)LA) Businesses prepare to fight living-wage ordinance

[question everything]

Businesses prepare to fight living-wage ordinance
Rick Orlov, Columnist
LA Daily News
10/16/06

After years of quiet acceptance of even the most liberal of policies, the Los Angeles business community is surrendering its go-along-to-get-along philosophy and preparing to launch a major battle against City Hall.

The issue is the living-wage ordinance and a proposal to extend its reach beyond companies doing business with the city to include hotels along the Century Boulevard corridor, which benefit from the nearby Los Angeles International Airport.

The business community has assembled some of the city's best-known, most-connected and highest-paid lobbyists and attorneys to fight what they see as a precedent-setting move that could lead to increasing the minimum wage citywide.

(snip)


http://www.dailynews.com/rickorlov/ci_4498594

[ruiner4u]

1. those poor starving CEO's...n/t

[rwenos]

2. Interesting. . . Green-Headed Monster

LA has long been an anti-union town, a fact which changed dramatically in the early 1990's, when the hotel workers scored a big strike victory, winning an organizing election.

STRANGE political bedfellows here -- Janice Hahn is an heir to the old Hahn constituency, the Black community. The police unions have scored a win . . . maybe the hotel unions on the Century strip want more than they can get, and the rank and file are predominantly Latino.

This is a story to watch, for LA people. Probably not of much interest to the rest of the crowd, though, during a political season.

[ninkasi]

3. If I owned a company

I would be ashamed to admit that I refused to pay my employees a living wage. We work so that we can live, right? Rent, insurance, utilities, groceries...and employers don't want to provide a wage that will allow us to support ourselves? In the meantime, the employers and business owners think it's perfectly fine for them to live a lifestyle of luxury. Just don't ask them to pay us peasants enough to keep from starving.

This, then, is the republican mindset, and their goal. Squeeze the poor and middle classes, and redistribute all wealth upward. Oh, yeah, they're definitely the party which honors "values." Their values are bankrupt as far as I'm concerned.

[Karmageddon]

4. the "cheap labor republicans" won't be happy until slavery is legal again.

[DBoon]

5. These businesses would die without LAX

Publicly funded infrastructure keeps them alive.

They are willing to get the benefits from taxpayer-funded public works, but don't want any restrictions on how little they can pay their employee