Living Wage Campaigns As Social Movements - Experience From Nine Cities

Living Wage Campaigns as Social Movements: Experiences from Nine Cities
David Reynolds Abstract
Ever since Baltimore passed its pioneering law in 1994, a living wage movement has come to life across the nation. Today, more than 63 municipalities have living wage ordinances in place thanks largely to coalitions of unions and community and religious groups. In a recent article in Labor Studies }oumal, Bruce Nissen raised the question of the extent to which these campaigns can be considered social movements. For his Miami case Nissen found that, while the living wage effort achieved much, its accomplishments as a social movement proved more limited. This raises the question of what a living wage campaign that has greater socialmovement characteristics actually looks like. This paper uses the experience of nine notable campaigns to sketch out these socialmovement qualities and to explore how and why some campaigns take on more of a social-movement character. n the past several years, a growing living wage movement has taken hold in this country. Local campaigns have passed living wage laws in more than 63 municipalities (see Appendix, Table 1). Today, more than 70 communities across the country have active living wage efforts. In his recent paper published in Labor Studies]oumal, Bruce Nissen (2000) raised the intriguing question concerning the extent to which living wage campaigns can be characterized as social movements. As Nissen noted, many prescriptions for the U.S. labor movement's revival call for greater socialmovement dimensions. To what degree do living wage campaigns further such an agenda? In examining the Miami living wage campaign Nissen found that, while the effort achieved much, including a passage of a living wage law, as a social movement its accomplishments proved more modest. Yet, as Nissen points out, while living wage campaigns share a simiLABOR STUDIES JOURNAL, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2001). Published for the United Association for Labor Education by the West Virginia University Press, P.O. Box 6295, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506. 2001, West Virginia University Press.
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lar legislative goal, their actual organizing experience varies considerably. If Miami represents a typical case of noteworthy activism witb modest social-movement aspects, wbat does a living wage campaign look like tbat travels further down tbe social-movement road? Fortunately, at least balf a dozen campaigns among tbe successes provide examples of living wage activism witb strong social-movement features. This paper focused on tbese experiences: wbat tbey look like and bow tbey happen.' What Makes a Social Movement a Movement? Nissen uses tbe classic work of Me Adam, McCartby, and Zald (1996) to encapsulate tbe tbree major features wbicb social scientists bave empbasized wben examining social movements. Tbese tbree are: (1) tbe structure of political opportunities and constraints confronting tbe movement; (2) tbe forms of organization (informal as well as formal) available to insurgents; and (3) tbe collective process of interpretation, attribution, and social construction tbat mediate between opportunity and action. Nissen summarizes tbese elements as tbe political-opportunity structure, tbe mobilizing structure, and tbe framing process. For our analysis, we will make two modifications to tbe above framework. First, we break tbe mobilizing structure into tbree dimensions: coalition building, grassroots action, and ongoing activism. Second, we view tbe evaluation of living wage campaigns not as a yes/no question, but as a spectrum. At a basic level, most living wage efforts display some cbaracteristics of social movements. Tbe issue is tbe degree to wbicb a campaign combines different elements and on wbat scale tbey are manifest. Witb tbese qualifiers in mind, our analysis will focus on five socialmovement elements. The Political Opportunity Structure Social movements need some possibilities of acbieving at least some victories. A political structure tbat is entirely closed to outside activism will discourage social-movement organizing. As we will see, bowever, a moderate or even strong degree of opposition can enbance tbe socialmovement quality of a campaign by compelling activists to mobilize counterpressure. In rare cases, sucb as tbe Portland (Or.) initial living wage law, tbe political structure is so open to tbe issue, tbat living wage laws are passed tbrougb tbe internal efforts of sympatbetic city councilors witb no campaign at all. As tbe Portland experience suggests, bowever, a law witb
LIVING WAGE CAMPAIGNS
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no outside campaign will likely produce lax enforcement. In Portland this eventually prompted grassroots activism around enforcement and expansion of the law. Shaping the Public Debate Part of the framing process involves a movement's ability to enter the public consciousness hy shifting policy debates around its issues. Ideally, a living wage effort will not just achieve public visibility for its cause, but also shift general discussions of local economic development strategies toward a more social-justice focus. Coalition Building Social movements draw in organizations and individuals from diverse backgrounds. Activism around a social movement's issues and goals also becomes a central focal point for the activities of many participating organizations. A coalition can be evaluated hoth in terms of the breadth of groups involved and the degree to which participation in the coalition becomes a core part of member organizations' activities. A coalition of individuals able to tap the endorsements and support of various organizations to which they belong is not the same as a coalition in which several different kinds of organizations make a campaign a central part of their core activities. Coalition building also involves a framing process, as different groups may define and act on an issue differently from other organizations. A social movement synthesizes different approaches within a common framework (Simmons, 1994). Grassroots Action Demonstrations, rallies, marches, sit-down strikes, etc. provide the physical and often most outward displays of a social movement. To what extent can a campaign mobilize significant numbers of people and how broad is this grassroots participation across endorsing groups? Nearly all living wage campaigns are able to mobilize a turnout of community supporters to city council hearings. To what extent, however, does a campaign go beyond this tactic to involve grassroots participants in more extensive activities? Individual campaigns will also be noteworthy if they succeed in the difficult task of involving the low-wage workers affected by a new law into the campaign for the ordinance.
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Ongoing Activism
Social movements typically do not revolve around a specific publicpolicy reform, but encompass an agenda which sustains activism from one specific campaign to another. To what extent does a living wage campaign develop as an end in itself, and to what degree does it become one part of a broader wave of movement activity? The long-term social-movement capacity will also be enhanced the more a living wage campaign involves the creation or development of new social-movement institutions. Among the successful living wage campaigns, at least seven have displayed strong evidence of each of the above five elements (see Appendix, Table 2).^ The first five share a common theme in that all emerged as one part of a larger progressive project. By contrast, the social-movement character of both the Chicago and Boston campaigns were clearly enhanced by the opposition they encountered. Finally, the metropolitan Detroit and Washtenaw County campaigns are more typical among living wage efforts. Like the Miaml-Dade campaign they displayed far more modest characteristics. Tliey are notable, however, because they demonstrate how the political opportunities can foster a series of living campaigns which, while modest by social-movement terms, nevertheless provide an ongoing focal point for progressive activism.
