CA: Panel split over wage boost (considering recommendation to raise it to $9.78 an hour)

Sac Bee ^ | 8/5/06 | Judy Lin

[NormsRevenge]

A state wage board deadlocked Friday on a recommendation to raise California's minimum wage to $9.78 per hour.

The Wage Board, a 13-member body charged with determining an adequate wage to meet the high cost of living in California, also deadlocked on whether to bind wage increases to inflation.

"As a member, I feel we have failed in our charge," said Angie Wei, legislative director for the California Labor Federation who proposed the $9.78 hourly rate -- a $3.03 increase from the current state minimum wage of $6.75 an hour. The Wage Board was set up by the state's Industrial Welfare Commission to make recommendations on whether to increase the minimum wage.

But the board -- which consists of six members representing employers, six representing workers, and one nonvoting chairman -- deadlocked on every question. The results of Friday's daylong meeting will be reported to the Welfare Commission on Aug. 24.

Using a four-decade-old formula adjusted for inflation, Wei suggested a single woman needs $9.78 per hour to sustain herself. The hypothetical formula, known as "Minnie's budget," was put forth by labor representatives in 1961 to help determine what the minimum hourly wage should be. Then it was $1.37.

[NormsRevenge]

The Wage Board was set up by the state's Industrial Welfare Commission to make recommendations on whether to increase the minimum wage.

--

The Industrial Welfare Commission was for all intents and purposes dormant, it was brought back to life by the GUbinor not so long ago.

California commissions and boards come and go like the waves and quakes..

but they don't blow up.

[MikeA]

Sure, let's tank the California economy. And we're not all paying too much for everything from gas, to food to electricity now. Let's inflate the price of things even more. This state has become unlivable. 2008 and I'm out.

[mtbopfuyn]

Heck, just make min. wage $50 and put everyone out of business. Every time min. wage goes up, our savings we worked hard for drops and we on salaried jobs still don't get a raise. What, CA is just trying to make a head of lettuce cost $3 any way it can?

[Bogtrotter52]

So now pimply faced slackers are going to have to be paid $9.78 to serve you your Big Mac in a surly manner? Glad I do not live in CA.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

A classic case of A and B arguing over what they're going to force C to do for D.

[calcowgirl]

[paul51]

I don't know why they just don't make it $100 / hr.? That way everyone in the state will be well to do and can afford the homes and life will be wonderful.

[Mike Darancette]

So now pimply faced slackers are going to have to be paid $9.78 to serve you your Big Mac in a surly manner? Glad I do not live in CA.

No, third world incomprehensible non English speakers will have to be paid $9.78 to serve you the wrong order in a surly manner.

[calcowgirl]

http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=19157

State Board Hears Testimony Over Possible Minimum Wage Hike
Jason Kobely

8/4/2006

A state committee began hearings Friday over the possibility of raising California's minimum wage.

A publicly-appointed committee selected by the Industrial Welfare Commission took up the issue Friday, two months after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tasked the commission with looking into a potential increase in California's minimum wage from $6.75 an hour to $7.75.

The 12-member Wage Board heard testimony from workers, employers and others over the controversial wage hike plan.

In June, Schwarzenegger convened the panel and filled the commission with four Democrats after the Legislature passed a minimum wage bill he opposed. That bill would raise the minimum wage by a dollar over two years and include cost of living adjustments. The governor supports boosting the minimum wage, but without adjustments for inflation.

The board is equally split between employer representatives opposing a wage increase and representatives of labor organizations endorsing the increase. The body made no specific recommendations Friday, but have 45 days to compile a report on the issue for the IWC.

The five-member IWC will then decide whether a minimum wage increase should go into effect. If the IWC recommends an increase by October 31, the change would go into effect January 1.

[Amerigomag]

California commissions and boards come and go like the waves and quakes..

A curious arrangement.

In mid May the Austrian fires up a dormant Commission (IWC) and asks for a favor but doesn't offer to fund their activities.

The IWC, ostensibly, out of their own pockets, gins up a twelve member Wage Board, also without pay, and those same public minded souls meet and deadlock in early August.

