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Talk about being torn. I don't know which side of the Living Wage debate is more pathetic.
Let's take the antis first. Crain's Cleveland Business, which very recently showed some glimmer of a clue, appears to have snuffed it out with their editorial against the Living Wage in their 10-16 January issue.
[T]he measure seems to run counter to the economic development goals of the city, which has fought mightily to compete with the 'burbs...
Oy. They contradict themselves again. Up until now their line has been that regional growth is good, and that city-vs.-suburb is just a rallying cry for those no-good, divisive politicians.
But never mind that. Minimum-wage employment is not one of the economic development goals of the city. As my neighbor Bill put it so well a year ago when reviewing the downtown plan, "Are we happy... having industries which provide jobs making beds and carrying bags for city residents?"
There are plenty of minimum-wage jobs here... so many that like everywhere else McDonald's and Wendy's are starting to up their offers. What we need now are jobs that are one or two steps up the ladder from minimum. Setting the level at 125% of poverty level is just about there.
A couple weeks later, the current Crain's featured an op-ed from Denise Fugo, president of Sammy's Restaurant. Fugo just makes up impossible scenarios, and because nobody's touting her as an economist she will probably get away with it. (I suspect but can't prove that the anti-Living Wage side, organized by the Growth Association, is doing this on purpose: fronting with small-business owners to avoid charges like this one. Disgusting if true, disingenuous even if false.)
Here's just one example. An informed observer would note that whatever bad things might hypothetically happen as a result of the Living Wage, they'd be limited to the employers actually receiving major city contracts or subsidies. Most business would be unaffected. So Fugo reaches way, way out:
First, after a living wage is on the books, it becomes temptingly easy to pass a hike here and an adjustment there when the political mood fits, or to expand the living wage mandate to cover more businesses.
Hold it right there. Denise Fugo knows darn well that it is the state of Ohio that sets minimum wages in Cleveland. The city has no jurisdiction over minimum wages, period. The big poster with wage and worker's comp standards she's required to put up in the kitchen area says STATE OF OHIO right across the top in red lettering.
Nobody with any credibility to defend would make a statement like that. The risk of Cleveland City Council imposing the Living Wage over a broader base is absolutely zero. Fugo knows that, or she should know it.
But Denise Fugo needn't worry about credibility. Sammy's has a shiny new taxpayer-paid location right within the Gateway complex. She's--how do I put this nicely?--not one of the little people. For her to complain about legislation guaranteeing a fair income for others goes a little beyond tacky.
The antis, to summarize, play so casually with the facts that it gives mendacity a bad name. All the legislation says is that any new contracts with the city are going to require that workers get paid about ten bucks an hour, except for some small organizations. It really isn't complicated. It comes down to this: do you want your tax money to pay working people a poverty-level wage?
The pro-side is actually not so bad. Principled left-wingers (and I say that in a sincerely positive way) like Steve Cagan are leading the ground troops. Say what you like about their politics, the Jobs with Justice group is clear on who they are and what they're about. They're for the Living Wage ordinance because, darn it all, it's good for working people, and they're for working people. No evasion here.
Which leads me to ask why on earth they asked a flatlined hippie like Jay2000 to sponsor this legislation in Council. Good grief. Joining with Westbrook is a virtual guarantee of moral equivocation, hedging, and failure. As Council President the guy came up with utterly nothing for working people for ten years. Job guarantees on subsidized building projects? Nope. Organized labor at the ballpark? Uh-huh, they had to do it themselves. Shifting the tax burden off wages? Didn't happen, wasn't even discussed.
Westbrook didn't get behind the Living Wage until after being deposed from Council leadership. [correction: Groundwork for this initiative was actually done by Westbrook during the previous few months, and the ordinance itself had been scheduled for introduction the same day Polensek defeated Westbrook for the Presidency.] It's not that new an idea; in past years Los Angeles, Dade County, Cambridge, Madison, San Jose, and San Antonio, just to name a few, have all adopted some form of Living Wage legislation. It's not as though this couldn't have been proposed in 1998 or 1999.
If Jay Westbrook thinks that supporting the Living Wage now, without any leadership position or lever to power, is going to win back what he had of a progressive constituency... well, he's kidding himself. We all know who's side he was on when it counted.
By now, Council's erstwhile supporters of the Living Wage are running away faster than cats at a water balloon fight. Money talks, see, but Steve Cagan's people don't have much of a PAC budget. There's little danger now of accidentally resuscitating Jay2000's gasping career, and the Living Wage is the right thing for the city to do.
The city should not be encouraging companies to come sniffing around for free money in its various kinds of packaging. But as a means of harm reduction, those companies should at least give back a little bit in the form of good wages for their city workers. It's not unreasonable for Cleveland taxpayers to use legislation to make this moral sentiment a reality.
Support the Living Wage. It's about time we get a modest payback from our ongoing one-sided investment in other people's businesses.
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