Emeryville's Minimum Wage Hike Comes Not a Day Too Soon

From the Atlantic CityLab comes this informative piece on minimum wage and the lack of affordable rental housing.  Emeryville's problems are California's problems are the Nation's problems.  As the state of inequality rises, a declining middle class and increasing homelessness is the result.
Californians on average now need to earn $26.65 per hour to afford an average two bedroom apartment.  At the State minimum wage, Californians need to work 92 hours per week to afford a one bedroom apartment, a shocking and embarrassing number.  Now that Emeryville has raised the minimum wage to $12.25 per hour, the number of hours per week needed to afford a one bedroom apartment here is probably substantially lower, evidence we aren't adding to the problem at least.

 Read the rest of the story HERE

Emeryville To Have Highest Minimum Wage In The Nation

Last night's Emeryville City Council vote puts Emeryville as the highest minimum wage in the nation (for large businesses) at least for a while.  With the nation-wide 'Fight for $15' campaign, many other cities across the country are also looking to follow Emeryville's lead.  The $14.42 wage set to begin on July 1st will make Emeryville eek up over every other city but likely only for a short while.
From Lift Up the East Bay:

      

Emeryville City Council Votes Unanimously to Raise Minimum Wage to Highest in the Nation

Consensus Among Community, Labor, Small Business, and Government to Lift Low-Wage Workers and Address Income Inequality

BAY AREA, CA – Emeryville legislators voted unanimously to raise its minimum wage to $12.25 with a path to almost $16 by 2019, making it the highest in the nation. Their vote was spurred by consensus for a higher regional minimum wage between residents, workers, faith leaders, and small businesses. In their deliberations, Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin and Councilmembers cited the crisis of income inequality as the reason for their decision. The law will go into effect on July 1^st after a final procedural reading of the ordinance on May 19^th.

“With income inequality out of control, we need to lift the floor for low-wage workers so if you work full-time, you don't need public assistance,” said Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin. “We have a tempered regional approach and consensus that includes business. This is a policy for the common good.”

The Emeryville ordinance will raise wages for small businesses to $12.25 on July 1, with a path to $15 by 2018. Big box retail stores and other major employers with more than 55 employees like IKEA – which profited $3.7 billion last year – will raise to Emeryville’s living wage of $14.44 on July 1. The two wages will converge in 2019 at an close to $16, and continue upward with annual cost of living increases. All workers will earn 6 to 9 paid sick days as well.

At the Council meeting, roughly 25 members of the public delivered passionate testimony in favor with virtually no vocal opposition. There was clear consensus from workers, small business, faith leaders, and community members that $12.25 would be a fair place to start, helping workers, and beginning to create a regional standard to level the playing field for business.

“I have two jobs to help my mom pay the bills, and it’s hard to pay for transportation to get to school so I can get an education,” said 16-year old Emerald Jenkins, Emeryville Pak ‘n Save worker who gets paid $9 an hour. “It’s just common sense to raise the minimum wage. Not only would I be able to pay the bills, but if I earn more, I spend more, and that helps everybody.”

“Emeryville’s leadership is contributing to the positive tipping point on the minimum wage nationally,” said Jennifer Lin, Deputy Director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. “Two years ago, $15 was unthinkable, but today it’s unstoppable because of the broad consensus we have among workers, community members, faith leaders, small business, and our elected leaders.”

“Our employees are our greatest asset, and If we want to grow our community, we have to make our jobs better jobs,” said Ahna Adair, owner of CommonWealth Micropub in Emeryville and CommonWealth Café and Pub in Oakland. “We’ve done it in Oakland, and the sky hasn’t fallen. We’ve raised our prices 25 cents on a coffee, and I think our customers just perceive it as the new norm.”

Jackie, an Emeryville Starbucks low-wage worker and ACCE member, said in tears, “I can’t afford to live on my own, and have to rely on my sister to get by. I have medical bills that are destroying my credit, and I don’t have enough money to see the doctor. So many of my coworkers are in the same boat.” 

"With the new minimum wage, more workers will be able to live here and support Emeryville’s local businesses," said Judy Timmel, 22-year Emeryville resident and member of Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE). "And if I have to pay a little more in businesses, I don’t mind because I know it’s going to the right place.”

