By Doug Porter
Sometime over the next couple of months the San Diego City Council will consider a ballot measure for November raising the minimum wage. Although California has already enacted legislation boosting the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $9 next July and $10 by January 2016, research by the Center on Policy Initiatives indicates those raises fall way short of the $13 per hour wage necessary to live here without government assistance. Raising the minimum wage polls well with the public. Just last week a limited advisory referendum urging the Chicago City council to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour (for corporations with over $50 million in annual sales) passed with an overwhelming 87% approval. Nationally a variety of surveys indicate two thirds of voters favor increasing the mandated minimums. Today we’ll take a look at how business interests both nationally and locally are working to defeat increases in pay for low wage workers. Given that a significant number of San Diegans were naive enough to believe that the US Navy was preparing to leave town (the Barrio Logan referendum), the downtown clowns who perpetrated that falsehood can be expected to roll out the mother of all shock and awe campaigns as fall approaches.↧