A City Council committee’s initial embrace Thursday of a $25 minimum wage for some tourism industry workers — 45 percent higher than the city’s present $17.25 minimum wage — sets the stage for another battle pitting organized labor and its allies against the business community and free-market believers who think elected officials shouldn’t micromanage private companies. The U-T Editorial Board has long been in the latter camp. In a state with the highest effective poverty rate in the nation — one that for years has made little progress on affordable housing and the cost of living — why believe that elected leaders know how to competently address poverty? Yet with the entire council and Mayor Todd Gloria boasting of their pro-labor credentials, this fight may be over before it started.
The best that those who are skeptical government knows best can hope for may be that City Hall takes concerns of the business community seriously and makes at least some concessions. In an interview with an editorial writer on Friday, the council member leading the push for the $25 wage hike — Sean Elo-Rivera — was open to the possibility. He acknowledged that the change would be far harder on smaller, less-capitalized employers and agreed that picking one category of worker for a huge raise over others raised questions of fairness. But he said repeatedly that it was time that workers shared more fully in the profits being made by the visitor industry.
Some will be rankled by whom Elo-Rivera counts as visitors. Given that most buyers of Padres tickets are locals, he was asked about the accuracy of classifying Petco Park workers as being in the visitor industry. He made a distinction between ticket buyers who actually live inside city limits and those who live in outlying areas. When he says “I want San Diego to work for San Diegans,” he is defining “San Diegan” far more narrowly than most people. If you’re from Chula Vista, El Cajon, Alpine, Poway, 4S Ranch or Encinitas, etc., you don’t count.
The most forceful point Elo-Rivera made is noting that those who predict disaster if the minimum wage goes through included many who made similarly gloomy predictions about previous minimum wage hikes, including likening them to the “Robot Full Employment Act.” The sky didn’t fall, he noted: “Democrats don’t have exclusive ownership on being right. But we don’t have exclusive ownership on being wrong.”
We would put it a different way. The sky hasn’t fallen yet because of our elected leaders’ overconfidence in their economic savvy. But past performance is no guarantee of future results.
