Take the Offensive, Nader Urges Living Wage Supporters

By Jorge Casuso

Calling Santa Monica a "testing ground" for living wage battles across the nation, presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Tuesday urged supporters of a pioneering living wage proposal to take the offensive against a business-backed ballot initiative.

Nader lambasted the proposed ballot initiative as "a plan full of loopholes and cockamamie language" during a late afternoon beachfront rally attended by nearly 400 supporters of a measure being studied by the City Council.

"They're taking the language of the people and wrapping it in corporate greed," Nader told the crowd. "You don't have to be progressive to take this to the cleaners.

"The city council here is trying to do it right and these corporations are taking the initiative from you, they wrap it in money and turn it against you," Nader said. "You should take the offensive. Keep fighting for justice because you will prevail."

Using a giant banner, members of Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART) showcased the differences between the business-backed initiative (which covers businesses with city contracts and subsidies) and SMART's union-backed proposal (which covers all businesses with more than 50 employees in the city's lucrative coastal zone).

Proponents project that SMART's measure -- the first in the nation to cover businesses with no direct city contracts or subsidies -- will cover some 3,000 low-wage workers in hotels and restaurants along the coast. The business-backed initiative, they say, will only cover about 200 workers, none of whom work in the businesses targeted by SMART's proposal.

"You have a loophole wage law -- a cynical effort by business to use the ballot initiative process to protect their bottom line," said Bill Bonner, who narrated SMART's version of the city's living wage war. "You have a law with a hole so big that even the big hotels can slide right through and hide behind it."

Los Angeles City Council Member Jackie Goldberg, who sponsored her city's living wage initiative, urged Santa Monicans to form a coalition that can counteract the charges levied against SMART's proposal.

"You're going to hear that the most unbelievable crap you've ever heard," Goldberg said. "You'll hear that civilization as we know it will end, that the restaurants will pack up and leave... that this will drive away business and tourism from these shores. They predicted this and more in L.A.

"You will be told an unbelievable amount of fear mongering," Goldberg said. "The people in Los Angeles could tell the difference between you know what and shinola, and so can the people here in Santa Monica."

Goldberg said the business-backed initiative -- which sponsors say closely mirrors the Los Angeles law -- would not work in Santa Monica, which has far fewer city contractors.

"They're trying to confuse people," Goldberg said. "They're saying there should be a cookie cutter living wage. The living wage should take a look at all the conditions in each city."

Goldberg said that although the hotels and restaurants do not receive direct municipal subsidies, their success is in large part due to taxpayer's dollars used to revitalize the beachfront.

"The city using tax dollars put together the pier again," said Goldberg, referring to the piers reconstruction after the storms of 1983. "The same tax payer dollars that refurbished the boardwalk and added extra police. That's what (the businesses) are getting from the city."

Goldberg also denounced the initiative's "poison pill," a provision which would strip the council of the authority to pass any living wage legislation, requiring instead that any changes to the law be taken directly to the voters.

"They put in a poison pill that says the people you elect can never do anything about the living wage," Goldberg said. "They are telling your council what areas they can legislate in and what areas they can't legislate in."

Medea Benjamin, the Green party's candidate for U.S. Senate, put Santa Monica's living wage war into a global context.

"This fight for a living wage is going on all over the world," Benjamin said. "We are part of an international struggle and here is where we draw the line in the sand."