Living Wage Campaigns as Part of a Broader Project
In different ways, our first five campaigns emphasize the fifth element by using living wage organizing to develop larger, long-term movement projects. This largerframeworkserved to enhance the social-movement qualities of the campaign. We begin with Los Angelesa campaign particularly rich in detail and one of the most impressive living wage efforts in the country. Los Angeles Los Angeles has been known as an area hostile to organized labor. Yet today it offers a leading example of labor organizing and growth (Gentile, 2000). Indeed, the largest single union organizing victory in decades, the 75,000 home-care workers who joined the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), encompassed Los Angeles County. In recent years, key leaders within the area's unions and central labor council have pursued new and innovative approaches to union activism. At a general level these various strategies share a vision which seeks to build union strength through social justice.
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The Los Angeles living wage effort grew out of this broader process of labor revitalization. Its specific origins lie in the battle to defend the jobs of 1,000 unionized workers at the city's main airport, Los Angeles International. Three hundred of these jobs were lost when the city brought in non-union contractors, such as McDonald's. The remaining 700 jobs promised to suffer the same fate. A core group from the hotel workers and service employees unions joined with several community groups to map out a response. Their strategy involved passing three pieces of legislation connecting public funds to community standards. The first required companies receiving city contracts to retain the existing work force. Activists won this legislation in the fall of 1995. The second was the living wage law. The third established legal protections for workers' right to organize. The eighteen-month battle to win Los Angeles' living wage ordinance produced a broad alliance of labor and community groups that grew to more than one hundred endorsing organizations. While activists had clear champions on the City Council, Los Angeles' mayor opposed the living wagecompelling the campaign to build a veto-proof supermajority on the City Council. They also had to overcome a steady barrage of "hysterics" from the Chamber of Commerce and its allies. For example, the "Coalition to Keep L.A. Working" ran "fact sheets" used by the local media which claimed that: "ultimately, a business will have to cut jobs in order to deal with higher labor costs. There will be fewer entry-level wage earners. This ordinance will hurt the very constituency it claims to serve." To keep the pressure on, activists organized a phone-in campaign to the City Council. Organizations faxed letters of support. Over a thousand "New Year's" cards flooded in from city residents. For two weeks delegations visited the council twice a day, three days a week. Some actions became quite dramatic. For Thanksgiving, the campaign asked groups and individuals to mail council members over a thousand decorated paper plates symbolizing the struggle to feed a family on poverty wages. For the winter holidays, one hundred clergy and other supporters accompanied a volunteer actor playing the part of the ghost of Jacob Marley, who went to City Hall draped with chains to decry the mayor's Scrooge-like opposition to the living wage. Volunteers went caroling at City Hall and nearby restaurants with lyrics modified for the living wage. The living wage coalition also sought support from high-wage employers. Two top executives from Bell Industries and Pioneer Foods wrote an opinion piece published in The Los Angeles Times defending the living wage from the standpoint of their companies' successes pursuing policies of higher wages. Thirty-three
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Hollywood film and television producers also sent a letter to the City Council urging passage of the living wage ordinance. Organizers deliberately recruited and involved workers affected by the ordinance. At the airport, for example, workers organized a media event in which they took reporters and City Hall staff on a tour highlighting the conditions under which they had to work. Low-wage workers also provided powerful human-interest stories. Bobbi Murray, the campaign's media director, wrote that "workers came to City Hall and testified about injuries that went untreated because there was no time off permitted for a doctor visit, and no insurance or way to pay for it anyway; families crowded into tiny one-bedroom apartments in dangerous areas of town just to make rent, and visited food pantries to manage the groceries every month." The participation of affected workers not only strengthened the campaign for the living wage law, but also developed an activist nucleus among low-wage workers that could feed into union activity. The testimony of these workers also proved critical in gaining some positive media coverage. The living wage campaign's work paid off. In March 1997, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed the living wage. A month later they overrode Mayor Richard Riordan's veto. The Los Angeles law applies to public service contracts worth $25,000 or more as well as any business benefiting from a subsidy of at least $1 million in one year or $100,000 on a continuing annual basis. The law required an original living wage of $7.25 per hour plus family health benefits or $8.50 without the benefits. TTie wage is indexed to the annual adjustments made to the City Employees Retirement System. Covered workers also gained a mandatory 12 paid days off a year. The campaign revealed strong elements of all five social-movement aspects. It built a broad coalition and carried the cooperation down into a significant number of participant organizations' memberships. It achieved some success using the media to highlight the social-justice dimensions of the living wage issues. It was one of the few campaigns in the country to aggressively seek to involve workers covered by the living wage law in the actual battle for the legislation. Finally, it secured a significant political victory by building unanimous support on the City Council in defiance of the mayor's wishes. The most significant aspect of the Los Angeles experience, however, was its larger context. The Los Angeles campaign did not begin as a living wage effort, but in a battle to save hundreds of jobs at the airport and to organize among the 30,000 non-union airport workers. As men-
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tioned above, prior to the living wage, the labor-community coalition passed a worker-retention ordinance that prevents employers from union busting through threats that people would lose their jobs if they lost or chose to forgo the public contract. Since passing the living wage, the coalition has intervened in the processes of granting of food concessions promoting employers willing to sign neutrality agreements. They have also obtained amendments to the original living wage law which further support organizing at the airport and elsewhere. The changes include language to make clear that the airlines themselves are covered and the provision of strong protections and employer sanctions in any workplace in which workers are harassed for discussing their rights under the living wage. As with the airport, union organizing has provided the broader context for living wage activism in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles campaign monitors contracts and assistance to support living wage enforcement and union organizing. The coalition, for example, offers support to employers who apply for public money and agree to pay living wages and such labor-peace measures as neutrality agreements and card-check recognition. For companies who choose not to play fair, the living wage coalition can threaten to slow or block their application for contracts or financial assistance. In March 1998, for example, the campaign organized a march of 700 against United Airlines, whose airport lease was soon to run out. The Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) has used the ordinance's provision to allow collective-bargaining partners to forgo specific living wage provisions by mutual consent to convince employers to sign contracts earlier and more easily. In return for cooperation, the union has been willing to modify the living wage provisions. HERE has used the coalition's support to win a neutrality agreement and subsequent union recognition at the new site of the Academy Awards in Hollywoodthe first such union breakthrough in this area. SEIU also won union jobs for janitors using the living wage law and coalition support. The Los Angeles campaign maintains contact with covered workers through a unique program for educating workers directly about their rights under the living wage law. While the city prints the materials, obtains the training location, and does the advertising, the campaign designs the classes and provides the trainers. The workshops seek to reach an estimated 5,000-8,000 low-wage workers covered by city contracts. In addition, with many employers finding it easier to simply pay the extra $L25 an hour rather than provide health insurance, activists negotiated with
