Editorial, 01/29/2006 - Time to raise the state wage floor

By THE NEW MEXICAN
January 29, 2006

Once again, the New Mexico Legislature is in the national spotlight — but only a beam or two is falling on cockfighting and aspartame, both of which some national organizations would like us to ban. And there’s marijuana, which today’s governor and his predecessor have wished our lawmakers would legalize to one degree or another.

The issue attracting the most out-of-state eyes this year, though, is the minimum wage.

With Santa Fe’s $9.50 an hour leading the entire nation, our state already had the attention of business and labor alike. Now, with the 30-day legislative session well under way, passage of a statewide $7.50-an-hour minimum appears likely. The question — and, perhaps, sticking point — is whether it would take effect at the start of next year, as House Speaker Ben Luján proposes, or be phased in the way Gov. Bill Richardson wants it.

The governor’s notion is to make the minimum $6.50 beginning in 2007, $7 at the start of 2008 and $7.50 to ring in 2009. He also wants to keep other local governments from raising the bottom salary — as a courageous Santa Fe City Council did in 2003. Local governments should be allowed to decide this issue — and as for the governor’s phase-in, it’s too little, too late.

All those figures are controversial because they’re higher than the federal minimum wage of $5.15, enacted a decade ago during the Clinton administration. Albuquerque voters last fall rejected a $7.50 initiative. That leaves our City Different, and another liberal redoubt, San Francisco, as leaders of the latter-day “living wage” movement. Florida voters bumped their minimum to $6.15 — but New Mexico’s $7.50 is a sharp statewide boost the business lobby opposes. Thus the tippy-toe approach the governor is taking.

The economic battle of Santa Fe featured two main views: the economic one arguing that it could put some businesses out of business and the moral one that people willing to work full time shouldn’t be relegated to poverty. This conflict was spelled out beautifully by The New York Times Magazine of Jan. 15. Its cover story, centering on our community, should be mandatory reading for all 70 of our state representatives and all 42 senators — and legislative staff members too.

Among the many points made by writer Jon Gertner, quoting a member of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a national organization involved in the Santa Fe effort, is that a full-time job at the federal minimum pays less than $11,000 a year. The only good news is that only about 3 percent of our nation’s work force is paid so pinchely.

Most employers know that higher pay brings a better choice of hires — and the ability to demand, without blushing, better performance from those workers.

Thus the $7.50 being bruited about the Roundhouse isn’t as big a raise as it’s being called by opponents. Sure, there are trickle-up effects involving workers who’ve been around to earn the $7.50 or more they’re getting now — and they can argue for even higher pay. Still, the state raise wouldn’t be as dramatic as the $9.50 that took effect New Year’s Day in Santa Fe. However, the high cost of getting by in this community amounts to yet another joker in the economic deck.

Hard as it might be for businesses in some parts of our state to swallow, $7.50 isn’t likely to choke them. And workers who would come in for that wage in January would, in turn, spend — maybe even save a bit of — their money, even though they’ll still be hovering around the poverty level.

Congress should be ashamed of its collective self for failing to have raised the national mininum to $7.50 by now. And while New Mexico doing so won’t likely prompt a $2.35-an-hour leap on Capitol Hill, it should add momentum to some lifting of the national salary floor.