I’d rather

read 10 letters like this one from Jerry Wright or the earlier one by Sheila Harris, both restauranteurs, than one by the ingrate Vern Raburn, CEO of

Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or the xenophobic Pfeffer. These are thoughtful

and sincere and less about frightening people with nonsense about school invaders and lost constitutional rights.

I do not want to put Wright or Harris out of business; I don’t want them to have to fire anyone. Nevertheless, I’m willing to risk

that on the chance that the cumulative effects will be better than the status quo. When did “conservative” come to mean “afraid”? mjh

Living Wage Counterpoint

A business is nothing but its bottom line, and if it shows a profit, we get

to continue the game for another fiscal quarter. Behind each business are people. I am our business. My family is this business. Those

who choose to work with me to accomplish our goals are our business. In my case, this means 60 employees get to take home a paycheck.

Sixty souls can pay rent, pay a bill, buy some food. And if this law costs me more than I can bring in, then there are 60 families I have

failed.

This law picks on my industry: restaurants. … Jerry Wright
[full letter here]

This is all I could find about the debate a few days ago.

I still find it very hard to believe a Lowe’s or Chili’s would relocate. How can it possibly be economical to do so? mjh

Panel

debates wage increase

Heinrich and five others discussed the pros and cons of the proposed local minimum wage increase at the

UNM Continuing Education building on Tuesday night. The proposed increase of the minimum wage in Albuquerque from $5.15 per hour to $7.50

per hour will appear on the Oct. 4 ballot.

About 20 people came to the event, which was sponsored by the Anderson

Schools of Management. …

Jerry Easley, chairman of the Albuquerque Employment Growth Initiative, said he was against the

increase. He said $7.50 per hour will not help workers enough.

“To characterize $7.50 as a living wage is disingenuous,” he said.

“It will never support a family.” [mjh: so it isn’t enough and this opponent wants more?]

He said the increase would

push employers out of Albuquerque. He said after the 2003 minimum wage increase in Santa Fe, several businesses including Lowe’s and

Chili’s relocated or started businesses outside the city limit.

To its credit, the Albuquerque

Journal has granted space to a number of opinion pieces on the upcoming vote to increase the Minimum Wage.

ABQjournal: Lack of Data Foils Minimum Wage Evaluation By David Pfeffer, Santa Fe City Councilor

High toned

phrases highlighted Santa Fe’s “living wage” debate. Proponents haughtily blamed business for getting rich off

“the backs of the poor.” One adult working in two jobs or two adults working in one family proved reason enough to “do something about

it.” Articulate opposition could not hold against this supposedly moral stand. …

We do know that some employers have

relocated. The local newspaper’s printing plant has left town, leaving only the white collar staff within the city limits. We know of

businesses that have opted not to come here. …

[W]e may be kicking up by another dollar an hour this fact-blind

insistence on a supposedly moral stand— a stand taken, not only without regard to “immigrant status,” but without regard to

the damage it is doing to the very people it is supposedly designed to help.

David Pfeffer, a Republican

running for the U.S. Senate, was the only Santa Fe city councilor to vote against the wage ordinance.

class="mine">The sniveling tone of the preceding may be all the reason one needs to vote against Pfeffer in any election. I’m amazed any

business finds it cheaper to relocate; such a business cares as little about its customers as it does about its employees. Read the whole

thing to see just how important the “immigrant status” issue is to him (and a block of xenophobic Republicans).

In spite of

Pfeffer’s claim that there is no data on Santa Fe (which hardly supports voting against the issue in Albuquerque), what do you

know, here’s some data….

ABQjournal: Higher Pay Good for Santa Fe Workers,

Economy By Monsignor Jerome Martinez and City Councilor David Coss, Living Wage Advocates

Here are some key

facts:

# We have reduced poverty. According to a report just issued by the state Human Services

Department, recipients of Temporary Aid to Needy Families have fallen 9.7 percent in the last year, while in the state as a whole it has

only gone down 0.6 percent.

