Emeryville's Minimum Wage Ordinance to be Overtaken

Emeryville's Progressive Minimum Wage to be Rendered Obsolete

$15 Per Hour Statewide Coming

News Analysis
After passage of 2015's landmark Minimum Wage Ordinance, Emeryville's unique status as a nation-wide leader in labor law was always bound to be challenged sooner or later but starting now it appears our town is to become unremarkable once again; we are to become simply one town among many across California.  It's all as a result of an agreement reached between lawmakers in Sacramento and labor unions, moving the entire state's minimum wage to more than $15 per hour.  The 'Fight for $15' idea has proven to be popular with the electorate in the state, and the agreement to be announced Monday by the Governor will bypass what was likely to be a favorable decision reached in a ballot initiative threatened to be brought by the labor unions.

The new law highlighted by the Los Angeles Times will bring the lowest paid workers in California to $15 by 2022 with further raises linked to inflation as Emeryville's MWO does.  Also, the new state-wide law will provide for worker sick-leave pay similar to Emeryville's ordinance.

After buckling under union pressure, Governor Jerry Brown said he will likely make the formal announcement of the new law, the most progressive in the nation, tomorrow.
Both Democratic presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have thrown their support behind a nation-wide $15 minimum wage.

National politics being driven by ever increasing concern over ever increasing wealth inequality such as they are, Emeryville is poised to become obscure once more; out of the national public eye.  But our town will forever be seen as the place where the turn around started, the place where the multi-decade in the making nation-wide slide of the working poor was reversed.
Emeryville will nonetheless still recede back into relative obscurity unless of course forces turn our envious geographical location at the center of the Bay Area to again be reflective in the pay we grant to the lowest among us in the form of another ordinance raising the minimum wage.

Emeryville Plays Central Role in Regional Minimum Wage Fight

From In These Times:

TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015, 12:58 PM

LA’s Min. Wage Will Be $15 by 2020. But This Bay Area City’s Minimum Will Be $14.44 By July.

BY ANDREW KLEIN

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With proposals to raise the federal minimum wage languishing in Congress, cities are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and leapfrogging ahead of the current national rate of $7.25. On May 19, Los Angeles became the largest city in the country to approve a $15 hourly minimum wage—one of several California cities including San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego which have recently passed substantial wage hikes. Seattle, Washington, set the precedent in June 2014, pledging to raise its minimum to $15 over the next two to seven years, depending on the size of the company.

Most of the increases will be implemented gradually over several years. LA’s minimum wage, for example, will reach $15 by 2020. But earlier this month, one small California city decided that its low-wage workers shouldn’t have to wait that long for a living wage. This summer, Emeryville will set a new national precedent when its minimum wage surges to nearly double the federal rate.

“Let’s Give Emeryville and Workers a Raise”

“This is an issue that evokes strong emotions,” said Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin before the start of the public comment session for the city council ordinance that would raise the minimum wage to $14.44 per hour by July 1—making Emeryville’s rate the highest of any city in the nation. (The small Seattle suburb of Seatac also passed a $15 minimum wage, but not all workers in the city are covered under it.)

The mayor—an ardent supporter of the living wage campaign in Emeryville and the national Fight for $15—instructed attendees of the May 5 city council meeting to hold their applause and boos until everyone had talked. As dozens of low-wage workers, union representatives, faith leaders and community members addressed city government officials on the moral, social and economic significance of passing the living wage ordinance, seated supporters signaled their approval with spirit fingers twinkling in the air, Occupy-style, and signs reading “Let’s Give Emeryville and Workers a Raise” rippling back and forth across the room.

If boos had been permitted, it’s unclear they would have been forthcoming. Of the scores of speakers that night, only three issued any reservations about the proposal and not a single person spoke in outright opposition. Just minutes after public comment came to a close, the council approved a “first reading” of the ordinance unanimously, guaranteeing its passage into law. When the vote concluded, audience members began hugging and high-fiving. “You can clap now,” Mayor Atkin told them, and the room erupted in celebration.

The ordinance’s path to victory began in 2014. It first surfaced at a time when the Lift Up Oakland coalition—a network of local nonprofits, unions, elected officials and progressive businesses—was building momentum in the nearby city for a November 2014 ballot initiative, which would raise the city’s minimum wage to $12.25. After the measure passed overwhelmingly, Mayor Atkin quickly assembled a team of supporters to push for similar legislation in her own city.

