News

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

MINIMUM WAGE: CITY COUNCIL OF SANTA FE TO TAKE UP

PROPOSED EXPANSION OF LIVING WAGE LAW

PHOENIX--The Santa Fe, N.M., City Council later this month is expected to take up an agreement worked out between the city's business community and supporters of the current $9.50-an-hour minimum wage that would expand the law's coverage, representatives of the two sides told BNA Sept. 4.

The agreement, announced by Mayor David Coss in June, would allow an expansion of the so-called living wage, starting Jan. 1, 2008, to cover all employees in New Mexico's capital city, rather than just those employed by businesses with 25 or more employees, as the law provides.

Both sides also agreed to adhere starting Jan. 1, 2009 to an annual automatic cost-of-living increase already provided for in the law. The increase would be determined based on the consumer price index for the western region for urban wage earners and clerical workers. In exchange, organized labor would drop efforts to raise the living wage to $10.50 an hour, effective Jan. 1, 2008, as the living-wage ordinance calls for.

The agreement is subject to council approval, and action may come as early as the end of October, spokeswoman Carol Oppenheimer of the Santa Fe Living Wage Network told BNA.

Coss was unavailable for comment.

Hearings are to take place in September and October, although no formal date is set, Oppenheimer told BNA.

On Feb. 27, 2003, the council approved the living-wage measure (Ordinance 2003-08) by a vote of 7-1 (41 DLR A-9, 3/3/03). It applied to firms with 25 or more employees who are licensed or registered to do business in Santa Fe. The ordinance phased in a $10.50-per-hour minimum wage by 2008, beginning with $8.50 per hour in January 2004, then $9.50 per hour on Jan. 1, 2006, followed by a city review of the effects of the first stage of the wage increase.

Chamber: Economic Realities Had Key Role.

Simon Brackley, president and chief executive of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, which helped hammer out the latest agreement, told BNA Sept. 4 that economic realities played a key role.

Already, he said, most businesses within Santa Fe that hire 25 or fewer workers pay the $9.50-an-hour rate to remain competitive in the workplace, even though they are not required to do so.

In addition, he told BNA, businesses located in Santa Fe County but adjacent to the city limits are also finding themselves paying the $9.50 rate to remain competitive.

"Effectively, $9.50 has already been the minimum, so we didn't see that as being much of a change," he told BNA.

Brackley criticized the federal government for dragging its feet in raising the federal minimum wage. As a result, he said, several municipalities in New Mexico, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the state's largest city, have enacted their own living wage laws.

Earlier this year, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) on March 23 signed into law legislation (S.B. 324) that raised the state's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.50 an hour in January 2008, and to $7.50 an hour in January 2009 (58 DLR A-11, 03/27/07).

Under the new law, cities such as Santa Fe and Albuquerque with higher minimum wages already in effect will be exempt.