# We have gained jobs. According to a Sept. 22 report from the New Mexico

Department of Labor, 1,400 jobs have been added to the Santa Fe work force since the living wage came into effect. This 2.3 percent rate

of job growth is a little more than the state’s 2.1 percent job growth rate during this same period. Santa Fe’s 2.3 percent growth rate

is very high, as the state’s job growth, at 2.1 percent, ranked 12th highest in the country.

The hospitality industry in

Santa Fe did even better, adding 300 jobs, a 3.2 percent growth rate. The unemployment rate in Santa Fe in August was 3.8 percent, down

from 4.1 percent a year ago. The Santa Fe rate is much better than the state as a whole, which had 5.3 percent unemployment last month.

…

Low-wage workers often have to choose between putting food on the table or leaving their children alone and working a second

or third job.

The typical low-wage worker is not a teenager and is not new to the workforce. Forty percent

are single moms. The average age of low-wage workers is 31 years. They have been working an average of over 13 years.

class="mine">Note improvements in the hospitality industry, which depends a lot on low-wage workers.

No one can be surprised the

Journal comes out against the measure. Their support of public campaign financing does stun me, though.

ABQjournal: Recommendations On Ballot Propositions

Living Wage, No: Albuquerque should avoid being at

the bleeding edge of economic actions more appropriately taken by federal or state government. And voters should be wary of a clause

inside the Trojan Horse measure that sacks employers’ right to control access to their work place.

Public

Campaign Finance, Yes: The municipal campaign trail is being repaved in gold every four years. … The price tag: one-tenth of 1

percent of the city’s operational budget.

Ripping up the golden campaign trail may have unintended and unfortunate

consequences, just like McCain-Feingold got hijacked by the independent “527” committees. But restraining political inflation is

worth a try.

“Worth a try.” Wow, the Journal backs an experiment and its attendant risks. Surely

the same argument supports raising the Minimum Wage and tweaking it as we see its impact. mjh

ABQjournal: Guest Columns [mjh: in some strange lottery-

fashion, various pages at the Journal are free now and then — as the pro-ordinance article quoted above is today.]

My thoughts on the

Living Wage vote are seriously provoked by a letter to the editor by a local restaurant owner. I feel for her as she explains how much

she has put into her business which she feels is threatened by paying people a decent wage.

I understand her point about tipped

employees doing well, as they can at an expensive or popular place. Still, even tipped employees have a minimum wage and fewer benefits

than regular employees. It’s always struck me as odd that restaurants don’t have to pay their employees because they count on the

customers to do so.

Harris writes of her 17 employees, but how many currently make minimum wage? Not all 17, I am quite sure.

But it is at the end of her letter that I think she blows it by using Chicken Little language. Entrepreneurs cannot avoid

risk.

ABQjournal: Letters to the

Editor
Should the proposed living wage law be passed, we will be forced to make reductions in staff, either to exempt ourselves

from its terms or to avoid closing altogether. If you are happily picturing your “yes” vote to be creating a higher wage for certain

starting workers, stop a moment to realize you are also inevitably leaving a lot of very skilled,

deserving workers with no wage at all.
SHEILA SCOTT HARRIS
Perennials Restaurant, Albuquerque

Heartfelt. “Inevitably” (no one seems to know what the impact will be); “a lot”; “no wage at all” (wow —

anyone familiar with the restaurant business knows servers land on their feet — not that I want any of them to have to). mjh

PS: It’s not terribly relevant, but Ms Harris is the mother of Neil Patrick Harris, formerly TV’s Doogie

Houser.

Got a mailing from “www.stopthedeception.org,” which, like the Clear Skies Initiative, the Healthy

Forest Act and the USA Patriot Act, effects the opposite of its name

Promoting deception, this postcard says the “so-called

‘living wage’ is only bait.” The deceivers note the “ordinance is 10 pages long and includes a clause you don’t know about.” If there

is only one troublesome clause, how relevant is it that the ordinance is 10 pages long?

Of course, we know about that clause,

which was introduced after it became clear that unscrupulous businesses in Santa Fe would do whatever they could to keep their employees

from knowing their rights.

