On Sept. 4, fast food workers went on strike in 159 American cities. Hundreds were arrested for acts of non-violent civil disobedience. It was the latest escalation in a campaign for a $15 minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation.
Boulder didn’t have a strike. The night before, there was an event entitled “Living Wage: A Community Dialogue” at the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, which was sponsored by city’s Human Relations Commission, the chamber, the county Latino chamber and the county League of Women Voters.
The sponsors didn’t want a debate, but University of Colorado Boulder economics professor Jeffrey Zax made a presentation on why a living wage law is a bad idea and he made many controversial assertions.
The evening’s format made it difficult for the other speakers to counter his arguments.
CU Boulder sociology professor Don Grant spoke of his experience with the Tucson living wage campaign. Noting that many cities have been passing increases in the minimum wage, he said Boulder is being “being left way behind” in this movement Former state representative Claire Levy spoke of how she had urged the Boulder city council in June to adopt a living wage for city contract employees after she learned that the city is using contractors that pay low wages and often limit their employees to part-time hours so they don’t have to provide them health benefits.
Levy, a Boulderite, was elected four times to represent the city in the Colorado House of Representatives and is now the executive director of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, which released a report in August that shows, in Levy’s words, that “too many hard-working Coloradans have fallen behind in recent years through no fault of their own.”
The report found that: Colorado ranks among the top 20 states in the nation with the highest levels of income inequality.
Nearly half of the $1.6 trillion in income earned in Colorado in 2012 went to the top 20 percent of households.
Since 2007, median income in Colorado has declined by $4,400 to $56,765.
At all levels of education and nearly all occupations, women earn less than men.
The 2007 recession disproportionately impacted black and Native American households in Colorado.
Black household income has declined nearly 16 percent since 2007; American Indian/ Alaska Native household income declined 18.5 percent.
This report could inspire people to fight for a living wage in Colorado cities. However, there is an obstacle. Many years ago, a Republicandominated Colorado state legislature passed a law prohibiting cities from passing minimum wage increases for the general population.
The law could be overturned if a law is passed undoing this prohibition. But there would be a fight. You can expect pushback from the business community and conservatives. In fact, the National Employment Law Project recently released a report on a campaign for “wage suppression” carried out in the last few years by the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its corporate funders. The National Employment Law Project has documented that “since January 2011, legislators from 31 states have introduced 105 bills aiming to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the state and local level, and 67 of these 105 bills were directly sponsored or cosponsored by legislators affiliated with ALEC.”
National
Employment Law Project says ALEC legislators have worked to weaken wage
standards at the state level by repealing state minimum wage laws,
reducing minimum wage rates for youth and tipped workers, weakening
overtime compensation policies, and preventing the establishment of
local living wage and prevailing wage ordinances.
In
the 2010 elections, Republicans won governorships and control of state
legislatures in many states. Attacks on working people and unions
followed almost immediately in those states. In the November elections
in Colorado, the state legislature and the governorship (currently
controlled by the Democrats) are up for grabs. We can expect more
attacks on working people in Colorado if the balance of power changes.
We
face a clash between two different philosophies, which economist Jared
Bernstein characterizes as “You’re On Your Own” and “We’re In This
Together.” Do we want to privatize and de-regulate everything, or use
the tools of government to build a more just society? What kind of
Boulder do we want?
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
