Emeryville's Minimum Wage Under Attack by Sacramento Group

California Restaurant Association Moves Against East Bay Cities

The attacks from outside groups on Emeryville's proposed minimum wage law are coming from all sides.  Yesterday the Tattler reported the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National and California Restaurant Associations (NRA/CRA) are coordinating with Emeryville businesses to lobby City Hall and now California Assembly Bill 669, crafted by the California Restaurant Association, that would invalidate any ordinance Emeryville might come up with.
The story produced by Capital & Main, an online publication highlighting the influence of big business on government and how special interest money works against the public interest, makes a special Emeryville connection; Pixar/Disney is one of the largest contributors to the California Restaurant Association.


From Capital & Main:

Will a New California Bill Trump Minimum Wage Ordinances?

By Bobbi Murray

April 1, 2015 

California is one of only seven states that pays tipped workers their state’s minimum wage instead of the penurious $2.13 (the federal minimum) to $5 range. California’s wait staff and other service workers collect a $9 hourly minimum—plus gratuities. Legislation will raise the state minimum wage to $10 hourly next year. But that won’t apply to tipped workers, if a proposed bill passes the California legislature and becomes law.

Assembly Bill 669 was sponsored by the California Restaurant Association (CRA) and introduced by Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim). Daly’s bill would cap the minimum wage for California’s tipped workers at $9 if they earn a total of $15 hourly. Far more disturbing to low-income service employees, however, is a passage embedded in the bill that could undo local minimum wage ordinances previously approved by voters in Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco and San Jose.

Those measures would be overturned unless they “specifically reference” the Daly bill’s language – an unlikelihood, given that the language of the local ordinances could not have anticipated the Daly measure. Specifically, the present bill states, “This bill would supersede local minimum wage laws unless the local law contains specified provisions” and:

This section shall preempt local ordinances setting forth a minimum wage in excess of the minimum wage established by this subdivision, to the extent the ordinance is applicable to qualifying tipped employees, unless the ordinance specifically references this section and states the local jurisdiction’s intent to establish a higher minimum wage for qualifying tipped employees.

“It’s a Restaurant Association sneak–what they really want is to preempt legislation,” says veteran labor attorney Margo Feinberg, who has crafted local wage legislation. “They don’t want to pay the cities’ minimum wages.”

Last November Oakland voters raised that city’s base wage to an hourly $12.25 – which Feinberg says could be threatened by Daly’s legislation.

“Say I work at the Denny’s in Oakland, they have to pay me $12.25 an hour,” she says. “If this goes through, my base pay goes down to $9 an hour.”

Manuel Villanueva, a Los Angeles organizer for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC) who worked as a server at local eateries for 10 years, explains the stakes for wait staff.

“A tipped worker would never work eight hours,” he says. “You only work four hours or five. Your tips are taxed so your paycheck is lower.”

Those in favor of capping the minimum wage for tipped workers say that it’s a matter of equity—that workers “in the front of the house”—wait staff and table bussers—collect tips while the “back of the house” workers live with the minimum.

“If they are so worried about that why don’t they pay them a fair wage in the first place?” Villanueva asks.

The CRA did not respond to requests for comment.

Sylvia Allegretto, a co-chair of the Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of numerous reports about minimum wage industries, says it’s not as though wait staff make very much money in tips.

“This idea that people make so much in tips—there are way more workers working the slow hours,” says Allegretto. “Somebody works the midnight shift at Applebee’s, somebody works the third shift in the truck stop.”

Feinberg notes that tipped workers are not only restaurant servers, but valet parkers, hairdressers and nail technicians. Women are overwhelmingly represented in the tipped worker sector — a White House report puts the figure at 72 percent.

Allegretto observes: “To the degree it’s a women’s issue is the degree to which the issues disproportionately affect women—the majority of wait staff are women.” Worse for these women, sexual harassment can become just another part of their job: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the restaurant sector logs in at 37 percent of sexual harassment complaints.

The attack on tipped worker wages is nothing new for “The Other NRA,” as opponents call the National Restaurant Association, the CRA’s parent organization.

Herman Caine — Tea Party activist, former presidential candidate, Godfather’s Pizza magnate and CEO of the NRA from 1996 to 1999, lobbied hard to “[freeze] the federal tipped minimum wage, keeping it at $2.13 an hour,” says Saru Jayaraman, co-director of ROC and author of the book Behind the Kitchen Door. President Bill Clinton signed the legislation, leaving the hourly in place, for all practical purposes, “in perpetuity.”

Last week in Minnesota a measure “crafted and supported by the Minnesota Restaurant Association” — another NRA offspring — passed the Minnesota House of Representatives to limit tipped workers’ hourly pay to $8 an hour.

The plight of tipped workers is a recipe for poverty, says Jayaraman. “This is the second-largest and fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy,” she tells Capital & Main. “Three of seven employees work in tipped occupations.”