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UCLA Health Care to offer a decent family package, with no major deductibles, for $1.25 an hour. The living wage campaign's coalition building has also carried into the long-term. Activists used living wage activism to develop a new faithbased worker-support network: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). CLUE directly participated in the Los Angeles and subsequent living wage campaigns. Along with the Southern Califomia Ecumenical Council, CLUE has also called on churches to lead by their own examples by paying all their staff a living wage. At the urging of the Los Angeles diocesan leaders, the national Episcopal convention adopted a living wage recommendation at its July 1998 meeting. As with the general campaign, CLUE's support to workers extends beyond the living wage. For example, three years ago the Westside Hotels balked at a first contract with HERE to gradually raise housekeepers' wages from $8.15 to $1LO5 an hour. CLUE dispatched small teams in full ministerial garb who delivered brief sermons on workplace fairness while ordering coffee at several hotel dining rooms. On April 8, 1998, an interfaith procession of 60 ministers, priests, and rabbis marched through Beverly Hills. They deposited bitter herbs outside the Rodeo Summit Hotel, which still had not signed the HERE agreement, and offered milk and honey to the two hotels which had. Two months later the Summit signed. CLUE has organized similar religious support for a campaign against a union-busting hotel in Santa Monica, Calif., an organizing drive at St. Francis Hospital, and protests over the University of Southern California's decisions to contract work out to low-wage employers. Seen in the broader context, the Los Angeles living wage campaign has provided key mechanisms around which to build local long-term social-movement activism. Labor has developed an ongoing coalition with religious leaders, promoted grassroots organizing activity among low-wage workers, developed a multistage legislative agenda, and launched a series of public campaigns which have placed basic issues of economic justice into the public debate. This broader social-movement context helps explain why Los Angeles activists have been able to mount one of the most aggressive living wage implementation and enforcement agendas in the country. Enforcement has proven the weakest link in the living wage movement. Many living wage ordinances rely upon passive enforcement in which workers, or others on their behalf, file complaints. Most city administrations do not have experience monitoring employers. As a result, all too often a subset of employers quietly ignores the living wage. The Los Angeles cam-
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paign, however, has organized hoth inside and outside the halls of government to discourage such non-compliance. The campaign runs its own contract and financial assistance data base, trains workers covered by the law, and maintains a coalition network capable of going after employer violators. The campaign also issues its own yearly report card evaluating living wage enforcement. It has trained city staff and gotten oversight responsibility transferred from a hostile part of the city administration to a new specialized section of five full-time staff. Such aggressive enforcement requires serious commitments of staff and resources. In Los Angeles such a commitment was justified because the living wage was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a mechanism for rebuilding union organizing and activism. The most formal sign of a sustained movement comes from the founding of a new social-movement organization: the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). LAANE was founded under a different name in 1993 as part of the effort to save jobs at the airport. In addition to maintaining ongoing projects around the living wage, today LAANE also serves as a conduit for other labor-community cooperation on organizing, research on the area's economy, and efforts to close the gap between rich and poor. It has investigated the use and abuse of corporate subsidies throughout the area, organized an active living wage and right-to-organize campaign in Santa Monica, and developed the Valley Jobs Coalition. The latter project aims to apply a community benefit plan to all new development projects that would ensure jobs providing a living wage, benefits, child care, training, and local hiring.
San Jose, Calif.
Even more so than Los Angeles, in San Jose the broader movement project and our other four social-movement elements predated the actual living wage campaign. Following the 1994 election of new leadership, a revitalized South Bay Labor Council began to aggressively seek to build alliances between labor and the community. In 1995, it established Working Partnerships USA as a non-profit policy and research institute to foster labor-community ties. The group won national news coverage when it published several reports detailing the dark side of Silicon Valley's economy. The research documented, for example, that the hourly wages of three-quarters of the area's workers actually fell between 1989 and 1996. With the median purchase price of a home at more than $300,000 and rent averaging $1,100 for a one bedroom apartment, over half of the
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Valley's jobs did not pay enough to support a family of four independent of public assistance. This economic data was used as part of the curriculum in an innovative Labor/Community Leadership Institute aimed at developing a cadre of leaders oriented around a movement for economic justice. Working Partnerships actively recruits from among a diverse array of area grassroots leadership to attend the eight-session training program. Participants come from unions, neighborhood groups, the clergy, elected officials, and others. During the classes, participants discuss the regional economy, the role of unions, privatization, the role of government, and ideas for how the regional economy can be changed. The program aims not simply to develop a common understanding of the local political economy, but to forge concrete personal ties between the leaders of future labor-community coalitions. Indeed, over the course of the class, participants work together on an actual economic justice project. Working Partnerships also served as the conduit for developing a new Interfaith Council on Religion, Race, Economics, and Social Justice, which brings together more than 60 congregations and community groups. The network has, for example, successfully advocated for an additional $25 million in Redevelopment Agency funds for low-income housing and greater access to public benefits for immigrants. The group's labor-related activism helped shift public dialogue from a power struggle between labor and business to demands that corporate and government practices reflect high moral ground (Brownstein, 2000). It is within this broader movement-building context that the San Jose living wage campaign developed. The first round took place in 1995, when the labor council put together a coalition to attach living wage-type standards to a local tax incentive program. Both the labor council and Working Partnerships participated in a county task force which proposed policies requiring tax rebate recipients to provide jobs paying at least $10 with health insurance and to pay back the rebate if such jobs did not materialize. Over the opposition of the Santa Clara County Manufacturing Group, the Board of Supervisors passed the new policy. Following this success, the labor council used its coalition building to boycott a new Super Kmart that violated its promises of neutrality in union organizing and to use union workers to build the store. The labor-community coalition persuaded the City Council to pass a resolution supporting the boycott. The 1998 San Jose livingwage campaign provided yet another channel for the central labor council and Working Partnerships to further
