The Nation's Pulse: The Year of the Living Wage
McGroarty, Daniel
THE NATION PULSE by Daniel McGroarty The Year of the Living Wage Political activists succeed where unions have failed. • .. ,,,, , ,,,, ,,, ,,, + ,,, A s a proxy for Big Labor's political...
...in Minneapolis, businesses that receive more than $100,000 in economic development assistance are assessed a minimum wage of $8.25 per hour...
...The New Party's walk-on role in the Teamsters scandal may have left the mainstream media unfazed, but the party's electoral successes have energized the left...
...Paul ballot...
...With 17 Living Wage ordinances in place now and campaigns underway in 24 more cities, this may prove to be the year of the Living Wage after all...
...The TDU"— the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a left-leaning internal union group that backed the Carey candidacy—"is in deep with the New Party, and has been from the beginning...
...Indeed, in certain respects the two organizations seem to have morphed into a single entity: ACORN and the NP share an office address, fax lines, and e-mail addresses in New York, Boston, St...
...Louis and Dallas...
...The sender, Adam Glickman, political director of the national New Party, lauded the efforts of the Twin Cities Area New Party and St...
...The New Party even boasts a Congressman: Danny Davis of Chicago, whom New Party literature touts as a member, although Davis's official bio makes no mention of any political affiliation other than the Democratic Party...
...Even so, Washington's inaction on the minimum wage front masks a series of impressive successes around the country to raise municipal minimums to S7.7o an hour or better—in some cities, more than doubling the present federal minimum of $5.15...
...Though the donation itself was a token $5,000, some suggested it was an effort in Carey circles to curry favor with Quindel — a charge she denied, even as she confirmed that she was indeed a New Party member...
...How does the NP wage its "strategic hamlets" approach...
...In February ACORN took to the DSAnet to broadcast a new call to activists "who think that too few have too much WEALTH AND POWER...
...Paul campaign—in which a local ballot initiative promoting a super-minimum was turned back by voters—an e-mail went out over DSAnet, the Democratic Socialists of America's electronic activists grapevine: Attention All Midwest Activists: ...Activists Needed From Around Mid-West To Come to St...
...stand in stark contrast to failed efforts to raise the federal minimum...
...As for a larger agenda, creating a series of super-minimums is just the beginning...
...After Quindel overturned Carey's election and resigned from her post, interest in the New Party-Teamsters connection ebbed...
...What cities are next on the Living Wage hit list...
...It's not John Sweeney's AFL-CIO, its friends in Congress, or the White House...
...The New Party has done that, and then some...
...The email highlights ACORN organizers' role in "running campaigns for a living wage in Denver, St...
...With the GOP in control of the io6th Congress and impeachment having devalued President Clinton's political capital, 1999 may seem to offer little for Big Labor to look forward to...
...Calls emanated from Republican circles to end ACORN's federal subsidies...
...Founded in 1992 by a collection of leftish academics and labor organizers, the New Party has resisted the typical temptation of third party groups to mount quixotic campaigns for the presidency...
...But there's been nothing but silence since...
...The American Spectator • May 1999 53...
...The force behind the Living Wage effort is a self-styled progressive alternative party called the New Party...
...Even the Committees of Correspondence, a faction spun out of the Communist Party USA in early 1992, has embraced the idea: "For a Democratic and Socialist Future, Make a Living Wage the Minimum Wage...
...These days, however, the minimum-wage movement sends mixed signals on Labor's prowess...
...In early 1996, John Sweeney's AFL-CIO Executive Council invited the New Party to a special session on the Living Wage—an event one NP official termed "the first time in 75 years that a third party has been officially invited to a meeting by the top leadership of the American labor movement...
...During the endgame of the 1995 St...
...The platform of the Labor Party—another new entry in the Labor-left effort to breathe new life into the third party movement, headed by Tony Mazzocchi, former official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union—called for a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to establish a Living Wage during its national convention last November...
...even a losing Living Wage effort helps identify and activate new union members...
...Paul, Little Rock, and Chicago...
...So close is the connection that New Party literature sometimes describes ACORN as having "affiliated" itself with the New Party...
...Big Labor has taken note...
...estimated—correctly, thus far—that the pro-business lobbying groups so effective in Washington will not rouse themselves to fight a multi-front municipal campaign...
