Down with poverty wages! YES on Measure R!
All photos here taken by Craig Spjut of UA Local 290 Plumbers and Steamfitters Thanks Craig!
Tag Archives: $12.00 an hour
Updates in the campaign for MEASURE R – THE EUREKA FAIR WAGE ACT
August 22 Updates
Very Important: We have an immediate need for volunteers to help us CANVASS in Eureka. No experience required! And you don’t have to live in Eureka to help. We have been knocking on doors every day, and we need more people. We will prepare you to canvass for Measure R, provide simple outreach supplies, and pair you up with a person who has experience. Then we’ll hit the streets, talk with Eureka residents about the fight for $12 in Eureka, and register more voters. We’ve registered about 350 Eureka residents so far!
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO RAISE WAGES
- We need you to VOLUNTEER your time and energy to help with phone calls, data entry, sign delivery, tabling at events, graphic art, etc.- your skills are needed.
- YARD SIGNS for Measure R are being made by a small, local printing shop. Very exciting! Let us know if you’d like us to bring you a yard sign (or a smaller window sign) to display at your home or business in support of the Fair Wage Act! Here’s what it looks like.
- We’re hosting another outdoor FAIR WAGE CAFE at Cesar Chavez Park (Hammond Park), at 14th and F, Eureka (with the tennis courts and playground). It will be held sometime in September, on a Saturday. We’ll finalize the date soon. Enjoy nutritious, yummy food, live local music, kid’s games, and family fun from 12noon to 5pm. Bring friends, co-workers, neighbors, and the whole family out for a day in the park! It’s all free!
- Measure R recently received the unanimous endorsement of the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee. Our thanks to them for their support of Measure R, and we’re pleased to add them to the growing list of organizations and individuals that stand behind Eureka’s working families.
Endorsers of Measure R, the Eureka Fair Wage Act, we thank you:
- Humboldt and Del Norte Central Labor Council
- Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee
- Roosevelt Institute at Humboldt State University
- Humboldt County Green Party
- SEIU Local 1021- a union of 54,000 workers in Northern California
- United Food and Commercial Workers Local #5
- Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Social Action Committee
- Progressive Democrats
- Operating Engineers Union local #3
- Building and Construction Trades Council of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties
- Eureka City Council member Linda Atkins
- former Eureka City Council member Chris Kerrigan
- Natalie Arroyo*
- Kim Bergel*
(*We hope Natalie Arroyo and Kim Bergel will be Eureka City Council members in the near future)
- Brave New Films, a non-profit documentary film company, is making a pro-minimum wage raise video that will be ready by Labor Day weekend. They have contacted us, and we will have the video to show on Access Humboldt, the internet, wherever we (and you) can spread it. It will include Eureka’s Measure R information!
- Please consider giving a FINANCIAL DONATION of any amount to the Measure R campaign. It is run solely by volunteers in the community. Donations will help us print important campaign materials, fund radio spots, and help pay for web space. Donate today at FAIRWAGES.ORG. You can mail us a contribution, donate online, hand us money, a check, or money order in person– however it works for you!
- If you haven’t seen our new website, please go to its easy-to-remember address, fairwages.org. Also, we continue to host the blog, eurekafairwageact.wordpress.com where, for almost two years, we’ve been posting research, news, events, etc. about raising wages.
- We’re on Facebook. “Friend” us at Fair Wage Folks. “Like” us at Eureka Fair Wage Act and Measure R.
Help us get the vote out for Measure R!
Fair is fair! We need this!
For the people,
The Fair Wage Folks
KIEM ch3 nbc Eureka Interviews Eureka Fair Wage Act Proponent James Decker
KIEM asks Eureka Fair Wage Act proponent James Decker some pertinent questions about raising the minimum wage to $12 in Eureka – and gets some straight answers.
While you are there take the poll!
The Laboratory of Life
shortlink here: http://wp.me/p2w2NH-la mnemonic here: http://urlet.com/simplicity.buying
It is said that we don’t need a minimum wage, that a minimum wage causes unemployment, that if the minimum wage were lower – or completely eliminated – then employers could afford to hire more workers. It is said often that this is “supply and demand” and an ironclad “law of economics.” It is of course an argument designed to appeal to the simpler minded half of the gene pool.