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expand their social-movement institutions. The first Labor/Community Leadership Institute classes used the living wage as their group project. The Interfaith Council on Religion, Race, Economics, and Social Justice mobilized around the living wage effortfurther building its membership. In the end, the effective labor-community campaign succeeded in passing the then highest living wage in the country: $9.50 an hour with health insurance or $10.75 without. The ordinance also included worker retention provisions for new contracts, bid notifications to be sent to the central labor council, and a requirement that covered employers assure good labor relations. The latter measure seeks to hamper employers firom hiring anti-union consultants or mounting aggressive anti-union campaigns. The living wage campaign proved a classic good fight with ample grassroots activism. The local Chamber of Commerce and the San ]ose Mercury'News pronounced that the living wage was a separate city minimum wage that would destroy the economic future of the community. Living wage supporters jammed council hearings. On Labor Day, advocates spoke from the pulpit about the living wage in 80 churches and synagogues. Labor and its allies also mounted one of the strongest getout-the-vote operations in the city. The living wage became a central issue in the city's third district between the union-backed incumbent and the anti-living wage opponent. The incumbent won by 200 votes. Two weeks after the election, the living wage ordinance passed by a strong 8-3 vote. The broader social-movement elements, which fed into and were enhanced by the San Jose living wage battle, continue to foster further progressive activism. The labor council and Working Partnerships, for example, have launched an expanding series of campaigns around the issue of temporary work. This activism focuses on building supports for temporary workers around training and skill certification, portable health and other benefits, and a model temporary-employment agency for clerical workers. The coalition is also pressing for a code of conduct to be adopted by temporary employment agencies, in which they agree to pay living wages, provide access to affordable health benefits and training, and use fair administrative procedures. Woven into all of this activism are efforts to organize among temporary workers and to foster new forms of labor organizations appropriate to a contingent work force. Milwaukee Like San Jose, the three Milwaukee living wage campaigns were
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launched by a recently formed coalition that used living wage activism as a mechanism to grow and develop. A few key labor and community leaders achieved a remarkable accomplishment when, in the early 1990s, they pulled together Sustainable Milwaukeea non-profit organization which embodies one of the nation's premiere labor-community economic-development coalitions. They convinced union, community, and religious activists that participation in a year-long planning process to draft a grassroots plan for Milwaukee's future would not prove a waste of time, but an investment in new and lasting progressive activism. The plan, "Rebuilding Milwaukee from the Ground Up," offered a comprehensive community agenda covering jobs and training, credit and banking, education, transportation, and the environment. It paid off in a range of ongoing grassroots projects. Currently, Sustainable Milwaukee operates through five task forces on living wages, job access, a Central City Workers Center, transit, and environmental justice. The area's living wage campaigns provided Sustainable Milwaukee with one of its first key grassroots organizing projects and public victories. Intensive door-to-door neighborhood organizing not only helped get living wage supporters to public hearings but built for the coalition a grassroots volunteer and leadership network. The first legislation, which applied to city contracts, came in 1995, when the living wage movement nationally was still in its infancy. A year later the Milwaukee schools enacted a living wage for all school employees and contractorsbringing an estimated 3,800 workers up to $7.70 an hour. In 1997, the campaign secured a county living wage for janitors, security, and parking lot attendants. Because the living wage efforts were part of a larger, long-range initiative, activism around the living wage concept has continued well after the laws have been passed. The coalition, for example, brought together key decision-makers from religious, labor, governmental, and community groups to serve on workers' rights boards. These boards have used a combination of moral and public pressure to encourage fairness and equity at work. They have campaigned on behalf of asbestos-removal workers as well as welfare recipients trapped by the state's W-2 reform. In 1998, Sustainable Milwaukee's living wage task force also began stirring up life in the fast-food industry. Research on area McDonald's restaurants revealed that inner-city franchises were paying wages significantly below their suburban counterparts, even when they charged more for the food. Volunteers visited targeted locationshanding workers information sheets on the wage differences and leaving a phone number to call for information on unionizing.
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While living wage activism provided an important element for building Sustainable Milwaukee's movement activism, it operated as only one part of a broader plan linked around the issue of family-supporting jobs. Activists also succeeded in teaming up two groups with a history of battling each othercivil rights organizations and the building-trades unions. Through the coalition's job access task force, these groups work together to demand and enforce union prevailing wages and significant 25 percent minority and 5 percent female hiring on major city construction projects. Funded in part by a grant fi-om the Casey Foundation, Sustainable Milwaukee has also established the Central City Workers Center as a grassroots, community-based employment program. Center staff help prepare inner-city residents for high-paying jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries. The center works with area businesses and unions to connect residents with real job and apprenticeship training programs. As part of the process, residents are required to put in volunteer time with Sustainable Milwaukee, thereby exposing them firsthand to grassroots activism. Because companies have moved many decent-paying jobs to the suburbs, effective public transportation has also proven a living wage issue. Not only does the local transit system underserve low-income parts of the city, but it offers little connection to the available suburban jobs. With large allocations of federal funds up for negotiation. Sustainable Milwaukee mobilized residents, community groups, and elected leaders behind a bus and light rail proposal. Because of this grassroots activity, a $241 million federal grant for southeastern Wisconsin transportation allocated substantial funds for constructing a light-rail system and upgrading the bus service. However, Wisconsin's Republican governor worked behind the scenes to get control of these funds. By late 1998, the coalition was considering suing the state for using money slotted for light rail and buses to build more suburban roads. As with the other cases, the strong movement qualities of Milwaukee living wage campaign came from its roots in a larger project. The living wage campaigns provided a vehicle for the coalition to establish a broad membership, sponsor grassroots activity, raise fundamental economic questions, and demonstrate its credibility by winning concrete policy changes. Thus, the network built around passing three ordinances translated into other projects as well as continued living wage-related activity. The living wage activism was also accompanied by successful efforts by Sustainable Milwaukee to establish a growing full-time staff. These re-
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sources have allowed the coalition to maintain an overall level of grassroots activism between the ebb and flow of particular efforts. Pittsburgh Unlike San Jose and Milwaukee, where a broader project predated the living wage campaigns, in Pittsburgh the two formed together. The first initiative for a living wage law came when a sympathetic City Council member drafted an ordinance. If this move had gone forward successfully, little social-movement activity would have developed. However, with the degree of opposition becoming clearer, supporters chose to step back fi-om this fast track to reformulate the living wage as part of a broader movement-oriented plan. Indeed, the new Westem Pennsylvania Living Wage Campaign self-consciously framed its mission as laying the foundations for a social movement for economic justice. Thus the campaign set aside its first two years simply to establish the groundwork before even attempting an actual living wage ordinance. In the coalition's statement of purpose, passing local living wage laws provided only one of four goals. The other three, all linked to our five elements, are: Building an inclusive, broad-based movement of working people through their unions, religious institutions, and other community-based organizations. Supporting the rights of workers trying to organize, preserving existing living wage jobs by fighting privatization and contracting out, and sustaining prevailing wage standards and other such struggles. Providing broad public education that explains economic change and regional economic development from the perspective of working people and their communities.
