Friends, Colleagues and Students: Good news, and good potential news, on the union front:
Maryland has passed the nation's first statewide living wage law -- it requires employers doing business with the state government to pay workers $11.30/hour in the Baltimore/Washington area and less in other parts of the state. Baltimore was the first city in the country to pass a local living wage law (1994) and the idea spread quickly. More than 100 cities now have such laws. Let's hope that Maryland is, once again, a pioneer in an idea that will spread to other states. See the article in the NY Times about the Maryland law: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09wage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Santa Fe, NM passed a citywide minimum wage law a few years ago. At the time, business leaders warned that it would destroy the local economy, but those Chicken Littles were wrong, as columnist Rick Wartzman in the LA Times point out in his article today. He suggests that LA and other cities should consider doing the same thing. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-calco11may11,1,7423869.column?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=2&cset=true Kelly Candaele and I wrote an article this week for TomPaine.Com on the importance of the pending labor law reform bill in Congress - the Employee Free Choice Act. (This is a different and more straightforward version of the article we published in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week). If passed, the EFCA would help trigger a revival of union membership and, more broadly, of progressive politics. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/10/labor_law_reform_not_just_for_unions.php May 9, 2007 Maryland Is First State to Require Living Wage By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland signed the nation's first statewide living wage bill yesterday, giving fresh momentum to a movement that seeks to raise wages through legislation. Under the law, employers with state contracts will generally have to pay workers a minimum amount — $11.30 an hour in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and $8.50 an hour in the rural counties, where wages and prices are usually lower. The Maryland state minimum wage is $6.15 an hour, one dollar above the federal minimum. "This law lifts tens of thousands of families out of poverty and into the middle class," said Tom Hucker, a first-term Democratic delegate to the Maryland House and before that the executive director of Progressive Maryland, the main group backing the bill. "Today Maryland shows the rest of the country a good way to honor work and fight poverty." Nationwide, 145 cities and counties have enacted living-wage bills, which generally require businesses that receive government contracts — and sometimes those that receive subsidies — to pay an amount above the federal or state minimum wage. The highest living wage in the nation is $14.75 an hour in Fairfax, Calif. In 1994, Baltimore became the first city in the country to require a living wage for city contracts. Earlier this year, it looked as if the Maryland living-wage effort might founder because many businesses and Republicans had bitterly opposed the bill when it called for a uniform living wage of $11.95 an hour. They said it would inflate businesses' costs and cut into profits. But Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, was able to win support by creating two wage levels and by reducing the top level to $11.30. Last month, the State Senate passed the bill 31 to 16, while the House approved it 91 to 49. "This is a history-making day for us in Maryland," said Delegate Herman L. Taylor II, a Democrat who was the main author of the legislation. "Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, but one in 10 Marylanders is in poverty. This should help reduce poverty, and this is important because it helps fight poverty without using public assistance programs." Some Republicans criticized the legislation, saying it put residents of rural areas at a disadvantage by relegating them to a lower living wage. When Maryland's previous governor, Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, vetoed a living-wage bill in 2004, he criticized it because it set a uniform statewide living wage when there were substantial differences in the cost of living across the state. Some Republicans and business leaders said the law would increase state spending when Maryland was facing a $1.5 billion budget deficit. Ellen Valentino, the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said her group strongly opposed the legislation but was glad to secure an exemption for businesses with 10 or fewer workers when they received contracts worth less than $500,000. The law also exempts nonprofit groups. "We think wage decisions are best left to business owners," Ms. Valentino said. Jen Kern, director of the Living Wage Resource Center for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said the new law might prompt other states to seek to enact statewide living-wage laws. "A lot of organizations have been focused on increasing state minimum wages over the past couple of years," Ms. Kern said, "but now with this becoming law in Maryland, some people are asking, 'Why isn't this on our state legislative agenda?' " _____________________________________ Peter Dreier Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program Occidental College -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