Yet two facts confront us.
One, the real purchasing power in constant dollar terms of the minimum wage has declined for 45 years, so there has been a de facto “lowering” of the minimum wage, and Two, we currently have a very persistent and high level of unemployment.
The laboratory of life has proved this favorite Chamber of Commerce meme to be a fabrication that is nowhere near real life economics.
We conclude that the theory that lowering the minimum wage increases employment is FALSE.
shortlink here: http://wp.me/p2w2NH-la
Eureka Fair Wage Act Meetings EVERY WEDNESDAY NIGHT
Eureka Fair Wage Act Meetings EVERY WEDNESDAY NIGHT
People welcome to the meetings even if you live outside of Eureka.
The Fair Wage folks urge you to get involved in passing the Eureka Fair Wage Act, also known as the Minimum Wage Ordinance. If passed through a popular vote, the Act would require large employers with 25 or more workers in Eureka to pay a $12 dollar minimum wage. A higher minimum wage, with a small business exception, will improve lives, make Walmart reconsider its presence in Eureka, boost the local economy, bring employment up, and allow individuals who work full time to rise just above the federal poverty level.
Meetings for the Eureka Fair Wage Act are now every Wednesday at 6:15pm at the Eureka Labor Temple, 840 E Street. More information can be found and questions answered by visiting the Eureka Fair Wage Act website, fairwages.org, or by calling 707-442-7465. If you are interested in helping the campaign in any way, wherever you live, please get in contact.
NCJ: Eureka Fair Wage Initiative “Easily” Qualifies for Ballot – Will Be Before City Council Mar. 19
shortlink here: http://wp.me/p2w2NH-jG
The Eureka Fair Wage campaign is delighted that we easily surpassed the 10% signature threshold, guaranteeing ballot access for the Eureka Fair Wage Act. We believe, however, and hope to prove, that we gathered enough signatures to cross the 15% threshold which would put the Fair Wage Act on a ballot even sooner.
Please come out to the Eureka City Council meeting at 6:00pm, Tuesday March 19 and show your support for the Eureka Fair Wage Act. The Fair Wage Act (or “Minimum Wage Ordinance”) will be on the agenda. The City Council has the option, again, to listen to the needs of the people and simply pass the Act, raising the minimum wage for large employers to pay their workers in Eureka. If the Council does not, we will continue organizing and pass the initiative at the ballot box!
Wage Hike Proposal Headed to Eureka City Council
North Coast Journal, Ryan Burns, Mar. 8, 2013
Here’s a ray of hope for people working at Eureka’s Taco Bell. Or Wal-Mart. Or any other business in the city that pays workers as little as the law will tolerate:
A petition to boost Eureka’s minimum wage to $12 an hour has received enough valid signatures to be presented to the City Council at its March 19 meeting.
http://urlet.com/games.leading or:
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/blogthing/2013/03/08/wage-hike-proposal-headed-eureka-city-council/
Times-Standard Coverage:
http://www.times-standard.com/breakingnews/ci_22751562/fair-wage-act-go-before-eureka-city-council
Jim Hightower: Do More Than the Minimum on Minimum Wage
Do more than the minimum on minimum wage
Monday, February 18, 2013 |
Posted by Jim Hightower
podcast http://jimhightower.com/sites/jimhightower.civicactions.net/files/5-21_m_show.mp3
story http://jimhightower.com/node/7962
“In the wealthiest nation on Earth,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union speech, “no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty.” Right! Not only does his call to raise America’s minimum wage put some real pop in populism, but it could finally start putting some ethics back in our country’s much-celebrated, (but rarely-honored) “work ethic.” Kudos to Obama for putting good economics and good morals together – and for putting this long overdue increase on the front burner.
But then came the number: $9 an hour. Excuse me, Mr. President, but that means a person who “works full-time” would nonetheless “have to live in poverty.” Yes, nine bucks is a buck-seventy-five better than the current pay, but it’s still a poverty wage, and it doesn’t even elevate the buying power of our wage floor back to where it was in 1968.
~VISIT LINKS ABOVE FOR THE REST OF IT~
George Clark & Linda Atkins Propose Ordinance to Raise the Minimum Wage (2008)
“Linda Atkins and I are both running for Eureka City Council and we have proposed an ordinance raising Eureka’s minimum wage by $1.”
George Clark, LTE, Times-Standard, Oct. 23, 2008
George Clark & Linda Atkins 2008 Campaign Statement on the Need to Raise the Minimum Wage in Eureka
FRANK JAGER: Job killer
October 6, 2008 Heraldo Leave a comment Go to comments
From the Clark/Atkins campaign:
GEORGE CLARK AND LINDA ATKINS REBUT JÄGER AND ENDERT ON RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE
“Yesterday’s Eureka Reporter article: “Two Candidates Suggest Raising Minimum Wage,” discussed George Clark and Linda Atkins proposal to raise Eureka’s minimum wage from $8 to $9 per hour.
Concerned about the fact that Eureka’s workers’ median income level is only 51% of the statewide average, Clark and Atkins feel that raising the minimum wage is a necessary first step, as part of a comprehensive effort to get Eureka’s economy back on track.
The article also featured the reaction of Linda and George’s opponents in their race for Eureka City Council: Polly Endert and Frank Jäger respectively. “It’s totally the wrong approach,” according to Polly Endert and Frank Jäger added, “It’s a great idea, but it’s a job killer.” The evidence shows minimum wage initiatives are neither “totally wrong” nor “job killers.” They are, however, often resisted by entrenched moneyed interests whose influence in this campaign once again threatens the future of Eureka’s working families. When it comes to raising the minimum wage, Linda Atkins and George Clark feel the facts should speak for themselves.
Over the past 12 years around 140 States and Municipalities have enacted living wage measures and 29 states and the District of Columbia all operate with minimum wages above the Federal standard. There is now a rich body of evidence in this area, none of which supports Jäger or Endert’s claims. In 1995 and in a subsequent study in 2000, David Card and Alan Krueger, “consistently found that changes in the minimum wage have not tended to raise unemployment by any discernible amount (and indeed have tended to be associated with slight increases in low-wage employment.”
In 1998 a survey of professional economists at forty leading research universities in the field of labor and public economics published by Victor Fuchs of Stanford and Alan Krueger and James Poterba of MIT conclude that, “the general professional view is, again, that there were no strong negative employment effects, if any, from raising the minimum wage by relatively modest amounts.”
Three more recent studies examining the impact of living wage laws in San Francisco and Los Angeles done in 2005 all agree: “None of these studies finds evidence of significant reductions associated with the implementation of living wages laws.”
A particularly interesting study was done from 2001 to 2005 comparing employment growth between 11 states that operated with minimum wage levels higher than the Federal standard and 33 others that did not. The states operating with the higher minimum wage experienced overall job growth of 0.57 %, while those that maintained the lower Federal minimum wage had a 0.52% growth rate. In other words employment growth was actually slightly faster in those states which paid minimum wages greater than the Federal level.
Given the enormous amount of evidence that contradicts Frank and Polly’s “sky is falling” reaction to the idea of raising the minimum wage for Eureka’s working families, are we to conclude that they simply don’t get it or is this what having “no agenda” means to them?
George Clark and Linda Atkins believe in building our economy from the ground up. Raising wages in Eureka, which are so far below the state average, is the right and fair thing to do for Eureka’s working families. When the spending power of working families goes up, so does morale, which leads to productivity boosts, lowers job turnover, all in an ongoing “virtuous cycle,” and everyone benefits. Furthermore, increased spending by Eureka’s workers creates more demand for products, helping businesses while creating more jobs in the process.”
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Defending the Community
$12.00 An Hour Minimum Wage for Large Employers
Blogging the Eureka Fair Wage Act
Wage Hike Proposal Headed to Eureka City Council
North Coast Journal, Ryan Burns, Mar. 8, 2013
Here’s a ray of hope for people working at Eureka’s Taco Bell. Or Wal-Mart. Or any other business in the city that pays workers as little as the law will tolerate:
A petition to boost Eureka’s minimum wage to $12 an hour has received enough valid signatures to be presented to the City Council at its March 19 meeting.
http://urlet.com/games.leading or:
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/blogthing/2013/03/08/wage-hike-proposal-headed-eureka-city-council/
Take the poll at KIEM! Raise wages in Eureka!
Feb. 12, 2013
Too Old to Play Full Court
Feb. 11, 2013
http://radmul.blogspot.com/2013/02/too-old-to-play-full-court.html
George Clark & Linda Atkins 2008 Campaign Statement on the Need to Raise the Minimum Wage in Eureka
Feb. 9, 2013
“George Clark and Linda Atkins believe in building our economy from the ground up. Raising wages in Eureka, which are so far below the state average, is the right and fair thing to do for Eureka’s working families. When the spending power of working families goes up, so does morale, which leads to productivity boosts, lowers job turnover, all in an ongoing “virtuous cycle,” and everyone benefits. Furthermore, increased spending by Eureka’s workers creates more demand for products, helping businesses while creating more jobs in the process.”
Eureka Wages Going Up?
February 8, 2013
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/blogthing/2013/02/08/eureka-wages-going/
Fair Wage Folks Turn in Signatures at Eureka City Hall for $12 Minimum Wage Ordinance
February 8, 2013
Last week of signature gathering for Eureka Fair Wage Act
January 26, 2013
Eureka Fair Wage Act
January 19, 2013
http://radmul.blogspot.com/2012/07/eureka-fair-wage-act.html
Occupy Minimum Wage
January 17, 2013
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/arts/2013/01/17/occupy-minimum-wage/
Benefit for Eureka Fair Wage Act; Rooster McClintock, Jan 19
January 8, 2013
http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/benefit-for-eureka-fair-wage-act-rooster-mcclintock-jan-19/ and http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/benefit-fundraiser-for-the-eureka-fair-wage-act/ and http://tomsebourn.blogspot.com/2013/01/fundraiser-for-eureka-fair-wage-act.html
Benefit for Fair Wages
January 7, 2013
http://thebicyclegnome.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/fair-wade-benefit/
“Fair Wage Cafe” next Saturday
December 8, 2012
http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/fair-wage-cafe-next-saturday/
Fair Wage Graphic Contest offers $100 reward
December 1, 2012
http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/fair-wage-graphic-contest-offers-100-reward/
Eureka Fair Wage Act — What do people think?
November 26, 2012
http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/eureka-fair-wage-act-what-do-people-think/
Group seeks Eureka Fair Wage Act
September 30, 2012
http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/group-seeks-eureka-fair-wage-act/
The Drive For Fair Wages in Eureka
September 8, 2012
“After being out for two or three sessions of sig gathering for the Eureka Fair Wage Act I can say that I am stoked about how well people are taking to the message. It is very easy to get people to sign, and it is fun. We are meeting lots of new people and making new friends. Some people are saying “$12.00 an hour? HELL YEAH!” Some folks are thanking us for the work we are doing!” “We are fixing what is broken.”
http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/the-drive-for-fair-wages-in-eureka/
EUREKA FAIR WAGE ACT – THE BEGINNING
August 14, 2012
http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/eureka-fair-wage-act-the-beginning/
Eureka Fair Wage Act
August 13, 2012
http://northbayuprising.blogspot.com/2012/08/eureka-fair-wage-act.html
We File
July 26, 2012
http://thebicyclegnome.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/we-file/
The Fair Wage Proponents
July 26, 2012
http://thebicyclegnome.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/the-initiative-proponents/
Fair Wage Initiative Filed in Eureka California
July 26, 2012
http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/fair-wage-initiative-filed-in-eureka-california/
Eureka Fair Wage Act
July 20, 2012
http://thebicyclegnome.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/eureka-fair-wage-act/
Eureka Fair Wage Act Initiative
July 19, 2012
http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/eureka-fair-wage-act-initiative/
