Corporate culture has lost its focus
By GUEST COMMENTARY BY VIVIAN ROTHSTEIN
Congratulations to our City Councilmembers Bloom, Genser, McKeown, O’Connor and Shriver for joining more than 150 cities across the country in establishing a living wage for city employees and the employees of city contractors.
The living wage concept is based on the belief that a person who works full time should be able to support themselves and their family in dignity without relying on public welfare benefits to put food on the table.
This is a belief as American as apple pie. It is a belief on which our country was built. Each generation toils so that the next can live a good life.
Yet, with millions of jobs going abroad, many business interests seem to believe that people holding service sector jobs — jobs that can’t be exported — do not deserve to live above the poverty level.
Our country cannot survive with only doctors, lawyers, university professors and scientists. We also need cooks, waiters, parking lot attendants, gardeners, crossing guards and others who devote their lives to making society productive and pleasurable. There is no reason why the people who hold these jobs, which are important to our well-being, should be forced to live in poverty.
The living wage movement asserts that by paying workers so little that they cannot meet their basic needs, businesses are benefiting from a form of “corporate welfare.” A case in point is the huge public subsidies enjoyed by Wal-Mart. Numerous studies have shown that Wal- Mart employees rely heavily on taxpayer programs for their medical care. By withholding health benefits from their employees, Wal-Mart is depending on the public to provide their employees’ health care services.
The Santa Monica living wage was set at $11.50 an hour so that workers employed by city contractors earn enough to provide for their own basic needs.
The living wage concept is embraced by a majority of Santa Monicans and has been for several years. A broader living wage law was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2002 only after a $2.3 million campaign, funded largely by the luxury hotels Shutters and Casa del Mar and other local business interests, which utilized misleading campaign literature in the last weekend before the vote. This strategy was investigated by a panel of leading citizens, including former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, which strongly condemned the tactics employed by living wage opponents in a report (available at DemocracyDistorted.com). This report deserves a review by any Santa Monican who values the integrity of our local electoral process.
The commission found that living wage opponents distributed last minute slate mailers suggesting that feminists, educators and Democrats were against Measure JJ, the living wage ballot measure, while in reality leaders of all these groups had endorsed it.
Some may say it is useless to review a past election in discussing the living wage concept. But I think it is instructive to understand the lengths to which large corporations will go to deprive ordinary people of the right to decent pay. The reason is not that corporate salaries and profits are hurting. It is that the corporate culture in our country has lost its sense of responsibility and accountability to the people who do the work, buy the products, and live in the communities affected by their policies.
And that is why our Santa Monica City Council is so precious. It is a body, elected directly by us, which over the past three decades has been willing to stand up for the community and the little guy in the face of huge financial interests that want to dominate our town.
This liberal council majority has defended rent control, limited development, protected the environment, built affordable housing, and now has passed a city living wage law. In the process, these public servants have made Santa Monica a financial success and a model of humane governance.
All I can say is, keep up the good work. (Vivian Rothstein is the director of Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism and is a Santa Monica resident.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 29, 2005. Read the original PDF.