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.

Fox News Reports: Robots Could be Coming to Emeryville

Emeryville Waitrons Replaced by Robots?

Guess who?

Fox News, a media conglomerate well known for it's concern for the working poor in this country, is warning Seattle restaurant waiters the City Hall there, by raising the minimum wage on a fast track to $15 per hour (presumably to help poor people), is actually going to get them fired from their jobs
because if their bosses don't sack them first, robots will.
It's a cautionary tale that Emeryville waitrons should heed: robots could be in your future...that's what's being 'whispered' anyway.
Restaurant owners, so exasperated over having to pay their workers a (barely if at all) living wage of $15 per hour, will fire them all and buy robots to serve the public their meals Fox reports.  Emeryville is also on a path to eventually get to $15 per hour for its minimum wage workers, perhaps in 2018 or 2019, raising the terrible specter of fresh faced college kids replaced by murderous HAL 9000 robots that won't open pod bay doors, let alone get your steak to your table before it turns cold.

Kudos to Fox for the timely heads up.  Emeryville; stop the minimum wage juggernaut before it's too late!

Fox News' token brunette Lauren Simonetti tells the story:

The Face of Minimum Wage

Emeryville's Minimum Wage Workers

Beatriz's Story

News Analysis
Emeryville is considering raising the minimum wage and a rising tide of voices against the proposal is being heard from the small business community in town.  The former Mayor and a vocal minority of Emeryville residents supporting the business sector are also entering the fray.  Contrary to claims made by these critics, the City of Emeryville has voluntarily made transparency, accountability and democratic inclusion paramount; a courtesy letter was sent to every business in town, alerting them to the public meetings where this issue has been discussed, giving businesses a more than equal opportunity to influence the decision makers.
This unprecedented move by City Hall however has caused some residents to cry foul, noting City Hall is giving the business community special favor with the notification letter since no residents or workers have gotten this letter.  The letter represents an extra level of transparency, above and beyond the legal minimum requirements, and is causing some blowback; these residents say the City should be be just as concerned about giving this extra level of notification to all the residents and the workers, since they would also be directly affected by a minimum wage increase.  The City should be as interested in hearing the resident's and the worker's voices as the voices from the business community, these residents claim.

Amid all the drama between the business community and residents, the one group yet to be heard from in any substantial way, are Emeryville's minimum wage earning workers themselves; the people in our town who stand to gain from a wage increase the most.

The Tattler has sought to rectify that.  We've contacted several of these workers and we have encouraged them to testify to the City Council or to us.  With one exception so far, these low paid workers have declined to comment; all claiming fear of retaliation from their bosses.
The exception is a young woman of color working at a national fast food chain restaurant in town.
This woman and her employer will remain anonymous as she has expressed fears of possible retaliation from her boss if her identity is made known.  She has chosen the name Beatriz for herself for purposes of this story.

Beatriz's Story
Beatriz (19) works for this Emeryville fast food employer but she lives in Richmond with her parents and siblings, she told us she cannot afford her own apartment.  She is attending community college part time while she works, usually 25 hours per week.  She rides the bus to Emeryville for her commute.  Beatriz is paid $9 per hour, the current minimum wage in Emeryville (and California) and she receives no benefits.  Her paycheck is sometimes less than $200 per week after taxes are taken out.  She is in training to become a 'shift leader', a promotion if she gets it, and her compensation would increase to $10 per hour (with no benefits offered).
Beatriz receives financial aid for college but she has to pay for her books on her own and her Emeryville job provides that money.  Most of the remainder of her earnings goes to her parents to help pay the family's bills.  She told the Tattler, "I have a big family and I help out with food expenses and rent and other bills".

Low Wage Brings Family Crisis
Rent is a looming and existential problem for Beatriz's family;  the lease on their apartment is ending and the landlord is using that opportunity to increase the monthly rent on them.  This has put the family in crisis because they can't afford the higher rent.  The landlord has notified the family they will be evicted if they can't pay the higher rent.  "We're going to have to move, but the rents are high everywhere", Beatriz told us.  Her parents have been looking for a new apartment to rent but they can't find one the family can afford.  Meanwhile the clock is ticking.

