Posted on 06/01/2005 9:59:15 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Gov. Jim Doyle's deal with lawmakers to raise the statewide minimum wage in return for signing a law barring Madison and other communities from setting their own rates is drawing fire from some labor leaders.
"All this really does is raise the minimum wage to $6.50 an hour six months sooner than if he had done nothing," said Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor.
"In exchange for that, he's permanently negotiated away the ability of local governments to pass their own minimum wage laws to pressure the Legislature into raising the statewide wage," Cavanaugh said.
Cavanaugh, who was a member of the joint labor-management task force that recommended the higher statewide rate, said the deal "undermines the ability of the council he appointed" to make similar decisions in the future.
And he added that he would "personally have no interest in serving on future task forces in the Doyle administration if this is the way we're going to be treated."
In his most stinging criticism of Doyle, Cavanaugh suggested the first-term Democratic governor's role model "seems to be Tony Earl," the last Democrat to serve as governor before Republicans held the office for 16 years.
"Tony Earl made some mistakes in terms of ignoring his base, and Doyle seems to be doing the same thing," Cavanaugh said, adding that he believes Earl was a one-term governor because of those mistakes.
Doyle was scheduled to sign the bill today barring local governments from raising their local wage rates higher than the statewide standard.
At the same time, lawmakers were expected to allow an emergency rule to take effect raising the minimum wage to $5.70 an hour. A permanent rule will raise the rate to $6.50 an hour next June.
Doyle contends the deal is needed so that an estimated 80,000 minimum wage workers would get a $100-a-month raise immediately and a bigger raise next year.
In an unprecedented move, Republicans blocked the increase and had threatened to keep it from taking effect until December 2006.
As a result of that action, Madison, Milwaukee and other communities stepped in and raised the minimum wage within their city limits, which in turn triggered the Republicans' effort to bar such local increases in the future.
Cavanaugh contends that by signing the pre-emption law, Doyle muddied the minimum wage debate and deprived Democrats of a vital issue - that Republicans were standing in the way of a higher statewide wage - in next year's legislative races.
"The onus would have been on the Legislature" for blocking the increase, Cavanaugh said. "Now that he has cut a deal, he has to share some of that onus. And it allows the Republicans to say they've worked with the governor on this issue."
But Robert Kraig, political director of the Service Employees International Union, said he isn't sure what the long-term political fallout of Doyle's action will be.
For one thing, this was the first time in nearly a century that lawmakers actually blocked an increase in the minimum wage, "so it remains to be seen how important pre-emption really is," he said.
Kraig, whose union represents workers in many of the industries most often covered by the minimum wage, said that Doyle deserves to be praised for trying to get the wage raised sooner rather than later.
He acknowledges, however, "it was a big price to pay."
This is a follow-up to my post the other day: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1413814/posts
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