The State Industrial Welfare Commission has the authority, apparently, to hike the state’s wage mandates on private employers, without any action of the State Legislature. That seems like a poor set-up. Mandates on employers like this should require a vote of the people’s representatives EVERY time. If jobs are going to be cut due to regulation on businesses, someone in elected office should be responsible, not some extremely obscure commission.
Anyways, if you haven’t been following the debate over the minimum wage between the Governor and legislative Democrats, here is a short breakdown:
- The Democrats want to raise the minimum wage.
- The Republican Governor wants to raise the mandated wage.
- Republican legislators, overwhelmingly, do NOT want to increase the mandated wage.
- The Republican Governor wants a $1 an hour hike.
- The Democrats also want $1 (they would probably go for $10 if they could), but also want to create an ‘auto-pilot’ indexing to inflation of the mandated wage).
- The Governor had one of the few GOP supporters of this regulation on business, Senator Abel Maldonado, introduce his $1 hike in the mandated wage.
- Democrats killed the Maldonado bill, and are quickly moving their own ‘indexing’ version through the legislature.
- The Governor petitioned the Industrial Welfare Commission to increase the wage by administrative action.
OK, this bring me to the ‘outrage of the week’: Apparently this obscure commission had four members whose terms had expired. Late last week Governor Schwarzenegger re-appointed two Democrats who had previously been put there by the now-disgraced and recalled Gray Davis. To add insult (to Republicans) to injury, the Governor than added TWO MORE Democrats to the commission. All four of these are FOUR-YEAR appointments.
Just to look at one appointment — to the important position of Chairman (text from the Sacramento Bee):
BAD POLICY
In his letter to the Industrial Welfare Commission, Schwarzenegger says that, "The minimum wage should set a reasonable floor for entry-level wages in a manner that does not affect the availability of entry-level jobs or inhibit job growth."
Earth to Governor: Increasing the mandate on employers, forcing them to artificially raise their salaries instead of relying on the free-market system is GOING TO INCREASE COSTS and IS going to COST JOBS as employers have to figure out what to CUT in order to deal with the new costs to their business associated with the mandated wage increase.
As Nobel-Lauriat Economist Milton Friedman succinctly put it:
In an exclusive column for the FlashReport, Republican State Senator Bob Dutton made some very salient remarks about the real impact of an increase of the minimum wage:
**There is more – click the link**