Concretely, these broad objectives have produced several projects related to, but separate from, the actual tasks of passing a living wage law. For example, with the county government changing to Republican control for the first time in 40 years, activists organized a campaign to block the privatization of four nursing homes. The coalition helped organize support for nursing-home workers on strike at a company where 60 percent of the employees made the minimum wage. It also fostered official public research into work conditions in the area's human service industry. Similarly, the campaign has organized support for steelworkers fac-
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ing the loss of 500 jobs at a local coke-processing plant and 350 Nabisco workers who confronted a plant closing in violation of their collectivebargaining agreement. As in Los Angeles and San Jose, these efforts around worker justice fostered an ongoing religious task force on economic issues. Long-range-movement building was also behind the campaign's development of a popular economics workshop. Volunteers were trained to lead discussions among fellow union members, church parishioners, neighbors, and students. In addition to discussing the living wage, the populareducation program seeks to develop grassroots leadership and raise debate among working people about economic development generally. Battimore While Baltimore's pioneering living wage campaign was not tied to the kind of elaborate cross-area movement-building project as seen in the other cases, it warrants attention for its largely unique commitment to organizing social-movement activism among covered low-wage workers. From the beginning, the two main forces behind the Baltimore living wageBaltimoreans United in Leadership Development (aka, BUILD, a coalition of 50 congregations) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)made organizing low-wage workers the center of their effort. Through solicitations at neighborhood stores, person-to-person contacts, and other means, the campaign built up a list of 3,000 workers who wanted an organization for people like themselves. Today, the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee has grown to a staff of three with 500-dues paying members. Most of these workers are covered by the living wage law, although the SSC includes workers from other private employers. With the city administration mired in the legacy of decades of passive, market-oriented development policies, the committee has mobilized its members to enforce and extend the living wage. For example, workers and their supporters twice packed the Board of Estimates chamber to denounce the Eastman Transportation Company's violations of the living wage. Indeed, thanks to the efforts of the SSC, AFSCME, and BUILD, the city threatened to cut $14.4 million in contracts to two dozen schoolbus contractors that refused to raise their wages by the 50 cents needed to comply with the living wage law. The SSC and the living wage coalition have also organized for further policy changes covering contractors. They won an important first right of refusal that provides workers the right to keep their job even if their employer loses the contract. The campaign also secured strong pro-
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LABOR STUDIES JOURNAL: SIMMER 2001
tections for the right to organize. Any employer caught interfering in a unionization drive by their workers has its contract canceled. SSC, AFSCME, and BUILD have also gotten the city to bring back, as government jobs, custodial work at local schools previously contracted out. Along with BUILD and AFSCME, the SSC participated in a successful campaign to block state plans to force welfare recipients attending community college to drop their education to take up poverty-wage work. Similarly, it helped win a state law banning companies from gaining public subsidies by replacing existing workers with welfare recipients. Building an organization of low-income workers has not proven an easy taskwhich is why so few campaigns pursue it aggressively. Such workers often juggle many responsibilities and can change jobs frequently. To help add immediate relevance to SSC membership, organizers pulled together a basic benefit package for their members. For $10 a month a worker receives $10,000 worth of life insurance and dental, vision, prescription, and health discounts. The package does not provide comprehensive medical care, but it does focus on crucial preventative measures. The various components of the SSC's activities reinforce each other. The law granting workers the right to keep their jobs when the contract changes hands also helps worker-organizing by stabilizing the work force. Similarly, the protections for union organizing aid the links between SSC membership recruitment and unions. At the same time, both of these laws were passed, in part, because the SSC organized low-wage workers to campaign for them. The five cases covered here do not exhaust the use of living wage campaigns to build broader movements. Several efforts now under way parallel these cases. For example, in Little Rock, Ark., the Central Arkansas central labor council and the local chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) recently translated years of informal cooperation into a formal alliance. The new partnership aims to push for economic change and increase each partner's membership. A living wage campaign is providing one of several initial projects to build the alliance. Just north of San Jose, the new East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy is following in the path of the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy to use activism around new and existing living wage laws to build a long-range labor-community economic-justice coalition. Movement Battles Enhanced by Strong Opposition It is often said in labor circles that management's behavior can be
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the best organizer. Bruce Nissen argued that strong political opposition that is not insurmountable can enhance the social-movement qualities of a living wage campaign. This was certainly the case in Chicago and Boston, where tough opposition to the living wage helped foster grassroots campaigns of ever-increasing social-movement dimensions. Chicago The three-year Chicago battle certainly offered high drama. On May 1, 1996, more than 500 living wage demonstrators joined a May Day march through downtown Chicago. The Chicago Tribune ran a big story on the demonstrators titled "Wage Warriors." Both the city's Cardinal Bernardin and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney personally contacted Mayor Richard Daley to urge his support for the living wage. When SFIU held its national convention in Chicago, delegates staged a major street parade. The campaign sued to gain access to Navy Pier so that living wage supporters could picket the mayor as he welcomed delegates to the 1996 Democratic Convention. Indeed, as delegates went to the convention hall they were greeted by a large living wage banner hung from a nearby Teamster hall. Several busloads of delegates went on living wage "tours of shame" in which they visited low-wage employers enjoying significant public contracts and financial assistance. The Chicago campaign showed other strong social-movement qualities. It united a broad coalition of more than 60 endorsing organizations with a combined membership of 250,000. Membership on the steering committee was contingent upon an organization's contribution of $1,000 and a commitment to deliver a busload of people at living wage events. Several organizations also contributed direct staff time. The ability of the campaign to mobilize hundreds of living wage supporters made such an impression upon the mayor that the city illegally barred people from attending tbe City Council meeting at which aldermen dutifully voted down the proposed ordinance. News stories of the arrest of six living wage leaders who attempted to enter the chamber included photographs of the half-empty room which the fire marshal had claimed was filled to capacity. The campaign's social-movement character eventually secured it a living wage law. When tbe campaign unveiled its original ordinance to an audience of 750 supporters, 26 aldermen co-sponsored it and another 10 promised to vote for it. This council majority, however, evaporated after Mayor Daley announced his opposition. In the final vote a majority voted no. However, the fact that 17 out of 50 aldermen cbose to defy the mayor