Beatriz has been made aware of the proposed $14.42 minimum wage for Emeryville's big businesses and she is extremely happy and hopeful at the prospects, "The money I make is necessary for my family.  A raise to $14.42 per hour would mean my family would be able to keep our home" she said.
Beatriz would make an extra $5.42 per hour with the proposed increase.  This amounts to an extra $135.50 per week or $542 per month before taxes, more than enough to make up for the increase in Beatriz's family's rent, "definitely enough to save our home" she said.

Profits Sent Out of Emeryville
Beatriz's employer, a wholly owned subsidiary of a larger parent corporation, has more than 7000 restaurant locations across the US and is located in over 50 countries.   The corporate headquarters are out of state and an Internet check revealed the CEO brings in more than $4.2 million yearly in cash payments and equity compensation, a level that translates to more than $2100 per hour for a 40 hour week at 50 weeks per year.  The corporate Board of Directors each gets around half what the CEO gets, around $1000 per hour (if they work full time).
However the majority of employees for this corporation make the minimum wage or less, that's $9 in California but only the federal level of $7.25 elsewhere.  This means the CEO earns more than 290 times more than the average lowest paid workers.

The next public meeting to discuss Emeryville's minimum wage raise will be at the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting: Tuesday April 7th at 6:30 PM at City Hall.  The public, including minimum wage earners, are welcome to attend and give public testimony if they wish.

Kurt Brinkman Uses Oakland Tribune to Misinform Emeryville Residents

Former Mayor Spreads Misinformation

on Minimum Wage Debate

Obfuscation and Outright Falsehoods 

Former Emeryville mayor and multi-year Chamber of Commerce Board member Kurt Brinkman is using his position as a community leader to misinform the community in an opinion piece in the Oakland Tribune revealed in that newspaper's 'My Word' section this week.  Mr Brinkman, known to misinform and deceive the public while serving his five year term on the City Council in order to help the business community, told Tribune readers Wednesday the City Council is forgoing transparency and businesses are being left out of deliberations regarding a proposal to raise the minimum wage in Emeryville, a false statement.  Additionally, he says the Council's lack of intimate knowledge about small business is corrupting their judgement, rhetorically asking, "who on the Emeryville City Council has ever hired an employee, run a business or made payroll?", a dismissal of one Council member's 25 year proprietorship.

Mr Brinkman says he is concerned about Emeryville's small business and he tells the Tribune readers Emeryville's small businesses will not be given a phase-in period with the proposed wage increase, another patently false statement.  He also disregards the two City Hall public meetings held on this topic so far stating that the Council is turning a "deaf ear" on small business by conducting only one meeting.

Kurt Brinkman
Oakland small business 
owner has met a payroll 
for 18 years.

Also in the Tribune opinion piece, former Mayor Brinkman goes on to say Emeryville and other cities should not institute minimum wage laws on their own but instead defer to the State of California and its minimum wage, now pegged at $9 per hour.  He ventures Emeryville businesses will be "put out of business" or driven out of town, precisely the same charge he made as a Chamber of Commerce Board member in 2005 against the last minimum wage increase for Emeryville's hotel workers.  Mr Brinkman was part of a concerted $140,000 effort by the Chamber of Commerce to stop the wage increase for the hotel workers enacted as a result of the passage of the Emeryville ballot initiative Measure C.  At the time, Mr Brinkman and the Chamber assured residents the four  Emeryville hotels would go bankrupt or flee to Oakland or Berkeley as a result of the wage increase.  In the intervening years, Emeryville has approved the building of hotel number five, all paying their workers the higher wages, hardly the destruction of the hospitality industry Mr Brinkman predicted.   For his remarkable lack of prescience in the Measure C fight, Kurt Brinkman has steadfastly refused to comment.

The Tattler has long chronicled Mr Brinkman's ethical transgressions to further big business interests at the expense of Emeryville's small business on the dais at the Emeryville City Council.   In 2011, Councilman Brinkman joined colleague Nora Davis in an action to stop a citizen led initiative drive to remove Emeryville's infamous business tax cap, a law that makes small business pay a higher rate of taxes than big business in town.  The tax cap, still in place, forces Emeryville's small businesses to subsidize big businesses.