The fearful flyer claims the clause would allow:

• Complete

strangers to enter your child’s school. [mjh: ie, child molesters]
• Special interest groups to invade your

privacy in doctor’s offices or hospitals.
• Protesters and organizers to invade private property, badger

customers and bring business to a complete standstill.

Nothing should cost us our constitutional rights, because

our liberties are priceless.

What’s priceless is how many scoundrels

wrap themselves in the flag. Nothing like turning this into a constitutional issue. Clever to frighten even those who might

benefit from the increase with such nonsense. mjh

PS: a quick Google

Search shows I’m a bit late to the party on the “Coalition to Exhort Ballot Deception”, as SWOP

calls it.

Continue reading Deception Is All They’ve Got →

A week ago, Vern Raburn, CEO of Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, expressed

his opinion about the upcoming vote on raising the minimum wage in Albuquerque (assuming he wrote it and it wasn’t written by the

Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove). I responded to his gall at taking public money and opposing the public good. Jon Knudsen put it best:

“Ingrate” would seem like an appropriate term.

A couple of days later, Raburn’s opinion piece was front page news. After

all, the Journal pronounces him the “arguably the state’s most visible entrepreneur” — well, yes, “most visible” now that he’s on the

front page. To Andrew Webb’s and the Journal’s credit, the story does eventually get around to the he-said-she-said of modern

journalism, but the real message, as it so often is, is in the headline: “Bad for Business.” Mission Accomplished.

Today, the

Journal offers some balance by having an employer speak in favor of the change (excerpt below).

When you go to vote, remember what

Martin Luther

King said almost 40 years ago:

MARTIN LUTHER KING: “All labor has dignity. [Y]ou are reminding … the

nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

ABQjournal: CEO: Minimum Wage Bill Access Clause Bad for Business

Thursday, September 22, 2005, By Andrew Webb, Journal Staff Writer

Eclipse Aviation CEO Vern Raburn says he would have

bypassed Albuquerque if a proposed wage ordinance with its controversial public access provision had been on the city’s books

when he was looking to relocate his company in 2000….

Raburn has joined other business leaders calling for defeat of the

ordinance, which will raise the minimum wage and, they say, force employers to allow access to activists. …

Supporters

maintain that critics, among them a Chamber of Commerce-led initiative, are using the access clause to distract attention from their real

concern— that businesses face having to pay higher wages.

They contend opponents are exaggerating the effect of the access

wording. …

The sentence at issue is:

“Every employer shall allow any member of the public access to non-

work areas of the employer’s business that are otherwise open to the public or customers generally, such as parking lots,

sidewalks, and pedestrian areas, to inform employees of their rights under this ordinance and other laws.” …

Henderson

said the access clause was added to Albuquerque’s proposal because some businesses in Santa Fe had attempted to skirt that

city’s minimum wage law
.
“We wanted to see something that would help hold businesses accountable to the

law,” he said. …

Opponents, he said, “are not only making lies about how this ordinance could be used, but

they’re ignoring the fact that 40,000 hard working people in Albuquerque are in desperate need of a raise.”

Please re-read that clause about access. In NO WAY does it allow the disruption opponents are using as a sham

to defeat the ordinance. Further, supporters and councilors have offered to be more explicit in its restrictions.

If Raburn

genuinely believes that clause exposes his company to invasion, than he isn’t very smart. More likely, he opposes any interference in

his business. Not the attitude you want in a guy who wants to fill the air with small jets. peace, mjh

ABQjournal: Value Work by Paying Workers a Living

Wage By Mike Chandler, President, Valley Gases

My lowest-paid, employee is paid $10.50 an hour. My decision to pay well

above the federal minimum wage — and above the $7.50 that will be Albuquerque’s minimum wage if voters approve it Oct. 4 — is both a

personal choice and a business decision.

My employees need to be able to support their families on the wages they earn

— and I know they cannot at the current minimum wage.

Continue reading Support A Living Wage →

Here’s an update

to that neighborhood street corner that had up to a dozen political signs — they’re all gone. Yup. I assume a city crew did the right

thing. Thanks! mjh

mjh’s blog — Yard Signs Belong in Yards