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The higher pay level will apply to workers at inns near the airport. An appeal is promised. The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Wednesday to an ordinance that will for the first time extend the city's "living wage" requirement of $10.64 an hour to workers at a dozen hotels on the Century Boulevard corridor near LAX — the first time the protection has been applied to businesses that do not contract directly with the city. LA Times requires excerption.

Living Wage vs. Minimum Wage (November 1, 2006): “With all of the debate recently over raising the minimum wage, more needs to be said about requiring employers to pay a ‘living wage.’ … A living wage is considered to be a rate of pay for a 40-hour week that allows the wage earner to afford ‘housing, food, utilities, transport, health care and a certain amount of recreation.’"

The City Council deciding how much LAX-area hotel workers should be paid? Welcome to Los Angeles. February 1, 2007 LET'S TEST YOUR knowledge of how Los Angeles works. Here's the problem: Employees of a dozen or so hotels near Los Angeles International Airport want to be paid more. The hotels, however, don't want to pay their workers more. Normally this would be for the workers and the hotels to work out. But this is L.A., remember. So the City Council, at the behest of organized labor, extended its "living wage" law — which applied to employees of companies with city...

Setting up what could be a costly battle with the business community, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed a measure Monday extending Los Angeles' living-wage law to firms with no direct ties to city contracts. Flanked by more than three dozen workers from hotels along the Century Boulevard corridor leading to LAX, Villaraigosa told a City Hall news conference he hopes business leaders will reconsider their plan to launch a referendum challenging the law. "These hotels are doing quite well because of the airport and what we have done to promote tourism," Villaraigosa said. "I would hope we can continue to work...

Issues promise hubbub with protesters, proponents, prayer vigil Memphis City Hall could logjam this afternoon when dozens of annexation protesters are expected to converge with dozens of living wage supporters. Council members are scheduled to take a final vote today on whether to annex a 6.3-square-mile section of Southeast Shelby County as well as a 2.7-square-mile area between Interstate 40 and Shelby Farms known as Bridgewater. Roughly 36,000 people live in the combined area. "Our objective is to fill the (council) chambers," said Rufus Washington, president of the Southeast Shelby County Coalition that is leading protest efforts for the southeast...

When the first living wage was implemented in Baltimore in 1994, many people believed it to be a necessary and drastic increase of the minimum wage. While the existing minimum wage was set in place to prevent companies from abusing their workers with excessively low wages, the living wage was a minimum wage increase intended to help those working at minimum wage jobs earn enough income to provide for basic household needs. Supporters of the policy undoubtedly think the living wage helps out their fellow citizens, but unfortunately fail to realize the unintended economic destruction that would ensue if the...

With the "big box'' ordinance defeated, Wal-Mart is targeting the South Side as the home for its newest stores in the city, city officials confirmed Saturday. The retailer has met with city planning officials, several aldermen and community groups on the South Side and could propose new Supercenters soon, said officials. A published report claims the Arkansas-based company has gone as far as to present the city with a list of five potential sites for its new stores: 47th and State; 63rd and Halsted; 63rd and State; 83rd and Stewart, and 111th near the Bishop Ford Freeway. The City Council...

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley intends to use the first veto of his 17-year tenure to reject a living-wage ordinance aimed at forcing big-box retailers to pay wages of $10 an hour and health benefits equivalent to $3 an hour by 2010. Mr. Daley needs to convince only two aldermen to reverse course on the ordinance to ensure the veto isn't overridden. The aldermen voted 35-14 on July 26 to pass the ordinance. "I understand and share a desire to ensure that everyone who works in the city of Chicago earns a decent wage," the mayor wrote to the aldermen...

Praise, when warranted, should be given out as liberally as criticism. The Memphis City Council deserves a hearty handshake for being a leader statewide on the living wage issue. As early as this month, the council could decide to require companies that receive tax breaks or do business with the city to pay their employees a living wage, defined as $10.21 an hour with benefits or $12.56 without. A yea vote would make the council the first elected body in the state to do so. On Tuesday, a council committee will discuss instituting a living wage for the city's part-time...

Considering part-timers, workers at companies getting tax breaks. The Memphis City Council is exploring whether to force companies that do business with the city to pay their employees a "living wage." A living wage, which has become a national issue, is considered to be $10 an hour with benefits and $12 without. The council previously approved living wages for all full-time city employees that became effective July 1. Under that provision, about 200 city workers received pay increases, including some who had been paid the current minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Now council members are looking into whether they...

