SECTION: Part A; Page 1; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 2210 words
HEADLINE: L.A.'S GROWING PAY GAP LOOMS AS POLITICAL ISSUE;
POVERTY: SANTA MONICA CONSIDERS MINIMUM WAGE LAW AND L.A.
MAYORAL HOPEFULS WEIGH IN ON PLIGHT OF WORKING POOR.
BYLINE: JIM NEWTON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Los Angeles' prototypical poor person is no longer a scruffy panhandler
on the freeway offramp,
or a skid row derelict camped beneath a blue tarp. Today's poverty icon
is a working mother, toiling
eight hours or more a day at a job that does not pay enough to cover the
rent, clothe the baby or
provide a life of even minimal comfort.
That image is presented not by the radical left or organized labor. It's
the one that stares from a new
advertisement soliciting donations for the United Way, a solidly centrist
charity organization that
balances a commitment to giving with strong, long-standing corporate relationships.
For leaders of that organization, however, the growing sense of one city
breaking into two overcame
any reluctance to offend.
"We felt the working poor were being ignored," said Todd Rosin, the United
Way official behind the
ad. "These people are working, but they aren't getting ahead. They're having
to choose: 'Do I feed
my kid, or do I go to the doctor?' That choice is unacceptable."
As the United Way's campaign vividly demonstrates, the stubborn persistence
and changing character
of poverty today confronts Los Angeles' leadership, flush from six years
of economic expansion but
bedeviled by a growing income disparity that undermines the region's health.
The widening gap is
spurring new and controversial remedies and generating a surprisingly frank
political debate.
One startling fact: Los Angeles' 50 richest men and women are worth roughly
$ 60 billion and are
getting richer every year, while one out of every three children in the
county is growing up in
poverty--defined as a family of four that makes less than $ 16,450 a year.
That percentage has
steadily increased through the 1990s.
"It is," says Antonio Villaraigosa, speaker of the California Assembly, "something out of Dickens."
County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky agrees.
"You look around you, people are on cruises. They're working four-day weeks
and taking three-day
weekends. They're owning second and third homes," he said. "And then you
have a growing mass of
people who are at or below or just above the poverty level, even though
they're working one or two
jobs. . . . You have the potential for serious social upheaval."
The dichotomy between rich and poor already is playing out across the region
in challenging and
dismaying ways:
* It is illustrated by the struggles of airport security workers, most
of whom make minimum wage,
about $ 12,000 a year, in return for keeping the nation's air travelers
safe.
* It dominates the early run-up to the 2001 mayor's race, as candidates
and potential candidates,
such as Villaraigosa and Yaroslavsky, have identified the problems of the
working poor as the
campaign's leading issue.
* It divides Santa Monica, always a cutting-edge city in issues of poverty
and social justice, where
council members are considering what amounts to a municipal minimum wage
law, a prospect that
heartens labor advocates and traumatizes business interests.
* And it deeply troubles and conflicts Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan,
a Republican with
free-market sympathies, but also a Roman Catholic raised in a tradition
that champions the rights and
dignity of working people.
Riordan is a staunch supporter of business who is reluctant to endorse
the so-called living wage
ordinances, which he fears will drive away jobs by setting minimum wages
for companies that do
business with the government. That same Riordan, however, pays a living
wage at his downtown
restaurant, urges other corporate bosses to follow his lead and insists
in speech after speech that
government's actions must be judged on how well they serve the poor.
The city's economic recovery, for which Riordan takes considerable credit,
has helped create
thousands of new jobs, but has perpetuated, and in some cases exacerbated,
the city's vast disparity
in wealth.
To his critics, the upshot seems to be a policy of saying lots and doing little.
Has Riordan lived up to his own maxim, that government should serve the interests of the poor?
"Absolutely not," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, a leader of the Living
Wage Coalition and active
union organizer. "He hasn't ever developed a strategy that helps raise
the standard of living."
Riordan Defends Record With Poor
Riordan's defenders say his ability to affect poverty is highly limited--issues
such as welfare and
public health are largely beyond a mayor's reach.
The mayor cites a long list of achievements, some directly focused on poverty,
but most addressed to
the broader topic of improving the quality of life for poor people. Today's
Los Angeles is safer and
cleaner than the one Riordan inherited in 1993. It has more and better
parks, more libraries with
longer hours. All that helps to attract new business--and with it, jobs.
"By far the best thing you can do is improve the quality of life in communities,"
Riordan said last
week. "All the rest follows from that."
The only real long-term answer, Riordan and others insist, is education.
Poorly educated young
people end up in low-wage jobs, and employers willing to pay for a well-educated
work force avoid
areas with bad school systems. With a real devotion to reforming Los Angeles
city schools, Riordan
and others believe that poverty could be addressed here.
If Los Angeles under Riordan has struggled with the paradox of working
poverty amid prosperity, the
contrast is even more striking in Santa Monica. There, minimum wage workers
clean up after wealthy
patrons in the city's booming hotel business. Rooms can cost $ 450 a night;
the workers who clean
them are lucky to make more than $ 5.75 an hour.
Such glaring disparity has fueled what may be the region's most ambitious
and controversial attempt
to close the income gap. A group of activists in Santa Monica is spearheading
a campaign to have
that city enact the state's first municipal minimum wage, which would start
at $ 10.69 an hour plus
benefits. That's the equivalent of about $ 22,000 a year.
It would apply to any business with 50 or more employees that is situated
within the so-called coastal
zone, a mile-wide band along the beach.
The business community is apoplectic.