Assemblyman Daly does not directly represent the National or the California Restaurant Association, of course—he’s an elected official. He has served as Mayor of Anaheim—the Disney-dominated Orange County city that is home to the Disneyland Resort, a cluster of theme parks, hotels and restaurants that helped boost Disney profits by 32 percent last year and added to Disney’s 2014 gross income of $20 billion in 2014.

The Mouse has muscle. In 2007, when the Anaheim City Council approved a development that included some affordable housing and threatened to infringe on one of the Disney theme park’s expansion plans, Disney created SOAR– Support Our Anaheim Resort Area with $2 million – to oppose it. A Disney-backed referendum to upend the City Council vote in favor of the project eventually prevailed.

SOAR endorsed Daly in 2014 as “a strong business voice in Sacramento” and the CRA Political Action Committee hosted a fundraiser for Daly at Disney’s Grand California Hotel and Spa. Disney contributed $7,500 to his campaign. One of the four candidates Daly vanquished in the 2012 primary was Julio Perez, head of the Orange County Federation of Labor.

Disney is one of the four largest contributors to the National Restaurant Association, says James Araby, Executive Director of the Western States Council of the United Food and Commercial Workers. (Disclosure: The UFCW is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)

“I think this is an underhanded way for Mr. Daly to serve the National Restaurant Association,” he says of the bill, which has been referred to the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee with no hearing date set. “My hope is that the Democrats in California aren’t fooled.”

He’s rooting for a measure by state Senator Mark Leno that would raise the state minimum to an hourly $13 by July 2017 and tie future bumps to the Consumer Price Index. “Don’t try to put a downward pressure on wages—raise the floor.”

Daly, Araby says, represents a district that is 74 percent Latino—with many employed by the hospitality industry. “Mr. Daly should understand who his constituents are—his constituents would suffer disproportionately if this passes.”

U.C. Berkeley’s Allegretto agrees. “If the Restaurant Association had its way everyone would make $2.13 an hour,” she says.

Restaurant Lobby Puts Emeryville Minimum Wage in Crosshairs

NRA Comes to Town to Kill Emeryville's Minimum Wage

Among the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) and its subsidiary, the California Restaurant Association (CRA) have descended on Emeryville, applying their money and influence to try to stop the City Council from voting to institute an increase in the minimum wage.
The NRA/CRA conducted a meeting to strategize talking points at Christie Avenue's Black Bear Diner on March 25th.  The pressure has been brought to bare on the City Council and the City Staff; Council members have received many e-mails and they've been actually visited at their homes by paid CRA lobbyists from Sacramento.  Perhaps in response, City Hall has shown they are not immune to such lobbying efforts and they have elected to spend taxpayer money to contact every business in town with a letter notifying them of the minimum wage public discussions and encourage their feedback.  It's noteworthy that no such letters have been sent to Emeryville residents or the workers that would be affected by a minimum wage increase. Perhaps an oversight on the part of City Hall.

The meeting at the Black Bear Diner was a private closed door affair but it would appear by events transpiring since that meeting, one of the stratagems brought by the lobbyists is for Emeryville's big business to hide behind small business.  Big businesses have been consistently quiet while the small businesses have been demonstrably vocal in their appeals to the City Council to rein in the minimum wage.  This is probably a good strategy given the fondness Emeryville residents have for small locally serving business and the less than enthusiastic support they have shown for Burger King,  I-HOP, Target, Home Depot and such.

In addition to the lobbying by NRA/CRA, the City Council has also received sample legislation crafted to kill the Emeryville minimum wage by the wealthy and powerful Washington DC based American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), known by some as America's premier right wing free market think tank.  For years, ALEC has directly written legislation meant to disempower working people for the United States Congress, a cause heartily taken up by the Republican Party across the nation.  Much of this legislation has become law.  

The City Council will discuss the minimum wage proposal on Tuesday night at 6:30 at City Hall.

The following is a piece on the NRA (sometimes referred to as the other NRA) by the Center for Media and Democracy:

Mary Bottari Become a fan 

The Center for Media and Democracy/ALEC Exposed

The National Restaurant Association Spends Big to Keep Wages Low

Posted: 05/13/2014 11:49 am EDT Updated: 07/13/2014 5:59 am EDT

A majority of the Senate recently voted to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour recently, yet the bill failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle necessary for passage -- thanks in no small part to the political power of the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry's trade association.

For years, the "Other NRA" has flexed its political muscle to keep wages low and to freeze the tipped minimum wage at just $2.13 per hour.  Plus, thanks to non-stop NRA lobbying, the House last month passed a bill changing the threshold for employer-provided coverage under the Affordable Care Act to deny health care to employees who work 30 hours per week.

This is thanks in no small part to the Other NRA's super-sized political giving. According to an analysis by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, the $683 billion industry's trade association itself has poured $12.6 million directly into federal politicians' campaign coffers since 1989.  NRA member organizations have chipped-in around $51 million more: McDonald's, for example, has given $5.8 million to federal politicians, Darden (parent company of Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Capitol Grille) $5.6 million, and Wendy's $2.3 million.  The biggest spender is NRA member Walt Disney; the creator of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck disclosed $14.1 million in contributions since 1989.