...On the national stage, Big Labor's "America Needs a Raise" campaign suffered a setback in the waning days of the 105th Congress when Senator Ted Kennedy's effort to raise the minimum wage sputtered to a stop...
...A s a proxy for Big Labor's political clout—or lack of it—the effort to raise the minimum wage has always proved a handy leading indicator...
...Anonymous leaflets sent to the federal judge overseeing Teamster matters alleged that Federal Elections Examiner Barbara Zack Quindel—the official charged with reviewing Ron Carey's scandal-plagued re-election as Teamsters president—and her husband were New Party members, a minor fact made meaningful by further information that individualsin Carey's camp had authorized a donation to a New Party affiliate...
...nances of one type or another have been enacted in 17 U.S...
...0 f course, all of that may be simply so much ideological opportunism looking to animate an otherwise dispirited left...
...In other words, raising the cost of competitive out-sourcing may not benefit city taxpayers or even boost the pay of private sector employees, but it helps protect union jobs...
...Several years ago, when ACORN activists disrupted a speech by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a furor ensued over the fact that the ACORN hooligans may have been financed by federal grants provided under President Clinton's AmeriCorps "volunteerism" program...
...The New Party and its allies have44 Even a losing Living Wage effort helps identify and activate new union members...
...But for the most part, on the national level the New Party is nearly unknown, though devotees of the Teamsters election scandal may recall a cameo NP appearance at a critical moment in spring 1997...
...The media stopped just when it got interesting," notes a source in the camp of newly elected Teamster President James Hoffa, Jr., the candidate Carey beat in the tainted '96 contest...
...The Nation, lauding the Living Wage movement in a recent issue, quotes the director of Los Angeles' Living Wage effort as seeing the campaign as a perfect tool for union organizing...
...In California's Santa Clara County, a so-called Living Wage ordinance requires businesses that receive tax abatements to pay permanent employees $10 per hour, with mandatory health insurance thrown in...
...Four years ago the group filed suit in California asserting that it should be exempted from paying workers the prevailing $4.25-perhour minimum wage...
...What ACORN brings to the mix is a pre-existing presence in dozens of local communities, and a resource base that includes federal grants...
...Paul November 3-5 to Help GET OUT THE VOTE and Pass the JOBS and A FAIR WAGE INITIATIVE...
...All told, since 1994, Living Wage ordiDANIEL MCGROARTY is a visiting fellow with the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and senior director of the White House Writers Group...
...Since the first victorious campaign in Baltimore in 1994, the Living Wage's 17 wins in cities across the U.S...
...But appearances can deceive...
...When the New Party needs to get the Living Wage job 52 May 1999 • The American Spectator done, they look to an alliance forged with ACORN —the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—the not-for-profit tenants' rights and public housing activists...
...It made a reappearance in January, as one of many measures lumped into the loot bag President Clinton lugged up to Capitol Hill for his State of the Union...
...cities...
...ACORN's leading role in the Living Wage campaign is not without irony...
...NP-backed candidates have won zoo of the 300 races they've entered in a dozen states, taking seats on local school boards from Prince George's County, Maryland, to Little Rock, Arkansas, and in state legislatures in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Montana, and New York...
...ACORN lost both at trial and on appeal, abandoning the case only after the press began to pick up on the hypocrisy...
...ACORN received at least $2.1 million in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the past two years—small change in terms of the overall federal budget, but real money on the alternative political scene...
...Indeed, a New Party primer on the super-minimum acknowledges that one reason the Living Wage "is beloved by public sector unions" is that "it acts as a huge disincentive to contracting out...
...As for the likely economic impact of mandating massive living wage hikes, nothing says it better than ACORN's own brief in its California case: "The more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker...the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire...
...Who's waging this stealth campaign...
...Glickman termed the Minnesota effort the "first shot" in a series of municipal campaigns aimed at passing Living Wage ordinances, detailing plans for Chicago and Milwaukee as well as "plans to put `living wage' initiatives on the ballot in as many as ten cities around the country" over the next two years...
...Instead, the NP has held itself to a state and local elections strategy, with remarkable results...
...In other local jurisdictions, all companies that win public service contracts are required to pay a super-minimum wage...
...If the federal spigot was turned off for a time, however, it is back on again...
...Paul ACORN for collecting the signatures necessary to put the living wage initiative on the St...
...Politically, the New Party-ACORN alliance has been an enormous success...
Vol. 32 • May 1999 • No. 5
