>
> Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 13:38:02 -0400
> From: "Max Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
> The idea of LW being part of some pressure to
> privatize doesn't wash because the LW applies
> first off to contractors. Even so, the cost
> implications are likely to be negligible. First,
> there aren't enough workers -- relative to public
> spending in toto -- for whom the LW
> would 'bite' since they make more than a LW.
Right. A few mom and pop contractors will take the hit and then pass the increased labor costs back onto government which then passes the costs back onto local taxpayers. (My understanding is that LW in most cases only applies to contractors for public sector projects. For private sector projects, the same firms can continue to pay prevailing wages. Is this correct?)
In any case, as I mentioned this is in most cases small potatoes particularly given already downsized ("re-engineered") local government. Here in New Haven, for example, less than 200 workers are covered under the existing LW legislation and most of these were already making above the LW. Furthermore, given that New Haven is essentially bankrupt, it requires austerity in other budget areas. What are the stats for other cities? I suppose you could argue that Cambridge's LW legislation provided the focus for the Harvard sit-ins, but this is an indirect not direct effect of the legislation.
I did not mean to imply that LW campaigns are a conspiracy to further downsize already limited government. That being said you can see that existing LW ordinances can hardly be said to impose a great sacrifice on the major backers of the party. And I can easily imagine that many Dems tell one story as "friends of working families" and then relate to their bagmen a more "nuanced" account.
Perhaps you have to live here in one of the great capitals of liberal hipocracy to be able to imagine this scenario. A recent indication, the alderman (a Yale School of Management grad) who put forward the living wage bill recently quit his job to work for Solomon-Smith Barney, saying on his way out that he wanted his successor in office to have a "strong committment to social justice."
I plead guilty to excessive cynicism if the above analysis is off base, though I should say that my experience is that when it comes to this sort of thing, the most cynical explanation frequently turns out to be insufficiently so.
> The more likely effect of LW is pressure on
> contractors to recognize unions. LW regs
> are typically suspended where there is collective
> bargaining.
>
Are there instances where collectively bargained contracts were below living wage levels? Seems scandalous if this is the case. On a related point, I heard that the Harvard unions were initially unsupportive of the living wage sit-in since it gave attention to the fact that the subcontracting out of jobs was negotiated by the unions in the existing contract.
Final question: what are the specific legal barriers which prevent municipalities from exercising control over private sector wages and how did Santa Monica get around these?
John