• Bill of rights Several Montgomery County Council candidates last week rallied behind a "bill of rights" proposal that would create a living wage for immigrant and illegal alien domestic workers in the county. Democratic contenders Duchy Trachtenberg, Cary Lamari and Valerie Ervin were among the candidates who attended a press conference Tuesday to present a George Washington University study on the abuses of domestic workers -- nannies and housekeepers who are the female equivalent of predominantly male day laborers.

Chicago aldermen bucked Mayor Daley on Wednesday, voting by a remarkable veto-proof majority to require big-box retailers to pay their workers at least $13 an hour in wages and benefits by 2010. Wal-Mart and other big stores had warned they would seriously reconsider plans to expand or locate in Chicago -- a threat the majority of aldermen didn't take seriously. For Chicago's sake and that of the city's unemployed poor, they'd better be right. The proposal applies to any stores with more than 90,000 square feet of space that are owned by companies that have at least $1 billion in...

Defying Mayor Daley and challenging Wal-Mart and Target to follow through on their threats, a bitterly divided City Council voted Wednesday to require Chicago's big-box retailers to pay employees a "living wage" of at least $10 an hour and $3 in benefits by 2010. The 35-14, veto-proof vote is an overwhelming victory for organized labor and the latest in a string of legislative defeats for a corruption-weakened Daley. "They're afraid of candidates running against them. That's what it is. That was the real issue," Daley said, denying that the vote was a sign of his diminishing grip on a Council...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Seventeen student protesters were arrested Saturday at the University of Virginia on the fourth day of a sit-in seeking raises for the school's lowest paid workers. The protesters are calling for a "living wage" of $10.72 an hour for 800 to 1,000 workers at the school. Last month, the university raised its minimum wage by 49 cents to $9.37 an hour. The students were taken into custody without incident and were transported to the city jail to be booked on trespassing charges, activist Amy Kniss said. University President John T. Casteen III met with the protesters...

Seventeen University of Virginia students staging a sit-in at the school’s administrative headquarters were arrested Saturday evening on day four of a standoff between students and administrators squabbling over giving all UVa employees a “living wage” of $10.72 an hour. Many of the handcuffed students were carried out of Madison Hall into waiting paddy wagons at 7 p.m. At least one of the students was screaming, and many were crying, according to witnesses. The student protesters had been squatting in the building to force the university into increasing its lowest pay rate, which currently stands at $9.37 per hour. President...

MANCHESTER -- Mayors of two Connecticut cities that have "living wage" ordinances, which require businesses contracting with municipalities to guarantee certain pay levels to workers, say the predictions of doomsayers have not occurred and life for those at the lower end of the economic scale has gotten better. New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said he was skeptical when talk of the ordinance first came to his city in the mid-1990s, but in the years since it passed in 1997, the city has not lost businesses and workers are getting more money to live on. Mayor Eddie M. Perez's view...

Nassau County Lawmakers Weigh in on Living Wage Legislation (12/05/05) MINEOLA - Nassau County lawmakers are weighing in on whether the county can afford a new law that requires certain agencies and companies to pay their employees a living wage. The proposed legislation calls for agencies that contract with the county to pay their employees at least $9.50 an hour starting in 2007 and $12.50 an hour by 2010. An independent budget review says that would cost the county $1.5 million in the first year and up to $7 million when fully implemented. The state panel monitoring Nassau's finances is...

We have all heard about sweatshops that pay poverty wages and subject workers to inhumane conditions. We worry that the clothing from our favorite store has been sewn by teenagers locked in factories in China or that the Sulawesi coffee at our local roaster has been picked by workers earning pennies a day. But we really don't need to look so far to see this pattern play out. It happens right here in Madison - one need look no farther than the commercial cleaning industry. It used to be that janitors worked directly for the companies or owners where they...

ALBUQUERQUE -- Mayor Chavez has been re-elected as Mayor of Albuquerque with 47% of the vote, avoiding a run-off election. KRQE News 13 has called the Living Wage issue as having failed with 50.88% against and 3 precincts remaining.

Petitions push city for hourly minimum pay By Magen Howard July 24, 2005 Have your pen ready -- Memphis's living wage campaigners might be asking for your signature. Groups are going door to door about twice a month this summer to gather at least 3,000 signatures supporting a living wage ordinance. They will be submitted to the City Council in the fall. "Paycheck to paycheck, I'm barely making ends meet," said Percy Banks Jr., a Memphis City Schools warehouse worker who volunteered this month. "The living wage bill struck my interest." Banks wants to take the information to his union...