CA: Governor looks at plan to raise minimum wage (revives dormant commission, fills it w/dems)

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger revived a commission he once considered part of the wasteful bureaucracy yesterday to push his own plan to raise the minimum wage and circumvent the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger appointed four new members to the Industrial Welfare Commission, which met yesterday to consider his petition to raise the minimum wage by $1 an hour, but without the automatic increases that Democratic lawmakers want.

For the past two years, the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled Legislature have battled to a standstill over the issue. The Legislature has twice sent Schwarzenegger bills to raise the current $6.75 hourly minimum wage to $7.75 an hour and to include a cost-of-living index that would trigger automatic increases.

Schwarzenegger vetoed those bills. Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger said he wanted a raise without indexing.

But this week the Senate and the Assembly passed minimum wage bills that included indexing.

Schwarzenegger, at a news conference Thursday, said that low wage workers deserve a boost but that he disliked automatic increases.

“Those spending formulas have been terrible for our state, and why would we take something that almost bankrupted the state and say, now we're going to punish the private sector and we're going to have them do it, too,” he said. “It's a failed system.”

Labor officials and workers say the price of everything goes up, but without regular increases in the minimum wage, those at the bottom of the wage scale fall further behind. In addition, they point out that California has some of the highest living costs in the nation.

“I have to choose between paying for car registration, paying for medicine and paying for food. It's not enough,” said Favien Fields, who works at a school in Fresno.

The commission, which met in Sacramento, took testimony from a variety of groups and individuals. They plan several hearings before making the decision later this year.

Representatives of the California Chamber of Commerce, hotel owners, farmers and restaurant owners said that raising the minimum wage – especially indexing it automatically each year – could hurt their businesses.

“We simply can't pass those costs along,” said Roy Gabriel, a representative of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “We compete with other states and other countries.”

The commission funding was cut off by the Legislature in 2004. It was targeted as one of the wasteful bureaucracies that Schwarzenegger sought to eliminate in his California Performance Review.

The review was intended to implement Schwarzenegger's vow to “blow up the boxes” of government and replace it with a leaner, more effective government.

“He said 'You're an inefficient commission. We don't need you anymore. We're going to defund you,' ” said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation.

“But this is an election year and the governor doesn't feel like he can veto another minimum wage bill so he's set up a fake commission.”

Schwarzenegger's spokesman, Darrell Ng, said, however, that the five-member Industrial Welfare Commission has traditionally been the body that considers and adopts minimum wage increases. The five-member commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, includes representatives from business, labor and the public.

CA: Governor names new members to commission considering minimum wage hike (four Democrats)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642406/posts

ap on Riverside Press Enterprise ^ | 6/2/06 | Don Thompson - ap

Posted on 06/02/2006 11:13:53 AM PDT by NormsRevenge

SACRAMENTO

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger filled a dormant state commission with four Democrats on Friday before asking them to approve a $1-an-hour minimum wage increase without the annual cost-of-living adjustments pushed by Democratic lawmakers.

Two of the four were originally appointed to the Industrial Welfare Commission by former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and served until their terms expired last year.

From www.capoliticalnews.com (Steve Frank)
POLITICAL TIDBITS APRIL 26, 2006

BIG POLITICAL TIDBIT OF THE DAY

The winner today is Senator Abel Maldonado! Congratulations!

He is still the only GOP member of the legislature to support an increase in the minimum wage. He can't get it passed, even by the Democrat legislature.

Last year the Governor and every GOP member of the legislature, including Senator Maldonado, after the report of the California Performance Review Commission was made public, came out in favor of "blowing up the boxes" and killing, merging, ending duplicate agencies and commissions.

The Industrial Welfare Commission has been disbanded---good news!

So what is Abel to do?

He wants to resurrect the Industrial Welfare Commission for the purpose of raising the minimum wage--without a vote of any elected official. He wants the policy, without the responsibility of voting for it. He would be able to say, "I never voted for this minimum wage increase". Does he think Californians are blind to what he is doing?

But, there are two other points to be made:

1. The IWC would have the right to raise the minimum wage on all private businesses in California. But, it does not have the right, without a change in the Constitution of California, to raise the minimum wage on any government agency. In other words, he wants to raise the cost of doing business in California, while government gets to keep the ability of paying a lower minimum wage. Double standard? Sounds like Abel.
2. Agro-Jal Farms,the firm owned by the Maldonado family, and which Abel went to court to prove he was its Controller, was charged by its workers in 1999 to be paying under minimum wage to its employees.
From a May 29, 1999 Santa Barbara News-Press story about a work stoppage on Abel's farm:
"It's his fault because he won't pay us one quarter more," said a young woman employee of Agro-Jal who asked not to be identified.
"Now, with fewer berries on the plants, the woman said, the most she can hope to pick is 18 trays a day. At $1.75 each, that comes to less than the minimum wage. A tray contains 12 of the small green plastic boxes sold at supermarkets."
"What we're asking for is not much," the woman said. "Maldonado paid us $2 per tray last year -- why can't he pay us the same this year? If he were paying us well, we wouldn't be on strike."

I should note that Senator Abel Maldonado is the only elected GOP'er in the legislature that supports the creation (actually re-creation) of a government agency and the raise in the minimum wage. Also, he may be the only member of the legislature whose workers charged he was (don't know his pay scale now) paying under minimum wage. And, he wants to be the Republican nominee for State Controller!!

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