitresses will get the full benefit of the law) and phases in coverage of non-profits and small business (10 or fewer employees) so that they are fully covered by 2006. Thanks also to Michael Reich and Amy Laitinen of the Institute for Labor and Employment at UC-Berkeley for their excellent study on the economic impact of the law (released in May).

The 'next wave' drive to enact citywide minimum wage increases now turns to Madison,WI, where activists are organizing for a city wide minimum wage of $7.75.

Reprinted by permission from the ACORN LWRC List Serve. For more information go to: livingwage@acorn.org.



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LIVING WAGE COALITION OF SONOMA COUNTY
Phone: 707-623-7395
Email: livingwagesoco@gmail.com
PO Box 427
Santa Rosa, CA 95402