"I call this the 'leaving wage ordinance,' because if it passes, businesses
will be leaving," said Tom
Larmore, a Santa Monica lawyer who is chairing a special Chamber of Commerce
committee to
study the issue. "This would have a very, very severe impact. One of the
things that many businesses
would certainly consider and probably do is lay off employees."
Along Santa Monica's waterfront, hotel operators and managers generally
decline to comment on the
wages they pay, beyond grumbling off the record about the hardship that
such a forced salary hike
would cause them. They are not the only ones who might feel the law's sting:
The zone in which
proponents want to see the wage law imposed includes at least two department
stores, many retailers
and a number of large restaurants.
With few exceptions, starting salaries at those places fall far below Santa
Monica's proposed
minimum wage.
"The goal is to impact those businesses where the income disparity is the
greatest," said Vivian
Rothstein, a longtime activist who is one of the leaders of the Santa Monica
effort. "These are folks
who are following the rules. They're working their butts off . . . and
they're living in poverty. They
can't afford to feed their families."
As for the suggestion that businesses will leave rather than pay the required
wage, Rothstein and
Janis-Aparicio scoff.
"Who's going to leave a hotel with 90% occupancy on the beach?" Janis-Aparicio
asked. "If they
leave, 10 companies will be waiting to move in."
The pressure on business also is justified, proponents say, because many
of the businesses paying
their workers minimum wage benefit by direct or indirect government subsidies.
In Santa Monica,
public money has helped pay for improvements along the beach and the Promenade.
The city also
chips in to promote Santa Monica around the country. All that draws visitors
to local hotels,
restaurants and stores.
Larmore calls that misleading and wrong. The taxpayer money that has paid
for Santa Monica
improvements and promotions largely is generated by the tourism industry,
he noted. So the city
would not have it to spend were it not for hotels and other businesses.
More importantly, he said, the effect of hiking wages for those companies
would be to drive down
demand for workers.
That means hotels and other affected companies would pay more for their
people, but they'd employ
fewer of them. "It actually is going to hurt the people they're trying
to help," he said.
Early Issue in Mayoral Race
The hardest test in the quest to confront working poverty may be in the
coming race for mayor of Los
Angeles, a campaign that has started early and that, in large measure,
will set priorities for the city as
it enters the next century.
Poverty, as any political consultant will tell you, is not good politics.
The poor do not vote. The rich do. People do not like to be scolded for
their affluence. And one
dirty little secret of poverty is that it's good for some people. Los Angeles
is the rare city where
middle-class people routinely have maids and gardeners. The abundance of
poor people willing to
work for low wages is what makes that possible. A real attack on poverty
thus might make life more
expensive for others.
All of that argues against income disparity and the poor playing a central
role in any political
campaign, much less one of such national significance as the Los Angeles
mayor's race.
And yet, already there are signs that the issue will not go away.
City Atty. James Hahn, by most accounts the front-runner in the mayor's
race, frequently addresses
poverty, although often indirectly. His rhetoric generally addresses the
topic in ethnic rather than class
terms, but touches on some of the same notions--improving health care,
transportation and education.
Yaroslavsky may or may not run for the city's top job, but he already is
speaking forcefully on the
issue of class divisions. The county supervisor studied history and sees
a chilling comparison between
the divisions in American society at the beginning of the century with
those here at the end. Nothing
less than democracy itself is at stake, he argues.
"It's a matter of human dignity, of valuing the worth of a human being
as a part of society," he said.
"When people feel they're not worth anything, they do desperate things.
. . . Democracy will not
work in an environment in which tens of millions of people are economically
distressed."
Yaroslavsky, who has supported the campaign to require county contractors
to pay $ 8.32 an hour
with benefits or $ 9.46 without, said he hopes the efforts here continue
and are emulated elsewhere.
"If we have managed to improve the situation for the poorest of the working
poor in this county, then
we have accomplished something," he said.
Then there's Villaraigosa. Unabashedly liberal and pro-labor and seemingly
intent on running for
mayor, this is an issue made to order for the Assembly speaker. Already,
he is leaning hard on it,
regularly appearing at events in poor communities, sounding off on everything
from homelessness to
welfare reform to, most pointedly, the working poor.
"This is the preeminent social issue and the biggest challenge that we
have as a city and as a society,"
he said. "It's essential for people like me to raise this issue, to show
that it's not just important to poor
people. It's important to all of us."
Whether Villaraigosa or any candidate can get much traction with a direct
appeal to tackle poverty is
an open question.
In the meantime, however, labor activists say they intend to organize workers,
living-wage backers
intend to push the city of Santa Monica. And the United Way hopes over
the next few months to
draw broad public attention to the problem, taking the issue beyond the
activists to a new audience.
"We're not on a soapbox for the living wage," Rosin said. "What we're doing
is painting a picture of
reality."
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Poverty in L.A. County by the Numbers
More than 20% of Los Angeles County residents live below the official poverty
line--$ 16,450 a
year for a family of four. In 1990, that number was roughly 15%.
Roughly 6% of households bring in more than $ 150,000 in annual income,
a higher percentage than
the state or nation.
The median rent is $ 654 a month--or nearly $ 8,000 a year. Median homeowner
housing cost is
$943 a month--or roughly $ 11,000 a year.
An estimated 236,000 people are homeless.
One out of every three children lives in poverty, up from less than one in four in 1990.
43% of all Latino children live in poverty
33% of African American children live in poverty
21% of Asian American children live in poverty
21% of Anglo children live in poverty
Roughly 12% of elderly people live below the poverty level, an increase from about 9% in 1990.
2.7 million county residents, including one out of every four children, have no health insurance.
Sources: The United Way of Greater Los Angeles and Los Angeles County
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: September 7, 1999