48
LABOR STUDIES JOURNAL; SUMMER 2001
by supporting the law demonstrated that the campaign had made a political impact. After tbe vote, the activists began organizing ward-by-ward accountability sessions witb aldermen to account for their change of heart. Several members of the living wage coalition clearly saw the votes against the living wage as a political opportunity to run candidates against incumbent aldermen. The opposition finally sought a compromise in the midst of the 1998 election year, when the mayor and council prepared to vote themselves salary increases. Daley had argued that the city could not financially afford to pass the proposed living wage law. With the hypocrisy clear, Daley and his council allies decided they could not risk a backlash from a living wage movement more than capable of making the contradiction a public issue. While the new unanimously passed living wage law was narrower than the originally proposed ordinance, it did represent a major breakthrough in a long campaign. The degree to which living wage activism had shaken up "politics as usual" also became clear when, soon after the city vote. Cook County passed a similar ordinance. Tbe degree of opposition to the Chicago living wage helped foster a large-scale and extensive social-movement mobilization. By drawing clear battle lines between genuine labor-community supporters and loyalists to the Democratic machine, the living wage effort drew in the active support of a wide range of city groups. This sustained struggle was also possible because many of the key groups initiating the campaign entered the effort prepared for a major battle. Indeed, some did not believe that, given machine control over local politics, they could win passage of a law. Rather, they saw the living wage effort as an opportunity to build a broad coalition that would reshape debates over local economic development and open up new political opportunities by placing the Democratic machine on the wrong side of a popular issue. While the campaign did not produce a formal social-movement organization or long-range coalition plan, it did produce an ongoing movement legacy. The three-year battle fostered new bounds among participating organizations. For example, the two initiators of the campaign, the local ACORN chapter and SEIU Local 880, developed a strong partnership. When New Party-backed activist Willie Delgado first ran for the state Legislature in the 1996 Democratic primary, he received few union endorsements to challenge his AFL-CIO-backed opponent. In 1998, he ran and won with tbe solid labor support of unions that, along with the New Party, had fougbt side by side in the Chicago living wage campaign. On April 13, Ted ThomasIllinois ACORN president and Chicago New
49
Party chairmanbeat the machine-endorsed candidate to become alderman in the city's 15 th Ward. Having never before held public office, Thomas, a retired postal worker, won endorsements from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, and Chicago Defender on his record as a commu-
nity activist and a leader of the Chicago Jobs and Living wage Campaign. Boston The same combination of broad activist thinking and strong but vulnerahle opposition was at work in Boston. The Boston ACORN chapter initiated the living wage campaign not simply to pass an ordinance, but to further their neighborhood organizing and to build relationships with other progressive groups. While unions joined the living wage coalition, their attention initially focused more on the 1996 elections than living wage organizing. It was the opposition that helped to intensify labor's mobilization and strengthen the bounds between ACORN and the AFL-CIO. In February 1997, living wage organizers turned out a crowd of several hundred for a rally at which the city's labor leaders were to formally endorse the campaign. Activists had worked hard to gain the commitment to attend the rally from a majority of City Council members, most of whom had run with labor endorsements. Yet with Mayor Thomas Menino announcing his doubts about the living wage a week and a half before the event, only one council member actually made an appearance. Following this political "slap in the face," both the Greater Boston Central Labor Council and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO threw their energy into the campaign. While leaders from every major union in the city testified at hearings, the coalition developed an escalating series of actions, including lawn signs, human billboards, rallies, petitions, and lobbying delegations. The living wage passed by a final vote of 11 to 1. In an article seeking to explain the living wage "disaster," the Boston Business Journal complimented the coalition on its "superb campaign" and chastised business leaders for being "asleep at the wheel." By withholding the actual living wage legislation until they had built council commitment to the overall principles, the campaign outmaneuvered the business opposition. The business community, however, used the year gap between the law's passage and its implementation to undermine it. Business leaders mounted an intense anti-living wage media effort while Chamber of Commerce lawyers searched for a pretext for a legal challenge. In the end, the campaign had to trade the subsidy-based coverage (the element most at risk of a legal challenge due to restrictive court rulings on the state's home-rule
50
amendment) for maintaining the contract living wage and a local hiring hall requirement for both contracts and subsidies. This opposition served to further cement the bonds between ACORN and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Both sit on the living wage advisory committee established by the ordinance. Since the living wage battle, the two have worked together on two state legislative efforts: a campaign to raise the state's minimum wage and a measure to increase the state's eamedincome credit from 10 percent of the federal eamed-income tax credit to 30 percent for families with one to two children, and 40 percent for those with three or more. Both efforts have seen strong legislative action coupled with grassroots activity. The living wage has proven to be an issue with considerable staying power despite the opposition that coalitions may face. In Kalamazoo, Mich., for example, combined mayoral and council majority opposition to the living wage has simply fueled a coalition of labor and community groups that simply will not go away. When the coalition formed in 1998, the closing of a local plant by a company that had received large public subsidies also helped place the entire question of the city's generous tax abatement program into public eye. In the spring of 2000, the mayor and council felt enough heat around the subsidy controversy and living wage to offer a narrow living wage ordinance applying to tax abatement recipients. Ironically, the weak measure was voted down by living wage council supporters, setting up a ballot initiative campaign to pass a stronger and more comprehensive law. The public vote, however, was delayed by the legally questionable decision of the City Council not to place the measure on the ballot despite the campaign's collection of the required number of signatures. By the summer of 2001 the campaign was out again collecting signaturesthis time to ensure ballot access by defining the living wage as a city charter amendment. Other long-term battles in cities such as Denver, Ann Arbor, Mich., and Tucson, Ariz., also demonstrate the ability of wage issues to sustain local activism despite initial defeats. Serial Campaigns The seven case studies examined above represent living wage organizing with the strongest social-movement elements. In most cases, however, living wage campaigns are closer to the Miami experience described by Nissen. While they demonstrate social-movement qualities, the grassroots mobilization can often be modest, the coalition temporary, and the campaign's horizon may not extend past the passage of a living wage law.