Councilmember Dianne Martinez thanked workers for their moving testimony and said, “If our workers are creative enough to make it on minimum wage, our businesses are creative enough to make it work. We are all going to rise together in Emeryville.”

“We have to move people out of poverty,” said Gary Jimenez, Vice President of SEIU 1021. “We are winning the fight for $15, and the Bay Area is moving to develop the first regional standard in the country for wages and working conditions.”

Emeryville is the latest city in a national movement for $15 that began in the fast food industry across the country. The vote occurred as neighboring Berkeley and Richmond also look to raise their wages. Last November, 82% of Oakland voters and 78% of San Francisco voters approved wage raises to address growing income inequality in the high-cost Bay Area region. Oakland’s $12.25 wage went into effect this past March 2, and San Francisco on May 1.

More than 190,000 workers in Oakland and San Francisco won a raise thanks to the November initiatives. A higher minimum wage in those two cities alone will put $500 million into workers’ pockets, which gets spent in local businesses, growing the economy. More than half of the workers of color in those two cities received a raise.

Lift Up the East Bay is an offshoot of Lift Up Oakland, a coalition of community, labor, faith, and small business organizations established to address income inequality and lift up low-wage workers across the region who are struggling to survive. 82% of Oakland voters supported an Oakland initiative driven by Lift Up Oakland, made up of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the California Nurses Association, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), East Bay Organizing Committee (Fast Food Fight for $15), Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), SEIU 1021, SEIU ULTCW, Street Level Health Project, and UNITE HERE 2850. 78% of San Francisco voters supported Proposition J, sponsored by the Campaign for a Fair Economy, made up of SEIU 1021, the San Francisco Labor Council, UNITE HERE Local 2, the California Nurses Association, Jobs with Justice, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the Progressive Worker Alliance, Chinese Progressive Association, Young Workers United, and SF Rising.

Breaking News: Emeryville Minimum Wage Passes First Reading

Tonight, the Emeryville City Council moved its landmark minimum wage ordinance forward in a unanimous 5-0 vote.  The vote represents a 'first reading', a required step in a two part process for all new City ordinances.  Some small tweakings of the previous iteration were made after the Council heard from a flood of ordinary citizens, community activist organizations, clergy, Union Representatives, RULE members and most of all minimum wage workers themselves.
The first reading included language that would raise the rate of pay for all workers on July 1st with small businesses paying $12.25 per hour and big businesses paying $14.42 per hour.  The Council defined a small business as one with 55 or fewer employees.

Missing tonight were business owners with only one or two taking to the microphone.  Several speakers intending to request the Council place a moratorium on enacting the minimum wage filled out speaker cards but failed to speak, notably the editor of the E'Ville Eye, Emeryville's pro-business blog.  The editor, Rob Arias, has been agitating against the minimum wage ordinance for months, using his blog to demand an academic study to be performed before any more talk of raising the wage happens.  Mr Arias and his business owner colleagues left the building after hearing many workers speak of their travails tying to make ends meet on the minimum wage.

Look to the Tattler for more in depth coverage in coming days.

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.

How Much Have Low Wages Cost Emeryville Taxpayers?

As the City of Emeryville moves on July 1st to raise up the minimum wage on a path to $15 per hour in 2018, residents are reminded of the hidden costs of low wages.  The Tattler has reported how poverty wages (or sub-poverty wages as we have called them) represent a wealth transference from middle class taxpayers to business owners; in effect a business subsidy.   After a generation of development featuring lots of low wage service sector jobs in Emeryville brought by City Hall, it would be wise to consider the unintended consequences of this kind of development. 
From the University of California Berkeley Labor Center:

Poverty-level wages cost U.S. taxpayers $153 billion every year

April 13, 2015

BERKELEY —

While the U.S. economy rebounds, persistent low wages are costing taxpayers approximately $153 billion every year in public support to working families, including $25 billion at the state level, according to a new report from the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education.  The report details for the first time the state-by-state cost to taxpayers of low wages in the United States.

More than half of low-wage fast-food workers nationwide take advantage of public assistance, ranging from food stamps to Medicaid. (Photo licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by Drpoulette)

Following decades of wage cuts and health benefits rollbacks, more than half of all state and federal spending on public assistance programs (56 percent) now goes to working families, the report documents.