Most of those involved in hatching the Emeryville ordinance had worked on the Oakland campaign, and some of them, including the mayor, had helped pass Measure C in 2005. This groundbreaking law compelled Emeryville’s four big hotels to increase their workers’ pay, implement job security rules and adhere to workload standards, which are crucial in an industry responsible for a high number of on-the-job injuries.

Despite an extremely expensive campaign waged by the No on Measure C camp, which called itself the “Committee to Keep Tax Dollars in Emeryville,” 54 percent of Emeryville voters endorsed the hotel regulations, which have subsequently served as models for cities like Long Beach and Los Angeles.

With the 2005 victory, Emeryville seemed to make a political pivot. Once known as a corporate haven with a city council largely dominated by business-friendly voices, the city has since become a distinctively progressive city at the national forefront of living-wage activism.

Please click HERE for the rest of the story.

Minimum Wage: Emeryville Is No Longer Part Of The Problem

Emeryville Gets It

Now that Emeryville is going to have the highest minimum wage in the nation on July 1st ($14.42 for big businesses and $12.25 for small businesses, all raising to $15.00 per hour in 2018), Emeryville is no longer part of the problem....we're now part of the solution.

From Robert Reich at University of California Berkeley and Fight For $15:

Minimum Wage in Emeryville: After Victory, Now Small Business is Unhappy

Q: How Can You Tell When You're Being Played?

A: When Nothing Has Changed But
There's a Sudden Mood Shift

Happiness Morphs Into Unhappiness Without Cause

News Analysis / Opinion

A Random Roll Of The Dice?
Small business in Emeryville goes from happy
to angry with no prompting?
Or is there something else unseen controlling it?

Small businesses in Emeryville are being played.  And so are the residents of Emeryville; they're being played by an out-of-town right wing lobbying group and by big businesses in our town.  The Sacramento business lobbying group, the California Restaurant Association, is working Emeryville, surreptitiously sowing the seeds of discontent in order to further their own anti-minimum wage agenda.  They're working to turn smiles into frowns, to change the previously upbeat mood of our small business community, a community that so far has successfully steered the City Council to make the proposed minimum wage ordinance more amenable to small business desires.   Regardless of the rousing success by small business at an April 7th City Council study session, this Sacramento lobbying group wants Emeryville small businesses to be unhappy with what the Council is doing.  In fact they need small business to be unhappy right now...because if they're unhappy, then the California Restaurant Association and its big business backers here will have a much easier time, politically, getting Emeryville's minimum wage ordinance shut down.  So they're using small businesses in our town to accomplish their goals.

Buyers Remorse
The mood among Emeryville small businesses shifted from sunny to sour in two short weeks.  After they got virtually everything they asked for at the April 7th meeting, as reported by the East Bay Express, they walked out of the Council chambers high fiving and back slapping, celebrating their victory. But now they're so angry they're en masse petitioning the Council for a moratorium on the minimum wage all without any change or even talk of change whatsoever from City Hall.
Is it a case of buyers remorse?

Before April 7th Emeryville's small businesses wanted:

• A 'regional approach' to minimum wage; do what Oakland has done
• Minimum wage no higher than $12.25 (big business can go to $14.42)
• A slow multi-year ramp up to meet big business; slow so they can adjust
• A definition of small business as 50 or fewer employees

What the Emeryville City Council agreed to:

• A regional approach with Oakland as the model
• Minimum wage at $12.25 for small business (big business at $14.42)
• A slow multi-year ramp up to meet big business
• Small business is defined as fewer than 56 employees

But now they've had second thoughts...now it's all no good.  Now they want to stop the whole thing and have the taxpayers pay for another study on the effects of the minimum wage on business.  Mind you there have been countless studies conducted on this including a landmark UC Berkeley study the staff forwarded to the City Council to consider earlier in the year.

Rob Arias
"Studies" are no good.
Except when they further
a hidden agenda...
MY agenda....