51
Yet, even these more limited campaigns do produce social-movement gains. The efforts in Detroit and Michigan's Washtenaw County illustrate tbis point. While the effort to pass each law represented a modest undertaking, the very political opportunities to pass such popular measures has created an ongoing movement quality. Detroit The Detroit campaign made history by becoming the first to pass a living wage law via a ballot initiative. However, it was undertaken by a local labor movement driven by modest aims. The decision to place the ordinance on the ballot came from the political hope of raising voter turnout by giving city residents something concrete and compelling to vote for. Some coalition work was done. The campaign staff, for example, launched a modest outreach to clergy, with at least three dozen religious leaders holding living wage events. The local ACORN chapter also contributed door-to-door activism. However, tbe campaign's main efforts focused on using living wage materials to enhance labor's traditional getout-the-vote campaign. With the Chamber of Commerce realizing the difficulty of telling a 70 percent African-American city that raising wages was a bad idea, the get-out-the-vote effort paid off with an 80 percent vote in favor of tbe living wage initiative. Since it was conceived as part of a get-out-the-vote mobilization, the Detroit campaign never developed an autonomous living wage coalition with a developed plan for economic-justice activism after tbe election. However, the stunning victory has helped spark continued living wage activism. The Chamber of Commerce mounted a multipronged counterattack against the law. Its efforts to pass a state law banning such local measures, however, has thus far failed amidst a municipal backlash against continual efforts by Lansing to compromise local home rule. With enforcement of the law still uneven, two years after its passage the City Council remained embroiled in a debate over bow and whether to modify the ordinance. An attempt by the Chamber to weaken the ordinance provided a strong labor-community counter mobilization. In the meantime, small-scale grassroots outreacb to covered workers has resulted in a series of employer-violation complaints filed by workers with the city administration. The massive public support displayed by the ballot win also promoted tbe Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO and other living wage supporters to initiate a series of suburban campaigns. In early 2000, the suburb of Warren, the third-largest municipality in Michigan, passed a living
52
wage law. Campaigns have also won laws in Ferndale and Eastpointe. Taken individually, each of these efforts are modest affairs. A small group of residents and representatives of organizations have lobbied the local councils. Key organizational players in the area's politics have also worked behind the scenes. And the campaigns have turned out supporters for council hearings. The full significance of these campaigns, however, lies in their city-by-city nature. Overtime, networks of labor, religious, and community groups are systematically coming together to raise the living wage as an issue which is continuously debated somewhere in the large urban area. This experience also demonstrates a capacity for labor and its allies to engage in local public policy reform at a regional level. Washtenaw County Following the Detroit ballot win, activists in nearby Washtenaw County pulled together an ongoing campaign which passed laws in the working-class communities of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, Pittsfield township, and Ann Arbor, the largest municipality in the county with a population of 110,000. By late 2001 the campaign looked toward winning a county ordinance. As with many progressive campaigns in smaller urban areas, this effort has revolved around a core group of a dozen volunteers backed by key institutional affiliations and support. Activists have succeeded in building an endorsement list of 39 organizations and 59 clergy. Despite some pilot efforts, however, the campaign has not been able to sustain door-to-door style grassroots volunteer efforts or hold major rallies or demonstrations. Its mobilization capacity has remained at the level of turning out supporters for council hearings. Despite these limitations, several social-movement elements are noticeable. For example, at the coalition level, the local campaign marks the first time in many years that the two major labor organizations in the county have worked together in a sustained way. In addition, the list of endorsing clergy goes beyond the "usual suspects" to include mainline church leaders who typically do not participate in local progressive efforts. The campaign has also linked up organized labor with University of Michigan students, who successfully pressured the university over its ties to third-world sweatshops. Furthermore, the very ability of the local labor-community coalition to pass legislation around a proactive effort marks a new experience for many local activists conditioned to largely educational activism not tied to concrete policy victories. Most notable, the all-volunteer Washtenaw County campaign demonstrates the ability of the living wage to provide an opportunity for
53
activism even in the face of adversity. Following the two Ypsilanti victories, a year later the campaign won passage in City Council of a living wage ordinance in Ann Arbor only to have the Republican mayor successfully veto it. Yet the living wage issue refused to die. The campaign raised enough public debate that the Republicans on council and the mayor were compelled to vote for a motion committing the city to paying its own employees a living wage. With the election of a Democratic mayor in November 2000 the campaign passed a living wage in early 2001. While the Washtenaw campaign can not point to dramatic demonstrations or a long-term, many-pronged economic-development strategy, its ability to network effectively and to win concrete victories has led to modest yet clear advances in the political outlook of a number of local progressive groups. Conclusion: A Step Along the Social-Movement Road Whether they display the stronger movement characteristics of our first seven examples or the more modest elements of the last two, living wage campaigns have demonstrated an ability to move local progressive activism further down a social-movement road. Indeed, living campaigns are ideally suited to enhance the social activism in a community regardless of where activists begin along the movement spectrum. For example, they lead naturally to broad coalitions. With labor beginning to search for allies, living wage campaigns are seen by a growing number of central labor councils and individual unions as a good tool for connecting labor to community groups. At the same time, as the ranks of working poor increase, many religious and community groups that traditionally have focused more narrowly on anti-poverty issues have reframed their goals to prioritize the promotion of quality jobs. While the coverage is not always positive, the living wage issue has also proven to draw media attention. The basic concept enjoys significant public support. And some form of living wage legislation is something that most campaigns have been able to win. Such victories have meant effective political alliances and the credibility brought by a group achieving what it set out to do. While the degree of opposition can play a role in enhancing the social-movement qualities of living wage activism, our cases also suggest that conscious intention plays a predominant role. In all of the cases, deep coalition building, grassroots organizing, the involvement of lowwage workers, and the spillover into continued activity did not simply flow automatically as the campaigns evolved. Rather, at the outset, key organizers initiated the campaign with the larger purpose of using the