The NRA has also spent millions on the state level.  It has worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to quash local efforts to enact paid sick leave ordinances -- in Oklahoma, for example, the state NRA affiliate worked with Governor Mary Fallin (an ALEC alum) to crush both paid sick leave ordinances and minimum wage ordinances in one fell swoop.

Notably, as the restaurant industry pours tens of millions into politics and fights to keep wages low, it has seen five solid years of record-breaking profits and growth: The industry is expected to increase its profits by $24 billion in 2014, and hit $683 billion in sales.

Super-Sized Political Giving

For decades, the NRA's political spending has bought it mountains of influence.

In the 1990s, it served up enough campaign contributions to persuade Congress to set the minimum wage for tipped workers at just $2.13 an hour.  This archaic provision means that big restaurant chains have managed to shift responsibility for paying their workers onto us, the consumers.

That's not the only avenue through which the NRA's political spending leads to a public dunning. Thanks to an abysmally low minimum wage for tipped workers at restaurants like Olive Garden and non-tipped workers at McDonald's and Wendy's, nearly 60 percent of the $600 billion restaurant industry's employees are low-wage workers -- meaning they are twice as likely to be on public assistance as the rest of the population.  The National Employment Law Project estimates that the public assistance provided to fast-food workers costs taxpayers at least $3.8 billion a year.  Taxpayers fund McDonald's employees to the tune of $1.2 billion a year in public assistance.  The majority of restaurant workers are adult women, many with kids to support.

While moms and kids are struggling, restaurant CEOs are enjoying eye-popping salaries subsidized by the taxpayers. According to a report from the Institute for Policy Studies, big restaurants have exploited a tax loophole to write off more than $200 million in executive "performance pay" over just the past two years.   In other words, we as consumers are not only stuck with paying restaurant workers' wages, but we as taxpayers are stuck subsidizing the industry's profits with public assistance programs for their underpaid employees and corporate welfare for their overpaid CEOs.

A Side of Revolving-Door Lobbying and a Dash of Front Groups

The NRA's political giving is served with a side of influence-peddling. Between 2008 and 2013, the NRA more than doubled its count of registered lobbyists, from 15 to 37. At least 27 of the NRA's lobbyists have come through the "revolving door," meaning they jumped from Congressional jobs to lobbying gigs, and then play off their contacts inside the government to advance the restaurant industry's interests. What's more, the NRA's top member companies -- Darden, YUM! Brands (parent of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut), Walt Disney, McDonald's, Marriott, Sodexo, Aramark, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola -- added another 127 registered lobbyists last year. That's a lot of lobbying power.

In addition to its own paid lobbyists, the industry employs a crew of surrogates to do its dirty work in the public sphere. Salon just reported that the NRA is meticulously tracking the activities of fast food worker advocates and worker advocacy organizations. Salon reports that the Other NRA approved an "additional" $600K to attack ROC United, a small, New York based nonprofit ROC. The Other NRA also appears to back groups like ROCexposed.org (a front group linked to notorious astroturf flak Richard Berman), as well as prominent economists like Douglas Holtz-Eakin who push anti-minimum wage rhetoric.

Another example of restaurant industry astroturf is the Employment Policies Institute, which poses as a "think tank" and commissions reports and runs ads and op-eds opposing minimum wage hikes.  But EPI is run out of the offices of Berman & Co., Berman's PR firm, which represents the restaurant industry -- although over 80 percent of journalists fail to disclose those ties. Other Berman projects also advance the restaurant industry's agenda: front groups like the "Center for Consumer Freedom" have fought for years against indoor smoking bans and nutrition labeling requirements, which the industry has long opposed.

NRA "Made a Huge Difference" In Blocking State Minimum Wage Increases

And that's just on the federal level. The NRA and its state chapters have given millions more to state and local candidates, and spent countless millions more on state-level lobbying.  And in recent years, the NRA has been at the forefront of the push back against state and municipal efforts to enact their own minimum wage increases and paid sick day requirements.

Last June, the NRA boasted that its state chapters "made a huge difference" and "played an active role" in blocking higher wage laws in over a dozen states.  And, it has been the biggest opponent of paid sick day laws in states across the country -- it has even pushed a bill at ALEC to prohibit local governments from requiring employers provide paid sick days to their workers, which has since spread across the country.

Most recently, the Oklahoma NRA affiliate helped push SB 1023 to crush local efforts to guarantee a fair wage and paid sick days in that state; it was signed into law in April by Governor Mary Fallin, an ALEC alumni who gave the keynote at ALEC's Spring meeting last year.

Despite broad popular support for an increase in the minimum wage among both Democrats and Republicans, the Other NRA has managed to stick a fork in the measure in the U.S. Senate for now.  Stay tuned, however.  Advocates are planning more street heat this summer and during the fall election cycle to convince Congress that America needs a raise.