Councilman Scott Donahue
Emeryville small business
owner has met a payroll
for 25 years.

Last year, after voting to move Measures U&V (a pair of 'charter city' and real estate transfer tax initiatives) forward from the dais, Councilman Brinkman joined a failed $100,000 effort by the California Association of Realtors (CAR) to stop the Measures, stating Emeryville will effectively be destroyed if voters pass the Measures.  Mr Brinkman lent a hand to the Sacramento lobbying entity CAR by robo calling every Emeryville voter, a spiel that contained many factual errors and misleading tropes.

Current Councilman Scott Donahue took the opportunity to set the record straight regarding Mr Brinkman's erroneous comment about the Council's lack of business experience, "To answer Kurt's question, I've had a small business in Emeryville since 1990, employing over 20 people intermittently.  I've met my payroll obligations for my employees during all that time and I'm fully aware of the employee costs to small businesses" the Councilman said.

The public will get another chance (number three) to weigh in on this minimum wage proposal on April 7th at the regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

Emeryville's Minimum Wage Likely to be Eclipsed by Berkeley

'Regional Approach' on Minimum Wage Emerges

Buoyed by the actions of municipalities throughout California and the entire nation, East Bay cities in the Bay Area are undergoing discussion and implementation of minimum wage increases, one city seeing the raise by another and increasing their own in response; the much talked about 'regional approach'  polity emerges.  Emboldened by Oakland's $12.25 minimum wage, Emeryville has begun deliberation on its own summer 2015 wage hike to $14.42 per hour for big businesses and Berkeley, not to be outdone, is now considering leap-frogging past Emeryville with a wage pegged at $16 by 2017.  This regional approach to minimum wage setting is a formula that will likely settle out at a place where the lowest paid citizens among us will receive compensation for their labor at a (marginally) livable wage.  It's a formula that (ultimately) takes into account built-up inequalities across the region by removing local capriciousness and petty ideological politics from municipalities acting as would-be fiefdoms. 
First it was Berkeley that raised its minimum wage in 2014, followed on by Oakland last fall, then Emeryville, under pressure from its neighbors goes one better and now it's back to Berkeley, each city raising the wage a click.  This regional approach to settling on an ethical minimum wage is turning out to be a rational policy proscription that brings higher social and economic justice; a good thing.

From Chico Enterprise-Record News:

Berkeley could have $16 minimum wage by 2017

By Judith Scherr Correspondent POSTED: 03/24/15, 2:58 PM PDT |

BERKELEY -- The city's $10 an hour minimum wage, which currently trails levels set by San Francisco and Oakland, could sprint to more than $15.99 by 2017, if the City Council adopts standards being proposed by its Labor Commission.

San Francisco's minimum wage is at $11.05 an hour, on its way to $15 in 2018; Oakland's is at $12.25, increasing annually with the Consumer Price Index. All exceed California's current minimum wage of $9, which will increase to $10 in 2016.

Under Berkeley's 2014 ordinance, the minimum wage went to $10 an hour in October 2014, will increase to $11 by October 2015 and to $12.53 by October 2016.

The draft revised minimum wage law the Labor Commission finalized at its March 18 meeting would increase minimum wages in October 2017 to match Berkeley's Living Wage, the minimum companies contracting with the city must pay employees.

The law provides no further increases after 2016.

Berkeley's current Living Wage is $13.71 an hour, plus a health benefit of $2.28 an hour; both increase annually with the CPI.

Similarly, the proposed minimum wage and health benefit would increase with the CPI. Employees would be able to opt for either an employer health plan or a cash benefit.

The draft law provides sick days, calculated at one hour per 30 hours worked.

The City Council is expected to consider the proposal June 9, but approval won't be a slam dunk. "I think we are in for a fight with the City Council," said commission Chair Sam Frankel, urging colleagues to lobby the council members who appointed them to the commission.

Last year the council rejected a Labor Commission proposal that would have raised Berkeley's minimum wage over several years until it caught up with the Living Wage, opting instead for the more modest minimum wage.