54
campaign to maximize some or all of these elements. The living wage is thus an important tool for those wishing to rebuild an effective progressive movement around economic democracy. Finally, the combined experience of now more than 100 successful or active living wage campaigns across the country has created a clear national phenomenon. Today far more campaigns are active than the total number of municipalities that have passed living wage laws. All of these to a greater or lesser degree will enhance the social-movement capacity in their communities. And with the recent introduction of a federal living wage bill into the halls of Congress this movement-building will now begin to have a coordinated national dimension as well. While this federal undertaking is unlikely to spark immediate results, it does present intriguing long-range possibilities. With a network of more than 100 labor-community coalitions across the country, the living wage phenomenon has highlighted a clear progressive capacity for legislative change. Whether full-blown, long-term movement projects or newer and more modest labor-community lobbying campaigns, living wage activism has clearly become an important element enhancing the possibilities for a social-movement reawakening as we move into the 21st century. Notes 1 The material in this article comes largely from interviews with living wage campaign activists and internal campaign material which they provided. This material also formed the basis for a living wage handbook. Living Wage
Campaigns: An Activist's Cuide to Building the Movement for Economic Justice.
(See the "David Reynolds" listing in Resources below.) 2 The selection is based upon the author's interviews with key living wage figures active in the movement either nationally or in regional efforts. This material was used for the activist's handbook cited above. The Detroit and Washtenaw County cases draw from the author's direct experience. All other cases are based on interviews with living wage organizers. References Brownstein, Bob. 2000. "Working Partnerships: A New Political Strategy For Creating Living Wage Jobs." Working USA 4, no. 1 (Summer): 35-48.
55
Gentile, Gary. 2000. "Los Angeles Unions Strengthen: Area Becomes Ground Zero for Revitalized Labor Movement,." Ann Arbor News (October 1): A13. McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, eds. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nissen, Bruce. 2000. "Living Wage Campaigns from a 'Social Movement' Perspective: The Miami Case." Labor Studies Journal 25, no. 3 (Fall): 29-50. Simmons, Louise B. 1994. Organizing in Hard Times: Labor and Neighborhoods in Hartford. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Resources While it may not be exhaustive, the following list includes a wide range of resources that will be useful to further study or implementation of living wage campaigns. Grassroots Policy Project, Sugar Law Center, and Sustainable America. 1998. Public Subsidies, Public Accountability. New York: Sustainable America. (Available Grassroots Policy Project , 2040 S Street NW, Suite 203, Washington, DC 20009.) LeRoy, Greg. 1997. No More Candy Store: State and Cities Making Job Subsidies Accountable. Washington, D.C.: Good Jobs First. (Available from Good Jobs First, 1311L St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20005.) Metro Futures: Economic Solutions for Cities and Their Suburbs (New Democracy Forum), edited by Daniel D. Luria and Joel Rogers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.)] National Priorities Project and Jobs with Justice. 1998. WorkingHard, Earning Less: The Future ofJob Growth in America. Northampton, Mass.: Author. (A series of state reports is available from National Priorities Project, 17 New South St., Suite 301, Northampton, MA 01060, or online at http:// www.natprior.org/grassrootsfactbook/jobgrowth/jobgrowth.html.) Niedt, Christopher, Greg Ruiters, Dana Wise, and Erica Schoenberger. 1999. "The Effects of the Living Wage in Baltimore." Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. Nissen, Bmce. 1999. The Impact of a Living Wage Ordirmnce on Miami-Dade County. Miami: Florida International University Press. PoUin, Robert and Stephanie Luce. 1998. The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy. New York: New Press.
56
PoUin, Robert. 1998. "Livmg Wage, Live Action." The Nation 267, no. 17 (November 23): 15-20.
Reich, Michael and Peter Hall. 1999. Living Wages and the San Francisco Economy: Part 1, San Francisco Contractors and Home Healthcare Workers. Berkeley,
Calif: University of California Institute of Industrial Relations. Reynolds, David. 2000. Living Wage Campaigns: An Activist's Guide to Building the Movement for Economic ]ustice, rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and Wayne State University Labor Studies Center. (Available by calling [202] 547-2500. A PDF version is available for download at: http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edulivingwage.html) Reynolds, David, Rachel Pearson, and Jean Vbrtkamp. 1999. The Impact of Detroit's Living Wage Ordinance. Detroit: Urban Studies and Labor Studies Centers, Wayne State University. (PDF version available for download at: http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/livingwage.html) Reynolds, David and Jean Vbrtkamp. 2000. The Impact of Detroit's Living Wage Law on Non-Pro/it Organizations. Detroit: Urban Studies and Labor Studies Centers, Wayne State University. (PDF version available for download at: http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/livingwage.html) Weisbrot, Mark and Michelle Sforza-Roderick. 1995. Baltimore's Living Wage
Law: An Arudysis of the Fiscal and Economic Costs of Baltimore City Ordinance
442. Baltimore: Preamble Center for Public Policy.
LIVING WAGE GAMPAIGNS
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Living Wage Campaigns As Social Movements - Experience From Nine Cities

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Living Wage Campaigns as Social Movements: Experiences from Nine Cities

David Reynolds Abstract

LABOR STUDIES JOURNAL: SUMMER 2001