Let's start a living wage campaign in Flagstaff
A national living-wage movement is in progress

By Lisa Rayner
Tea Party Publisher

Many people are looking to living wage campaigns to raise working people’s incomes. In fact, a national living wage movement is in progress. Beginning in 1994, when Baltimore, Md., approved a living wage ordinance with the help of labor groups and religious leaders, more than 53 local living wage ordinances have been enacted around the U.S. There are more than 75 living wage campaigns in progress in nearly 50 states. These campaigns aim to increase minimum wages in a specific region. Living wages have ranged from $6.25 per hour to as much as $12 per hour, depending on the economic conditions of the area and the political climate.

Living wage ordinances often apply only to government entities and private businesses that receive public money like grants, loans, bond financing and tax abatements. However, it is also possible to enact regulations that raise the local minimum wage for all workers within a region. Living wage ordinances at city, township, county and state levels can be done either through legislation or citizen initiatives.

In May of 1996, Flagstaff City Councilman Rick Swanson introduced an ordinance that would have raised the then federal minimum wage of $4.25 to a city minimum of $5.50. An annual cost of living increase would be based on rises in the federal consumer price index. The ordinance was written by local attorney Paul Brinkman and reviewed by City of Flagstaff attorneys.

At the time, Councilman Rick Lopez told the Daily Sun, “The minimum wage doesn’t necessarily solve problems. Employees don’t necessarily put more money in their pocket and while some might benefit, others might lose their jobs.”

Councilman Norm Wallen responded in a Daily Sun guest editorial: “Those at the bottom end of the pay scale in Flagstaff that I have talked with are willing to take their chances in exchange for a half-way respectable wage.”

Councilwoman Rita Johnson also supported the ordinance, but on June 4^th it was voted down by the other four council members — Rick Lopez, John Cavolo, John McCulloch and Mayor Chris Bavasi.

Minimum wage worker Cheryl Sehon, who showed up at the city council meeting during which the vote occurred, told the Daily Sun, “Hopefully they will try to find out what we go through. People can’t live like this.”

The Tucson City Council passed a living wage ordinance in September of 1999. The Arizona State Legislature immediately attempted to make such local living wage ordinances illegal, but the Senate version of the bill failed in its final passage.

The Tucson ordinance mandates that contractors providing the following services to the city must pay employees paid through those contracts at least $8 per hour, or $9 per hour if health benefits are not provided: facility and building maintenance, refuse collection and recycling, temporary employee services, janitorial and custodial, landscape maintenance and weed control, pest control, security, moving services. The ordinance also requires that 60 percent of the workers for those contractors must be residents of the city.

The success of the Tucson living wage ordinance hinged on an alliance between the Southern Arizona Central Labor Council and local union affiliates and the Pima County Interfaith Council. Other cities and counties have reported that similar coalitions of labor interests, religious groups and advocates for low income people were necessary to their success.

Norm Wallen recalls that such a coalition did not materialize during the Flagstaff living wage campaign.

Rick Swanson came up with the idea on his own. The idea came to Swanson during a Friends of Flagstaff’s Future City Council candidate forum in February of 1996 during which Flagstaff’s low wages were discussed.

Another key strategy in any living wage campaign is the effective dissemination of information regarding the positive effects of an increase in the minimum wage and the evidence against serious harm to the local economy.

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