Berkeley's restaurateurs have led the fight to slow minimum wage increases.

John Paluska, who owns two Berkeley restaurants, cautioned the commission against raising the minimum wage and health care benefit too quickly.

"Based on today's numbers, this double increase would result in an additional cost to Berkeley employers of $3.46 (an hour)," Paluska wrote in a March 18 email. "Add in nearly three years of CPI increases and this number will likely be closer to $4 (an hour). This is a huge increase with no phasing."

Instead, Paluska proposed yearly CPI increases beginning in October 2017, which he said would give the business community time to study consequences of Oakland and San Francisco's wage increases.

Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO Polly Armstrong expressed concerns to the commission about seniors who hire caregivers.

"They are paid not by government money, but by individuals hiring them," she said, contending that seniors unable to afford the increased wage may hire employees off the books who are willing to work for less than minimum wage and might be untrustworthy.

The draft ordinance also addresses service charges, a percentage of a restaurant bill added in lieu of tipping. The proposed ordinance explicitly excludes owners and managers from sharing in service charges.

Armstrong told the commission she believes regulating service charges complicates record keeping.

But David Fielder, speaking on behalf of the Wellstone Democratic Club and the group Tax the Rich, said that without regulation service charges might go to managers.

Fielder went on to counter the argument that the wage hikes will hurt businesses.

"Don't listen to 'The sky is falling' and Chicken Little stuff," he said. "The thrust of this ordinance must ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people, not protect the secretive profit margins of a few outspoken opponents."

Stephen Gilbert, with the Berkeley Minimum Wage Initiative Coalition, told this newspaper after the meeting, "If the City Council decides to gut (the commission proposal), we'll be moving forward with an initiative."

The coalition plans to file with the city clerk in April to begin a six-month process collecting signatures to put a ballot measure before Berkeley voters in Nov. 2016 that would raise the minimum wage to $15 by October 2017.

San Francisco's November 2014 minimum wage ballot initiative won by 77 percent and Oakland's won by 82 percent.

On April 7 the Emeryville City Council will hold a study session on hiking the minimum wage to $14.42, equal to the city's living wage, effective July 1 2015.

RULE Meeting

Residents United For A Livable Emeryville

Come and meet your progressive neighbors and make Emeryville what you 

want it to be!

Saturday, March 21

Meeting 10:00 -12:00

Doyle St. CoHousing, 5514 Doyle St., 1st floor common room

Agenda*

E'vlle minimum wage:  guest Jennifer Lin, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy
Sherwin Williams Update

E'vlle EBID: funding for the Emery Go Round (report back from community forum)

RULE in 2015

Emeryville Police Shoot Woman, Body Camera Turned Off

From KGO News:

 Emeryville Officer Who Killed Shoplifting Woman was Wearing Body Cam, Had it Turned Off

(KGO) - An Emeryville police officer is now on administrative leave after fatally shooting a woman who was involved in a shoplifting incident outside an Emeryville Home Depot. Allegedly, the woman took off on foot after robbing the store and was pursued by two officers into Oakland. One of the officers alleged that the woman pointed a revolver at them, and the officers proceeded to fire seven rounds at the woman, killing her. 

The city of Emeryville had purchased 50 body cameras last month to be worn by officers on duty, and one of the officers involved in the shooting was wearing a body cam at the time. However, he claims he forgot to turn the camera on until after the woman had been killed.

Emeryville police chief Ken James says that the officer may have forgotten to switch on the camera because they are so new to the department that the officers have not yet been trained on how to use them. 

He said, "we have not deployed body cameras as a department-wide program at this point. The one officer that had the camera on was part of our field testing of the body cameras. As a result, we did not have a policy in place of when to activate it and when not to activate it."

Police chief James says that he hopes the footage will still be useful in the investigation. It has been turned over to Oakland police because the shooting occurred in their jurisdiction.

Officer involved in Monday shooting had body cam turned off

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said the late release of information about an officer-involved shooting was a "snafu" and mistake on the part of the police department, for which he accepts full responsibility.