Note that the nomination form for the Wage Board isn't linked on the IWC web site any longer and can't be found on the Department of Industrial Relations website, contrary to the IWC's referral .

So who is now, suddenly, sitting on the twelve member Wage Board. Who nominated them and who appointed them.

A mystery indeed.

[upchuck]

Can we puh-lease settle on a nice round number... say $100/hour and have done with this?

IMHO, Neal Boortz nailed this one big time:

MINIMUM WAGE BILL FAILS

Bad news for all of you non-achievers stupid enough to try  to raise a family on $5.15 an hour...there will be no increase in the minimum wage, at least for now.  The Senate bill that would have raised the minimum wage $2.10 over three years failed by four votes.  Oh well...such is life.  The bill was tied to a cut in the estate tax, which is why so many Republicans were for it. 

But the bill should have failed.  Republicans who caved in on the minimum wage just to get the tax cuts through are guilty of lacking principles.  This includes the president.  They know that every time the minimum wage is raised, it kills jobs.  They know that it is not the role of the federal government to set wages.  But yet, in a foolish attempt to get what they want on one issue, they cash in their principles on another.

What's more .. they also know that there is absolutely no clause anywhere in the Constitution which gives the federal government the authority to step into the middle of wage negotiations between an employee and an employer.  The federal government derives its powers from specific clauses in our Constitution.  If the Constitution doesn't grant the power, the power doesn't exist. 

So .. the Republicans decide they'll go with bad policy to get something they want passed.  Every time Republicans do this, it leads to disaster.  The theory seems to be that if they compromise with the Democrats, they'll get what they want.  But all you have to do is look at George W. Bush's approval rating to know that it didn't help that he worked with Ted Kennedy on 'No Child Left Behind.'  Oh and boy...weren't people impressed with that new prescription drug benefit for Medicare?  That did all sorts of good!  Remember when Bush Senior worked with Democrats on the 1990 budget deal raising taxes?  It got him bounced from office.

As for the Democrats, they just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a bill that would raise the minimum wage, since it meant cutting the death tax.  Everyone should know that the more you achieve in our society, the more you should be punished.  Confiscation of assets by the feds sounds so good to those steeped in class envy.

[calcowgirl]

Here's the nomination form via google cache (not much there):

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:fbEMoVYF4PkJ:https://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/Wageboardnomination.pdf

[Hebrews 11:6]

Another example of incredibly atrocious reporting. How can a reporter tell us a 13-member board deadlocks without attempting to explain how an odd-numbered body can't decide? Was someone absent or abstaining? Is some kind of supermajority required? We'll never know.

[newzjunkey]

Can we reduce politician's pay to minimum wage? That's more than they're worth.

[calcowgirl]

I read a little more about the board. There are six "employer representatives" and six "employee representatives" and one "non-voting chairperson," hence the deadlock. The IWC, to which they reported, is made up of a bunch of union democrats appointed in June.

There charge/task was to determine if the minimum wage was "adequate to supply the cost of proper living." They might as well adopt the "living wage" language at this rate.

http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/FindingsAndBdCharge.doc

Charge to the 2006 Minimum Wage Board re Minimum Wage

The IWC charges you to consider all material provided to you for review, and, after your review, to report to the IWC your recommendations on the following matters, consistent with the basic statutory responsibility to ensure that the minimum wage is adequate to supply the cost of proper living:

1. The adequacy of the current minimum wage of $6.75 per hour and whether the state minimum wage should be increased.

2. If you determine that the minimum wage should be increased, you should make recommendations as to:

(a) How much the minimum wage should increase;

(b) The timing of such an increase (ie. will the increase occur at one time or be phased in over a period of time); and

(c) Whether the minimum wage should be indexed.

3. If you determine that the minimum wage should be increased, you should make recommendations as to the adequacy of the amount which may be credited against the minimum wage for meals and lodging in Section 10 of IWC wage orders 1 through 15 and Section 9 of IWC wage order 16.

