Editorial: A wage we can live with
The Sonoma County Living Wage Coalition, a group of labor, environmental, political and religious organizations, has asked the County Board of Supervisors to pass a county Living Wage ordinance. Among other things, it would require certain for-profit businesses doing work for the county to pay their workers a wage of at least $15/hr., indexed to the cost of living.
We heartily endorse that proposal, which would cover some 5,000 workers who provide services to county taxpayers, including the 3,800 in-home care workers delivering critical care to disabled and homebound low-income residents.
Given the high cost of living in our county — home to millionaires and billionaires and a favored destination for wealthy tourists from around the globe — everyone who works here deserves a Living Wage for their time and labor. The Coalition’s modest proposal is a welcome and overdue beginning for our county. We say ‘modest’ because many Living Wage ordinances passed in other communities around the state and the nation are more inclusive, and more generous. For example, Santa Clara County’s living wage is over $19/hr. and like San Francisco’s and those in other communities, it covers many more private sector workers.
Our county Supervisors seem OK with the concept, but not the cost. They’re toying with covering only about 1,200 workers, but excluding the in-home care workers for whom a raise to $15/hr. would add less than 1 percent to the county’s budget, but make a world of difference in their families’ lives; they presently earn only $11.65/hr. Budget-conscious Supervisors say that kind of money just isn’t handy right now.
But it easily could be, and with almost no impact on county taxpayers. Here’s how:
Raise the county’s Transient Occupancy Tax from 9 percent to 10 percent. Napa County’s TOT is already 12%. Napa understands that TOT is paid by tourists – i.e., people from someplace else with lots of money to spend on our Booze and Views.
Raise the county’s Property Transfer Tax from 55 cents to $1 per/thousand of value on sales of homes worth a million dollars or more. This tax would be paid only by home buyers, many of whom don’t live here now; it would add $450 to the sale price of a million dollar house – chump change for those who can afford a million dollar house.
The research and statistics paint the irrefutable logic and the need behind the Living Wage proposal. But the term ‘Living Wage’ says it all: Life on the current minimum wage of $9/hr. is just not sustainable. A Living Wage is often the difference between Employed and Exploited.
Frankly, we hope the proposal will eventually be expanded to include more employers, whether or not they do business with the county. As our world-class winegrowers nurture the soil that produces their bounty, employers who profit from the time and talent of our workforce should always “enrich the terroir.”
Wages that don’t reflect the true cost of living here will eventually empty our communities of middle class families who are increasingly unable to find housing or buy the goods and services our businesses sell. Case in point: 90 percent of those employed in the city of Sonoma don’t live there, some by choice but most because they can’t afford it. They earn here but spend elsewhere.
Moreover, mandating wage increases for the lowest paid has never harmed the economy. In the 98-year history of 22 minimum wage increases in California, beginning in 1916, the bottom wage in California has been regularly increased — 73 percent since 2000 alone — and no wage-induced apocalypse has ever occurred. Nor were there any reports of business collapse or layoffs in the County after the state’s minimum wage increased again, by 12.5 percent, last July.
As Supervisor Susan Gorin has reported (and the Chamber of Commerce has cheered), the county’s economy is “strong and growing” and tax revenues are robust. To keep it going, the County should enact the Coalition’s $15/hr. Living Wage proposal as soon as possible. In fact, let’s make it an even $20.