“When companies pay too little for workers to provide for their families, workers rely on public assistance programs to meet their basic needs,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the labor center and co-author of the new report.  “This creates significant cost to the states.”

The report analyzed state spending for Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), and federal spending for those programs and food stamps (SNAP) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The UC Berkeley researchers also report that:

• On average, 52 percent of state public assistance spending supports working families, with costs as high as $3.7 billion in California, $3.3 billion in New York and $2 billion in Texas.
• Reliance on public assistance can be found among workers in a diverse range of occupations, including frontline fast-food workers (52%), childcare workers (46%), home care workers (48%) and even part-time college faculty (25%).

From 2003 to 2013, wage growth remained flat or negative for the entire bottom 70 percent of workers in the United States, Jacobs said.  Over the same time, the share of non-elderly Americans receiving health insurance from an employer fell almost 10 percentage points, from 67 percent to 58 percent. Despite modest pay raises at some of the country’s largest and most profitable employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, wages continue to lag far behind inflation.

The researchers note that raising wages would result in significant savings to state and federal governments.  In recent months, the substantial cost of low wages has prompted elected officials to take action. California, Colorado, Maine, Oregon and Washington are considering increasing the minimum wage to $12 or higher. In Connecticut, a proposal currently moving through the state legislature would fine large companies that pay low wages in an effort to recoup the cost these companies impose on taxpayers.  The Congressional Democrats’ fiscal year 2016 budget proposal unveiled last month included a provision that would roll back tax breaks for large companies that fail to raise pay on pace with inflation.

“Our public-assistance programs provide a vital support system for American families.  Raising wages would lift working families out of poverty and allow all levels of government to better target how our tax dollars are used,” Jacobs said.

Funding was provided by the Service Employees International Union.

RELATED INFORMATION

• UC Berkeley Labor Center

The Nation Moves Toward $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage: Emeryville Leads the Way

Emeryville Leads the Nation Toward 

$15 Per Hour Minimum Wage

The Emeryville City Council, by lifting the minimum wage to $14.42 per hour for big business employees on July 1st and $12.25 for small business with yearly wage increases for both meeting at $15 per hour in 2019 as they directed City Hall to do on Tuesday, is leading the way for the nation as a whole.  Emeryville will be seen as the example for other cities in the Bay Area and beyond.

Cal Berkeley professor Robert Reich tells us why this is important:

East Bay Express: Emeryville Small Business Victorious in Minimum Wage Debate

"Most of the Business Owners Got What They Wanted"

The East Bay Express reports on Emeryville's minimum wage debate.  They conclude the small business community was successful in driving their agenda in the policy that emerged from Tuesday's City Council meeting as the Council seeks to raise the minimum wage for all workers.

From today's East Bay Express:

Emeryville Business Owners, Workers Weigh in On Proposed $14.42 Minimum Wage

By Darwin Bondgraham

Last night, at a special study session meeting of the Emeryville City Council, dozens of business owners and workers spoke about the city’s proposed minimum wage increase. No business owner spoke out against raising the minimum wage. But almost all of them voiced concerns about the pace of the increase, and whether or not Emeryville should adopt what would be the highest municipal minimum wage in the nation. Some business owners asked for special exemptions for their businesses.

After hearing from the public, the council decided to draft an ordinance that starting on July 1 will increase Emeryville’s minimum wage to $14.42 an hour for large businesses and $12.25 an hour for small businesses. Small businesses are defined as companies with fewer than 55 employees.

The draft ordinance will adjust the large employer wage upward each year to account for inflation. And the small employer $12.25 wage will be increased by a dollar each year until 2019 when it converges with the large employer minimum wage, creating a single minimum wage for all employers.

The Emeryville City Council will vote on the minimum wage next month.

Business owners and workers on both sides of the issue helped the council craft the proposal.

....Ultimately most of the business owners who spoke got what they wanted; a lower phased-in minimum wage increase. Large retailers, janitorial companies, and restaurant chains, of which there are many in Emeryville, will see an immediate increase to $14.42, however.

“The study session proved we had basically reached a consensus,” Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin said in an interview. “I expect this will be the version of the ordinance that ultimately goes through two readings and becomes law.”

Read the rest of the East Bay Express story HERE.