In investigating this matter and making recommendations to the IWC, you may consider, but are not bound by, the IWC’s traditional determination to raise these credits by the percentage increase in the state minimum wage.

The information provided by the IWC will include transcripts of testimony and other documents previously presented to the IWC. The IWC requests that the wage board review these materials prior to the date of its first meeting.

[calcowgirl]

Wage Board Members:

http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/WageBdMembers07052006.doc

Employer Representative      Affiliation
Julianne Broyles             California Chamber of Commerce
Acie Davis                   Davis & Adams Construction
Kevin Dayton                 Assoc. Builders & Contractors of CA
Lara Diaz Dunbar             California Restaurant Association
James O. Abrams              California Hotel & Lodging Assoc.
Heidi DeJong Barsuglia       California Retailers Association
Gary Monahan (alt.)          Skosh Monahan’s Steakhouse & Irish Pub;
                               Costa Mesa City Council Member
Thomas J. Martin (alt.)      People Management Professionals

Employee Representative      Affiliation
Jovan G. Agee                UDWA/AFSCME
Barry Broad                  Calif. Teamsters Public Affairs Council
Angie Wei                    Calif. Labor Federation AFL-CIO
Chris Jones                  California ACORN
Josefa Mercado               SEIU Local 1877
Mark S. Schacht              Calif. Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
Lee Sandahl (alt.)           Int’l Longshore & Warehouse Union
Allan D. Clark (alt.)        Calif. School Employees Association

Non-Voting Representative    Affiliation
Paul M. Cohen                 Northern CA Carpenters Regional Council;
                                San Rafael City Council Member

[calcowgirl]

You can access some of the transcripts for the IWC meetings (not the Wage Board) from this link:

http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/Transcripts.htm

Apparently much of the IWC's selection process for the Wage Board was done in private discussions before the July meeting as there was simply a motion and unanimous vote to accept those listed above. Application forms for the board were available to all attendees at the first public meeting on June 2 and had to be turned in by June 23. By the July 5th meeting, they'd already chosen their candidates. I've never seen government act so quick. The following is from the transcript of the July meeting:

CHAIRPERSON CURTIN: ... And again, I -- the key element here is that we are under fairly rigorous time constraints, I mean, both by statutory requirements that we have to hold the hearings under the proper time constraints, and to get the increase in place by January 1, we have to have a decision sometime this year.

So to -- to sort of push the process back to try to determine whether we have the authority to do indexing or not may push the whole process back so that we're not timely for a wage increase if we decide to do that by January 1.

They obviously have their marching orders.

Here's from the tearjerker testimony:

(Ms. Mercado's statement is in Spanish and interpreted by Mr. Gaitan.)

MS. MERCADO (through interpreter): My name is Josefa Mercado. I work as a janitor. I'm a member of 1877. I've been working for about 33 years as a janitor.

And we're here to ask that the wages go up at least connected to the cost of living because everything is going up. And it's worse now than when I started working as a janitor and the minimum wage was four dollars and something. And everything is even -- even more expensive related to what they are now. So we -- we need your help to get up -- at least up to the cost of living. Because workers have families and children and need to pay to take care of their kids and the cost of sending -- for food, for sending them to school.

And I know what that is because I have six children, and I had to go through the -- the expenses of raising them and taking care of them, and I know what those costs are.

And that's -- that's why we're asking for your help to raise -- to keep up with the cost of living. Because gas and food and everything is going up, and we can't -- we can't afford it.

And I'm the only income in the house. I'm alone, my husband doesn't work, and we can barely make it. There's very little that he gets from Social Security to be able to work. That's why I have to keep working. And that's why I'm here to ask that you raise the wage up to the cost of living. It's very important.

Thank you.

[tubebender]

So...what is Mr Mercado making a hour and why hasn't he learned english in the 33 years he has been here???

[Hebrews 11:6]

Thanks for the clarification: six-to-six. It's a board designed to be deadlocked. It worked!

[MikeA]

And trust me, you have no idea how bad the retail help is here in the area where I live. It's not worth 90 cents an hour, much less 9 bucks