labor Low Wage Workers Turning to Voters for Pay Raises

When organizing drives prove unsuccessful, some groups of low-wage workers are using ballot initiatives to take their case to the voters. And they've been winning.

Wesley Lowery Los Angeles Times
Printer friendly  

For decades, Long Beach hotel workers fought for better wages.

But their efforts to start unions mostly fizzled. So last year, union backers tried something new: a ballot measure.

Voters swiftly gave them what years of picket lines and union-card drives had failed to secure — a $13-per-hour minimum wage for hundreds of Long Beach hotel workers.

A similar shift happened in San Jose, where voters in November awarded workers a higher minimum wage not just in hotels, but citywide. The victories put these two California cities on the cusp of an emerging trend: Ballot initiatives, labor experts say, have the potential to rewrite labor's playbook for how to win concessions from management.

Long Beach and San Jose join a list of cities nationwide where voters, not unions, have won workers higher wages, demonstrating the power of this new labor tactic.

The trend has built slowly. Frustrated in their efforts to fight corporations for better pay and working conditions, labor unions began turning to city councils in the 1990s to pass so-called living-wage requirements.

The efforts were small at first, usually affecting only workers employed by government contractors. But as time wore on, scores of such measures passed, eventually totaling more than 140 nationwide. As the victories mounted, proponents have grown more ambitious.

In recent years, labor activists have begun bypassing city councils altogether and taking their push for higher pay directly to voters who, polls show, often view wage increases favorably.

Nationwide, the strategy is by no means a slam-dunk — ballot campaigns are pricey and, due to ballot requirements, nearly impossible to win in some states — but in California, where a well-organized signature drive can land almost anything on the ballot, it has almost always been victorious.

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

Some of the more recent ballot campaigns have been aimed at particular industries or business sectors, such as tourism.

But a few, especially far-reaching wage measures, have been crafted to apply to jobs of every kind and are imposed citywide. Five of these have been passed nationally, three through popular vote, resulting in minimum wages higher than federal requirements for whole cities. San Jose's measure was the most recent and passed with more than 59% of the vote. Every low-wage worker in San Jose stands to benefit from the city's new $10 minimum wage, and every business must comply, no exceptions.

Continue reading full article here.