Posted on 11/04/2003 2:31:34 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Voters here must decide whether employers should have to pay their workers a minimum wage that mirrors the cost of living in one of the nation's most expensive cities. Proposition L, one of 14 measures on the city ballot Tuesday, would impose an $8.50-per-hour minimum wage on all employers in the city, not just those awarded municipal contracts. The state's hourly minimum wage is $6.75, and the minimum required under federal law is $5.15. The initiative's backers, who include advocates for the poor, labor unions and San Francisco's elected supervisors, maintain that a city-specific pay mandate is long overdue in a place where working parents need to earn about twice the proposed amount to meet basic expenses. "A full-time worker making $8.50 an hour makes less than $17,000 a year, and people say that seems like a lot. A lot to who?" asked Beth Shulman, the author of "The Betrayal of Work," a book about low-wage workers. Spearheaded by the city's restaurant industry, opponents argue the measure is ill-timed during an economic recession. They say it is also unnecessary because it would primarily benefit food servers who earn well above the minimum wage when tips are included. "There is not a cushion to absorb a minimum wage increase, especially a 26 percent increase that is going to some of our most highly paid employees," said Patricia Breslin, president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. If it passes as expected, San Francisco would be the first California city and only the third in the nation to set its own minimum wage. Washington, D.C., guarantees its workers $1 more than the federal minimum, which Congress last raised in 1997. Earlier this year in New Mexico, the Santa Fe City Council set a local minimum wage of $8.50 for all businesses with at least 25 employees. San Francisco's measure is a little more ambitious because it doesn't exempt small businesses from the mandate. The new wage would take effect in three months for for-profit businesses, but would be phased in over two years for nonprofit organizations and firms with fewer than 10 employees. City contractors already are required to pay their employees an hourly "living wage" of $9 for nonprofits and $10.25 for for-profit companies.
Too bad.
They should lower the minimum wage so employers can add workers.
You can't get a better job if you don't have a job in the first place.......duh.
Is that former proud Canadian or
formerly proud Canadian?
If it is legal to do this, why stop at $8.50?
Why not $85.00? Everybody wins!
I'm serious. Why not higher?
Or perhaps it can become a province of The Peoples Republic of China.
Criminy, I almost moved there 10 years ago and then $1000 a month would get me a one bedroom in the ghetto. I went into Safeway and saw that orange juice was about $5 for a half gallon and that homeless people were all around in packs of 10 or more.
Id din't want to join the ranks so I hopped in the SUV and left. Smartest thing I ever did.
Amendment V
"...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
This measure is blatantly and unambiguously unconstitutional unless there is a mechanism in the measure to compensate private property owners.
Beware, the law of unintended consequences. I, as most of my FReeper brethern, can see it all now,but the shortsighted lefties see nothing except the "worker's paradise".
I've seen Frisco and I don't need to go back. I got propositioned by a man, called a a$$hole by a woman (simply for being from Texas) and saw a guy defacating in a garbage can in broad day light. That was all in one day. No thanks, I'll take good old "fly over" country any day.
Well, yes and no.
Actual citizens will likely get laid off. They will probably be replaced by illegal aliens who know enough to keep their mouths shut and take whatever they can get under the table, without records or taxes.
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