Council President Todd Gloria: Backing 40% minimum wage increase is “righteous cause”. Efforts to put on ballot start today.

Monday while filling in on KOGO Radio [listen at 13:58] a man named Alex, who identified himself as the owner of two Mexican restaurants, called me to say he doesn’t know what he’ll do if this $11.50/hour city wide minimum wage goes into effect after what has just happened to his business. What just happened? July first he statewide minimum wage bumped up from $8.00 to $9.00 an hour.

“I’m a small Mom and Pop restaurant, I can’t afford to give a job that they’ll [employees] can have a middle class life. I just can’t do it! Man, I barely do that myself, and I’m working 80 hours a week!”

At his two stores with 32 employees, he claimed the $1.00/hour increase now cost him an extra $900.00 a week. So, do you know what he did? He cut 100 hours from the weekly schedule hurting the very people Gloria and the unions claim to want to help. This was on top of his continual quest for cheaper food to serve his customers.

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Owner of 2 restaurants told me on @KOGORadio when #MinWage went to $9/hr his costs rose $900/wk.& cut 100 hrs.Can’t afford city increase.

When San Diego City Council lefties such as David Alvarez and Todd Gloria first floated their proposal of a $13.09 (not a typo) an hour minimum wage, they promised to get the voters’ consent. Hearing the expected outrage from the business community, they feigned reasonableness, and dialed back the ask to $11.50 an hour. 

[T]he soft spoken political pugilists pulled a rope-a-dope

Claiming they’d now “compromised” with “stakeholders”, Alvarez and Gloria announced they’d gotten all the input they needed and would not seek to put the minimum wage on the ballot. Put another way, the soft spoken political pugilists pulled a rope-a-dope.

Council President Gloria, in fact, is now heading the opposition with the SEIU and other unions to not only stop the vote but to stop people from signing the petition to get the proposal to a vote.

Council President Gloria, in fact, has now amassed $300,000.00 to head the opposition with the SEIU and other unions to not only stop the vote but to stop people from signing the petition to get the proposal to a vote. The signature drive to put the issue on the ballot began today.

What could possibly go wrong? How about intimidation at signature gathering spots as happened in 2011 when union activists fought pension reform? 

And Gloria is teeing it up to happen again. 

At his two stores with 32 employees, he claimed the $1.00/hour increase cost him $900.00 a week. So, do you know what he did? He cut 100 hours from the weekly schedule hurting the very people Gloria and the unions claim to want to help.

During an interview with LaDona Harvey on KOGO yesterday, Gloria claimed his was a “righteous cause” and that efforts by small business groups and the Chamber of Commerce to put the vote to the people are a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Apparently that wasn’t the case when he suggested taking the measure to the voters. Oh, wait, he wasn’t planning to do that anyway. Wake up. 

The biggest issue isn’t only the 40% increase in labor costs for the business owners in San Diego, although we all know people will lose jobs and teens and black youth will have an even tougher time getting into the labor force without education and training. It’s that minimum wage will keep going up every year and price more and more people out of the labor pool. Gloria, Alvarez and the unions have seen to that by tying the wage to the Consumer Price Index. They want this to be the minimum wage battle to end all minimum wage battles. If they win this, they’ll never have to do it again because of the CPI tie. 

And what of the ever increasing costs of doing business? 

The restaurant owner laments: When [minimum wage] goes to $11.50, I’m going to have to cut like crazy!

Exactly. Hurting the very people this proposal claims to help.