Officer Lisa Lewis fired a weapon during a traffic stop Monday, striking suspect Armand Bennett, 26, in the head. Serpas the shots were fired following a scuffle between the two. However, the NOPD did not disclose the shooting to the public until Wednesday evening.

New Orleans police said Officer Lisa Lewis got into a fight with a man during a traffic stop on Mimosa Court in Algiers. During the altercation, she shot 26-year-old Armand Bennet in the forehead.

Bennet's attorney, Nandi Campbell, said her client never resisted, and she claims the officer fired a second shot at her client as he ran away.

The officer's attorney countered that Lewis had turned her body camera off because her shift was about to end and she was on her way back to the Fourth District station when she initiated the traffic stop that led to the shooting.

"What good is the camera if officers are able to take them off and just put them on the side?" Campbell asked. "There's supposed to be some sort of checks and balances, so if we have an officer who has no problems shooting at a man two times. Why should I be surprised that she took the camera off? I'm not surprised at all."

It's unclear yet if there's any other video from the scene.

"We want the officers to wear body cameras when they're engaged with somebody in the public, and we know many times that is going to happen and sometimes things happen very fast and they might not be able to," according to NOPD Chief Ronal Serpas. "But I don't know yet. I haven't seen this case."

Serpas said Lewis and the suspect had gotten into a scuffle a week before Monday's incident, and Bennett got away. He said that prompted the NOPD to issue four different warrants for Bennet, which led to Monday's stop.

The shooting and the events that led up to it are under investigation.

Ferguson Police Officer's Body Camera Turned Off During Shooting

Local police continue to search today for a suspect who wounded a Ferguson police officer Saturday night, but now authorities say the incident involved only one person and that it appears no burglary took place.

BY CAROLINE COURNOYER / SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

FLICKR/ELVERT BARNES

Local police continue to search today for a suspect who wounded a Ferguson police officer Saturday night, but now authorities say the incident involved only one person and that it appears no burglary took place.

Police also confirmed today that the wounded officer had a body camera, but that it was turned off during the incident.

St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman, a police spokesman, said he did not know why the camera was off.

Ferguson police officers began wearing body cameras on Aug. 31, three weeks after a white police officer, Darren Wilson, fatally shot Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed black teenager.

Police originally reported late Saturday night that the officer spotted two suspects trying to break into a business and that when confronted, one of them pulled a gun and fired at the officer, wounding him in the arm.

Police, however, now are describing a different scenario: that the police officer, during a business check, saw a male subject in the rear of the Ferguson Community Center. When he approached, the person began to run and the officer followed on foot. During the pursuit, the man spun around and fired at the officer, who was hit in the left arm, before disappearing in the wooded area behind the center.

The officer was treated and released from a local hospital today.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar were originally told that the incident involved two suspects at the time they provided statements to the press Saturday night, but later detectives confirmed it was only one individual, Schellman said.

Schellman also said that police did not have any more details on suspect's description.

The earlier story:

FERGUSON -- A Ferguson police officer was shot Saturday night. The officer, a man, survived the shooting, authorities said.

The shooting occurred in the 1000 block of Smith Avenue in Ferguson, near the new Ferguson Community Center.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said Saturday night that the officer was on routine patrol and spotted two suspects trying to break into a business. He said the business was in Ferguson.

When the officer confronted the suspects, Jackson said, one of them pulled a gun and fired at the officer. The officer was struck once in the arm, and was expected to be OK.

At a news conference near the Ferguson Police Department early Sunday, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar gave the same account of the shooting as Jackson.

He added that police fired at the suspects at some point during the altercation. But there is no evidence that they were hit. "We have no indication either suspect was shot," Belmar said.

Belmar said he doesn't believe the incident was linked to the Ferguson protests, and that he knew of no other incidents Saturday night.

In the background, chants could be heard from protesters, including, "We are going to shut this down!"

Many in the group of roughly 100 expressed skepticism at the police account of the shooting.

Dozens of police cars from numerous jurisdictions converged on the area after the shooting. The shooter is reported to have fled into nearby woods.

Police established a staging area near the St. Peters Evangelical Church of Christ on West Florissant Avenue.

