Business

Higher Minimum-Wage Proposals Gain Ground on Both Coasts

Published

9 years ago

July 23, 2015

LISA LEFF, Associated Press
DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The push for a higher minimum wage gained momentum on both sides of the country, with New York embracing an eventual $15 an hour for the state’s 200,000 fast-food workers and the huge University of California system announcing the same raise for its employees.

“How we support our workers and their families impacts Californians who might never set foot on one of our campuses,” UC President Janet Napolitano, who oversees 10 campuses, including UCLA and Berkeley, said of Wednesday’s action. “It’s the right thing to do.”

The 240,000-student University of California becomes the nation’s first public university to commit itself to the $15-an-hour wage that has become the rallying cry of many labor groups in recent months.

So far, the cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have approved phased-in increases that eventually will take their minimum wage to $15 an hour, or about $31,200 a year. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, voted to craft a law to do the same over five years.

In New York, the state Wage Board Wednesday endorsed a proposal to set a $15 minimum wage for workers at fast-food restaurants with 30 or more locations. The increase would be phased in over three years in New York City and over six years elsewhere.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has the final say, and he has signaled his support. New York would become the first state to single out a specific industry for such an increase. The state minimum wage is now $8.75.

“You cannot live and support a family on $18,000 a year in the state of New York — period,” Cuomo said at a New York City rally celebrating the proposal. “This is just the beginning. We will not stop until we reach true economic justice.”

Restaurant owners warned that higher wages could force them to raise prices, cut employee hours and hire fewer workers, and they said they may challenge the move in court.

“Singling out fast-food restaurants while ignoring other industries that hire workers who are paid under $15 is unfair and discriminatory,” said Jack Bert, who owns seven McDonald’s restaurants in New York City.

But Rebecca Cornick, a 60-year-old woman who makes $9 an hour at a Wendy’s in Brooklyn, said, “If I made $15, I could pay my rent on time, I could put food on the table, I could hold my head up.”

At the University of California, the hourly wage earners include students and full-time contract employees who work in dining halls, dorms and bookstores or labor as gardeners, housekeepers and custodians. Many start at the state minimum wage of $9 an hour.

Napolitano said she will boost that to $13 in October for employees who work at least 20 hours a week and will raise it some more in stages to $15 by the fall of 2017.

About 3,200 UC employees and a much larger but undetermined number of people employed by outside contractors at the university will receive the higher wage, UC said. The university is California’s third-largest employer, with a staff of 195,000.

“I just thought it was important for a public university to plant the flag here for low-wage workers and a more livable wage,” said Napolitano, who was President Barack Obama’s homeland security secretary before she assumed leadership of the university nearly two years ago.

Napolitano’s plan does not need approval from the university’s governing Board of Regents.

The higher minimum-wage argument has gained traction amid concerns over the shrinking middle class and rising income inequality.

Supporters argue a higher wage floor will help lift the working poor into the middle class. Opponents warn higher wages will kill jobs and lead to higher prices. Sixteen states have passed laws barring local governments from setting their own minimum wage.

Democrats, including presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, have said they support a higher federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour.

Vice President Joe Biden promoted a higher minimum wage of at least $12 an hour during a stop Wednesday at a washroom equipment manufacturer in Los Angeles, where he chatted with employees as they assembled soap dispensers.

Biden said the wage hikes approved by the city’s mayor and county supervisors would be “life-changing” for some 700,000 workers in the Los Angeles area.

“Maybe you’ll be able to have meat on the table a couple of times a week instead of once a month,” Biden told workers at Bobrick Washroom Equipment, whose CEO backed the city’s wage ordinance.

Other public university systems, including ones in Washington state, Indiana and Tennessee, have adopted minimum wages higher than those set under state or federal law. But none have committed to going as high as the University of California.

University officials estimated that the raises for workers directly employed by UC will cost $14 million a year, a fraction of the system’s $12.6 billion annual payroll. UC said it also expects contractors will pass some of the cost of higher wages onto the university.

The Republican leader of the California Assembly criticized the university’s plan to extend the higher wage to outside contractors.

“The university should be teaching engineering, not spending student dollars to practice social engineering by limiting who campuses can do businesses with,” Assemblywoman Kristen Olsen said.

In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, election officials approved the language of a proposed ballot measure that would make the nation’s capital the first East Coast city to adopt a $15 minimum wage. Supporters will have to gather about 23,000 signatures to get the proposal on next year’s ballot.

___

Klepper reported from Albany, N.Y. Associated Press writer Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the number of affected university employees is about 3,200 instead of 4,200.

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‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

5 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

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Business

Chevron Reports Progress in Flaring, Emissions at Community Town Hall

At the first in a series of community town halls on Oct. 16, Chevron Richmond reported a reduction in year-over-year flaring incidents, both in number and duration, and detailed new technologies and processes that will further drive down emissions and heighten community awareness about operations. Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Community member Kathleen Sullivan speaks at the Chevron town hall. Photo courtesy Richmond Standard.

By Mike Aldax

The Richmond Standard

Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Similar town halls will be held twice per year over the next five years as part of a settlement agreement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD).

The goal is to increase transparency about flaring and increase opportunities for the community to get answers to their questions about potential impacts to the community.

A key output is the creation of a Community Action Plan, or CAP. The CAP aims to create a two-way dialogue between Chevron and neighbors around flaring and environmental compliance.

“Chevron’s focus in this process is one of learning and engagement,” said Brian Hubinger, public affairs manager at Chevron Richmond. “We felt the most efficient way was to bring together a broad selection of community members rather than just think about what it would take to comply with the settlement agreement.”

The first town hall drew a few dozen members of the community, including Chevron employees, representatives of fence-line neighborhoods and members of local environmental organizations.

During the event, Chevron employees reported that 19 BAAQMD-reportable flaring incidents occurred at the refinery from October 2022 to September 2023 with a total duration of 270 hours. During the same period this year, 18 flaring incidents occurred with a total duration of 159 hours, marking a 41% decrease in duration.

Further gains are expected with the implementation of Flare IQ, set to be installed this year and next on all of the refinery’s flaring systems. Flare IQ is described as a supercomputer with an algorithm that gathers data from operations and enables employees to address potential issues before they occur.

Chevron also reported a 40% decrease in particulate matter emissions since the completion of the refinery modernization project in 2018.

In addition, flare gas volume related to Chevron’s new hydrogen plant project, built as part of the modernization project, decreased by 85% since 2019. The hydrogen plant has also reportedly made the refinery 20% more efficient.

“We’re really proud about that,” said Kris Battleson, manager of health, safety and environment at Chevon Richmond.

Neighborhood council leaders joined the president of the local NAACP in lauding the effort toward transparency and accountability. Among them was Vernon Whitmore, president of the Sante Fe Neighborhood Council and member of the 15-person CAP committee.

“The way we were able to talk openly and freely with Chevron – honestly, bluntly and frankly – while developing this program was very good,” Whitmore said. “And it was something that was well-needed at this time.”

Still, residents are skeptical, including Kathleen Sullivan, a longtime community advocate who also serves on the CAP committee. But she added, “you can’t complain about something and not be involved in the solution.”