"Studies" Are No Good.
But Studies, Now There's Something We Can Use
The moratorium and study idea is a classic CRA stall tactic used to great effect in their state-wide fight against the minimum wage.  It's right out of their play book.  Here in Emeryville, they've got Emeryville's right wing blog, the E'Ville Eye, doing their job for them.
But we must say, we're not too impressed with their planning in this up until now.  The editor of the E'Ville Eye, Rob Arias, as recently as February was telling his readers that studies are not trust worthy things.  Perhaps liberal scientists are perpetrating a hoax on Americans both with the minimum wage AND global warming.  These liberal Council members in Emeryville can reference as many "studies" as they want but us reasonable people aren't going to listen to them or the pointy headed academicians that foist them on us.
Here's Rob telling us as much when he responds to a commenter in his blog:

Rob says:

February 25, 2015 at 8:39 am

Thanks Bob. The truth is that City Council has no idea how this is going to impact the few small businesses in our community and they can reference as many “studies” as they want.

Emeryville's small business community has morphed from happy to unhappy without provocation from City Hall and the E'ville Eye has morphed from distrusting and denigrating studies to demanding one, all with no new input into the debate....at least no PUBLIC input.

Moods Change As If By Magic
The Tattler asked many small businesses in town this question; "You were happy before, after the April 7th Council meeting, but now you're unhappy...what changed?"   It turned out to be a very uncomfortable question for every business owner we asked.  One business, Scarlet City Espresso Bar stood out as emblematic among those queried.  After the April 7th meeting where the small businesses got the Council to give them everything they asked for, we interviewed the owners at Scarlett City about how they felt the Council had handled the minimum wage issue.  They said they felt good about the way the meeting went and they felt the Council had listened to them.  Now, however Scarlett City has joined with angry small businesses and signed the petition against the Council.  Our question, "Why are you unhappy now?  What's changed?" elicited an angry "no comment" from the Scarlett City owners.
And that's the way it's been with every business we interviewed.  They can't tell us why they've moved from happy to unhappy.

Telltale Sign of Meddling By Sacramento Lobby
Businesses or people don't suddenly change their opinion like this with no reason.  We know why this is happening...this is being orchestrated by the California Restaurant Association.  If the small businesses were to remain happy with what Mayor Atkin called a 'consensus' at the end of the April 7th meeting, the CRA would be unsuccessful in its attempt to stop Emeryville's minimum wage hike.  It's being done ostensibly for the benefit of Emeryville's restaurants but the big businesses, those who have been utterly silent on this issue, are really benefiting.  The last thing Target or Home Depot needs is for news of their agitating against an Emeryville minimum wage increase to go massively public.  So much better to let others fight for you and hide behind small business.  After all is anyone going to be sympathetic to the complaints from the big boxes and fast food, that they're going to have to pay their workers more?  Better to let the small businesses in Emeryville, the California Restaurant Association and right wing bloggers in town do the job for you.

Councilwoman Dianne Martinez Starts Constituant Blog

Councilwoman Martinez has started a blog emeryvilledianne.blogspot.com for Emeryville residents to follow.  First story out of the gate for Ms Martinez is a piece about the 'Fight for $15', the nation-wide minimum wage campaign Emeryville has joined.  Dianne's blog is added to Councilwoman Jac Asher's "Jac's Blog" as far as the Emeryville Council member blogosphere is concerned.  We appreciate Dianne and Jac in their constituent information effort but we're still waiting for Mayor Ruth Atkin, Councilman Scott Donahue and Vice Mayor Nora Davis to join in with some bloggy action of their own.

Emeryville City Council Contingent at 'Fight for $15" Rally

4/5ths of Emeryville City Council Fights for Nation-Wide $15 Minimum Wage

Mayor Addresses Large Berkeley Rally

Emeryville Contingent
Left to right: Dianne Martinez, Jac Asher,
Ruth Atkin, Scott Donahue

Today the Mayor of Emeryville led a contingent of four out of the five City Council members to petition for a nationwide $15 minimum wage at a large rally at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza.  The protest rally, some 1500 strong, was organized by 'Fight For $15', an international activist conglomerate comprised chiefly of fast food workers agitating for $15 minimum wage laws.  Labor Unions joined social activist groups and students at the famous UC Berkeley site of the 1960's Free Speech Movement where Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin was the featured kick-off speaker.
Mayor Atkin chronicled Emeryville's recent foray into its own path to $15 minimum wage, noting Emeryville's leadership role.  Many in the crowd seemed to be unaware but pleasantly surprised by Emeryville's new prominent position in labor rights.  It would seem our business friendly reputation may be giving way to a new reputation.

Readers will forgive the first minute or so of Ms Atkin's speech being clipped: