Living wage success! 

Bigger battle ahead

Thanks to CPI's dedicated supporters, our campaign to strengthen San Diego's Living Wage Ordinance soared over the first hurdle this week.  The City Council budget committee voted unanimously to send CPI's proposals on to the full council.

The Council vote is expected in September.

At the committee meeting Wednesday, Living Wage supporters packed the room holding signs with messages like "Living Wages Not Poverty Wages" and "Stronger Living Wage Law = Stronger Families."  A string of workers, clergy and community leaders testified to the need for stronger enforcement and more equitable application of the three-year-old law.

Under the law, contractors doing business with the city are required to pay their workers a living wage indexed to inflation, now $12.70 an hour or $10.58 plus health benefits.  At least two city contractors, Prudential Uniform Supply and Jani-King, have been caught paying workers less.

The reforms CPI is proposing include:

• Higher penalties for violations;
• A fair, open process of investigating violations;
• Protections for whistleblowers who report fraud and abuse in contracting;
• Removal of exemptions so that the wage requirement is applied equitably;
• A specific commitment that jobs outsourced through managed competition are covered.

Thank you to everyone who called the budget committee members, sent e-mails and attended the meeting!  

This is just the start of a battle that will escalate as contractors who are not paying the living wage fight to keep wages at poverty levels.  When the issue comes to the full City Council in September, we will need the entire community and to speak with a unified voice for fair wages.

Please forward this e-mail and talk to your friends about joining this crucial movement to build a strong local economy based on good jobs with family-sustaining paychecks and health coverage.  


Poverty undercounted and badly defined

CPI will provide local analysis of income and poverty rates next month, when the US Census Bureau releases its annual report on poverty levels.  But the official poverty measure badly underestimates what it really costs to get by in cities like San Diego.

The Economic Policy Institute, in Washington, has developed an alternative, more comprehensive measure of poverty, incorporating recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.  A comparison of the official US poverty level and the alternative measure reveals the poverty rates are higher and growing faster than the official count shows.

CPI has shown in a series of reports, Making Ends Meet, that the income needed to live in San Diego County without financial assistance is far higher than either the poverty line or the minimum wage.