Article on California Wage Law Ignored Other Views

To the Editor:

I was extremely disheartened by the reaction of the executive director of the California Association of Nonprofits to the recent voter-approved ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage in San Francisco (“San Francisco Charities Must Increase Payments to Low-Wage Workers,” November 13).

Instead of celebrating the passage of this law, Florence L. Green expressed alarm over the ability of nonprofit organizations to pay these wages, contending that unlike businesses, nonprofits can’t pass additional costs on to consumers. Her concerns are unfounded, yet The Chronicle did not seek to repudiate her claim.

The impacts of the federal increase and state minimum-wage increases in Washington and Oregon through voter-approved ballot initiatives prove that job loss and increased costs to consumers simply do not occur. What will most likely be an extremely small increase in labor costs is countered by increases in productivity and decreased costs for training and recruitment of new employees.

But the more important flaw in Ms. Green’s logic doesn’t concern economics as much as it does ethics. To suggest that nonprofits should be exempted from the law — when these organizations have been given two years to comply with the law, unlike their private-sector counterparts — is repugnant, at best. The nonprofit community in particular should be celebrating this hard-won victory and what it means to raising the floor for all workers. There would be less of a need for direct services that many nonprofits provide to low-income communities if workers were paid decent wages.

Let’s not forget that the minimum wage is an important source of income for a group of adult workers who make a substantial commitment to their families’ income. Why should the people who care for our children, aid the elderly and disabled, and prepare our food be denied the opportunity to earn their way out of poverty? Minimum- and living-wage laws are an important plank in a strategy to create a more just and equitable society and should be heralded along with the activists who have committed their life energy to making these policies possible. Next time, The Chronicle may want to consider talking to minimum-wage employees of a nonprofit group in San Francisco to get their perspective. I’m sure it differs significantly from Ms. Green’s.

Kristina Wilfore
Executive Director
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation
Washington