Emeryville Moves Forward With $14.42 Minimum Wage For Big Business July 1st

Big Business Wage $14.42

Small Business Wage $12.25

Both Meet in 2019

Tonight, the Emeryville City Council directed the City Staff to draw up a resolution for a minimum wage ordinance effective beginning July 1st that would require large Emeryville businesses to pay their workers at least $14.42 per hour.  The draft resolution will be presented by the Council at two public readings in May at which point, barring any changes subsequently made,  the ordinance will become the law of the land.  The $14.42 rate makes Emeryville the leading Bay Area municipality as far as lifting up wages of the working poor.

The Council agreed the cut-off point between big and small business will be 55 employees, including part time workers.  Small business will pay their workers at least $12.25 per hour with provisions to ramp up to meet big business in 2019 after the rate is adjusted to meet consumer price index increases.  Additionally a paid sick leave provision was agreed upon.  The only 'carve-out' concession to business the Council agreed to was a 160 hour training period for new employees 18 and under where the employer is permitted to pay workers 85% of the minimum base pay be it at the big business rate or the small business rate.
The law will effect all of Emeryville's current 2227 minimum wage workers (out of a total of 22,179 work force) who make $9 per hour now and many of the 6191 workers who currently make less than the Emeryville 'living wage' of $14.42.

How Much Do CEOs Earn Per Hour?

Emeryville City Hall is considering raising the wage of the lowest paid workers to as much a $14.42 per hour for big businesses in town like Panera Bakery, Starbucks, Denny's, Baskin Robbins, I-HOP and Kentucky Fried Chicken (some of these Emeryville restaurants or their parent companies are highlighted in yellow below). How does that stack up against the CEO's of these corporations?   USA Today has assembled a compilation of several CEO pay to get an idea:

Maximum Wage! How much CEOs earn an hour

By: Matt Krantz April 6, 2015 6:30 am

Getting paid $10-an-hour is a welcome lift for Walmart (WMT) and McDonald’s (MCD) workers. But compare that with what the average restaurant and retail CEOs earn.

The 13 CEOs of a group of well-known retailers and restaurants haul in an average $5,859 an hour according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ. Putting that another way: It would take an employee making $10 a hour more than two months working each day to earn as much as the average CEO in these industries make in a single hour. The analysis assumes a 40-hour-a-week schedule and uses total reported pay by the companies in the most recent proxy statements, which for some companies is 2014, but for some others is still 2013. Total pay includes salary but also stocks awards and bonuses.

CEO pay will be on top of investors’ minds this week as more proxy statements pour in from companies. These documents show investors how much they’re paying the top management. CEO pay is an annual source of angst for investors who, on one hand, are willing to pay managers whatever it takes to get good results, but at the same time can’t help but puzzle over the seemingly non-stop march of CEO pay higher.

This year stands to be even more charged as there’s pressure for restaurants and retailers to boost wages to hourly employees. Rising hourly pay at Walmart, McDonald’s and Target (TGT) – all announced this year – stand to drive a critical cost for all these companies higher. The raises also draw greater attention to pay disparity. Neither Target nor McDonald’s CEOs’ pay were included because their current CEOs haven’t served a full year yet.

It’s still early in the proxy season – and many companies haven’t reported CEO pay for 2014, yet. Walmart, for instance, hasn’t reported fiscal 2015 pay yet (so fiscal 2014 pay through January 2014 was included in this analysis).

No one expects a line cook or a retail clerk to earn as much as the CEO. And it’s quite possible CEOs put in more than 40 hours a week (statistics on a 60-hour workweek are also included in the chart below). But the attention to rising wages will certainly again turn a spotlight on how much the people at the top of these companies are earning.

The biggest CEO payout – by far – goes to the co-CEOs of Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG). Montgomery Moran and Steven Ells, co-CEOs, pulled down more then $13,000 a hour apiece. Compare that with the average $9.15 an hour paid to Chipotle crew members, according to Glassdoor.com. It would be very difficult for investors to complain too much, though, since shares of Chipotle gained 29% in 2014 and is the fast-casual concept to beat this year.

Over at Wal-Mart, CEO Michael Duke earned what amounted to $2,704 a hour during the company’s most recently reported proxy for the fiscal year ended in January 2014. That ranks him below well below average among the retailers and restaurants analyzed – which includes some fiscal 2014 and 2015 years. But even at that total pay, it would take the typical Wal-Mart worker more than a month working every day to earn as much as Duke makes in an hour. Wal-Mart typically files its annual proxy statement at the end of April.