Officers are still searching for the shooter, according to St. Louis County Police.

The shooting came at the end of another week of protests, arrests and violence since the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson.

Authorities had hoped to avoid further confrontations by canceling the weekly Ferguson Farmers Market on Saturday to prevent a repeat of last week's encounters between protesters and marketgoers.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson issued a video Thursday in which he apologized directly to Brown's family and to protesters who felt the police mishandled the protests that followed. But the move seemed to reignite protesters calling for Jackson's firing, and tension increased.

Christine Byers, Nick Pistor, Steve Giegerich and Denise Hollinshed of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

St. Louis officer under fire for turning off dashcam video during arrest

By AnneClaire Stapleton, Sonia Moghe and Dana Ford, CNN

Updated 5:46 PM ET, Wed February 18, 2015

(CNN)A St. Louis man has filed a lawsuit alleging excessive force in a case that involves an officer turning off a dashcam that was recording the man's arrest.

At one point in the video from the dashcam, a female officer can be heard saying: "Hold up, everybody, hold up. We're red right now so if you guys are worried about cameras just wait."

The phrase "we're red right now" indicates that a camera is recording.

A second dashcam continued to record.

Video of the April arrest shows officers stopping a vehicle being driven by Cortez Bufford, whose car roughly matched the description of one possibly involved in an area shooting.

As officers approached the vehicle, they ordered Bufford and his passenger to show their hands. They did.

                          

According to the police report, one officer smelled marijuana and saw what looked to be plastic baggies full of a leafy green substance.

The passenger was ordered from the vehicle, and he was handcuffed without incident.

Bufford was also ordered to exit the vehicle, but he refused and became increasingly agitated, according to the report. He was then removed.

While officers attempted to place him in handcuffs, one saw the handle of a handgun sticking out of Bufford's right front pocket. According to the report, Bufford was seen reaching for the weapon.

The video then shows officers kicking Bufford while he is on the ground. According to his suit, Bufford suffered abrasions to his fingers, face, back, head, ears and neck. He was handcuffed after an officer used a Taser on him.

A loaded handgun was later removed from Bufford's pocket.

An attorney representing the city and the police department defended the officers' actions in the arrest, while condemning the officer who turned off the dashcam, which is against department policy.

"The officers were not acting out of line at any time during the arrest. The person involved in this altercation had a semi-automatic gun, and the officers were protecting themselves and the public. They did what had to be done to protect themselves," Winston Calvert told CNN.

He said the use of force and the dashcam issues are separate. The officer who shut off the dashcam video was referred to an internal affairs department, Calvert said.

"The city's Police Department has a policy on the use of dash cameras and other cameras, and the Police Department special order says the cameras should be left on until the event is concluded. When we saw that an officer had violated that policy, it was very disappointing," he said. "The internal affairs recommended discipline for the officer, which is what happened."

Because the case is still open to appeal, Calvert declined to say what the punishment was. He said the officer, who he identified as Kelli Swinton, remains on the job while her appeal is underway. A call to the officer's lawyer was not returned.

Attorney Joel Schwartz, who represents Bufford, is urging reform.

All of the charges against his client have been dismissed. According to a statement from St. Louis prosecutor Jennifer M. Joyce, the "action of turning off the dash camera video diminished the evidentiary merits of the case."

"I don't think an officer on the scene should have the capability to stop the camera from rolling. Otherwise it defeats the entire purpose of having body cameras and/or dashcams," Schwartz said.

Utah officer who shot Darrien Hunt wore body cam, but it was turned off.

Saratoga Springs • Responding to newly released reports that a police officer involved in the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Darrien Hunt was wearing a body camera — which apparently was not turned on at the time — protesters on Friday decried Hunt's death and said it was hard to believe anything the police say about the episode.

The protesters wore bull's-eyes on their backs while shouting, "Stop killing our kids," "Stop violating the law," and "Don't shoot us in the back."

The rally, consisting of about three dozen people, took place outside the Saratoga Springs Police Department, but a handful of protesters moved to stand just inside the building's doors. People driving by honked in apparent support of the protesters.