Again, it cannot be stressed enough this analysis doesn’t even remotely assert CEOs should be paid closer to $10 an hour. Few compensation experts or even investors would agree with that.

But investors are constantly looking for ways to put wages and pay into context – which will be especially true this year and especially in these industries. Looking at CEO pay per hour helps investors gain some perspective during proxy season when evaluating CEO’s eye-popping pay packages.

HOURLY PAY FOR CEOS AT KEY RETAILERS AND RESTAURANTS

Company	Symbol	CEO	Pay per hour (40 hrs./wk)	Pay per hour (60 hrs./wk)
Chipotle	CMG	Montgomery Moran	$13,489	$8,993
Chipotle	CMG	Steven Ells	$13,471	$8,981
Starbucks	SBUX	Howard Schultz	$10,285 *	$6,857 *
Macy’s	M	Terry Lundgren	$7,904 *	$5,269 *
Dunkin Brands	DNKN	Nigel Travis	$4,889	$3,260
YUM Brands	YUM	David Novak	$4,795	$3,196
J.C. Penney	JCP	Myron Ullman	$4,629	$3,086
Wendy’s	WEN	Emil Brolick	$3,645 *	$2,430 *
Dominos	DPZ	Patrick Doyle	$3,571	$2,381
DineEquity	DIN	Julia Stewart	$2,766 *	$1,844 *
Sears	SHLD	Edward Lampert	$2,766	$1,821
Wal-Mart	WMT	Terry Duke	$2,704	$1,803
Panera Bread	PNRA	Ronald Shaich	$1,292 *	$862 *

Sources: S&P Capital IQ, USA TODAY research, based on 40 and 60-hour workweek and 52.2 weeks per year, total reported pay from most recent proxy
* most recent proxy end date is prior to Dec. 2014
** excludes Target and McDonald’s since current CEOs have served less than a year

The Face of Minimum Wage

Emeryville's Minimum Wage Workers

Elijah Esquibel's Story

Elijah Esquibel
Emeryville worker

The Face of Emeryville's minimum wage workers; second in a series.  Readers may peruse 'Beatriz's Story', the first in the series,  HERE.
In his own words, Mr Elijah Esquibel tells us how workers manage on $9 per hour, Emeryville's minimum wage.  


"I’m a banquet captain at the Emeryville Hilton Garden Inn.  I also live in Emeryville, and my wife and I like to eat and shop locally.  So when wages go up, everyone has more to spend at local businesses.  

We eat pastries at Arizmendi a few times a week; we have a late night dinners at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café after work; and sometimes we meet friends for drinks at the Oaks Corner.  

For the minimum wage retail workers at Bay Street, workers at the non-union hotels in Emeryville that are not covered under Measure C, and the fast food workers throughout the area, many have to work three hours just to afford a pizza from a local pizzeria – which means they can’t afford it.  

In addition to struggling to pay for food, transportation, and health care on $9 an hour, long commutes are destroying people’s family lives.  With rents skyrocketing, it’s typical to $1,000 just to get a single room in a small apartment with three roommates in Emeryville.  People earning minimum wage are moving further and further away, and many of my co-workers commute 90 minutes to two hours just to get to work.  

There’s no question in my mind that low-wages are stressful and take a toll on people’s health, family life, and our community as a whole.  

When multi-national corporations like IKEA, The Gap, and Jamba Juice pay low wages, they not only keep people down, they keep our community down.  When workers earn so little, they can’t afford to eat at local eateries, which negatively impacts local businesses and economy.  

IKEA profited $3.7 billion last year.  Locally, I’m sure that’s millions of dollars in profits that got sucked out of the local economy.  I think our community deserves better and should receive a benefit from these profits.  Paying workers more is the best way to do that.  

By bringing all workers up to $15 an hour by 2018, people would be able to spend a little more at local businesses.  

The pie is growing, but workers’ share is shrinking.  Business is booming, but workers wages are stagnant.  Now is the time to raise the minimum wage.  

Cities around us are all bringing wages up whether it’s Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco or San Jose.  Workers in Emeryville should not be left behind. Taking care of business also means taking care of employees.

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.