business « Washington Policy Watch

January 30, 2012 • 12:28 pm 0

Small business owners shun lobbyists, call for “high-road” workplace standards

Jamie Vaughn, owner of Revival Lighting in Spokane

Business experience, academic research and political muscle are backing calls by small business owners for “high road” business and economic development policies – and policymakers are listening.

The recent campaign for paid sick days in Seattle featured local business leaders like Dave Meinert, Makini Howell and Jody Hall. And they didn’t just support the idea – they helped craft the proposal that eventually became law. As Howell put it in an open letter to business owners:

“Not only can paid sick days work for my business, I believe it is exactly the type of public policy that makes our community stronger. Ultimately, strong businesses need strong communities to thrive.”

Before you write that off as the “Seattle liberal establishment” at work, take a look at this article from the Spokane Inlander about Revival Lighting owner Janine Vaughn, who:

showed up as a simple small business owner in Inlander stories about income-tax Initiative 1098 (arguing it would save her small business money) and workers-comp insurance-privatization Initiative 1082 (arguing it would cost her small business money).

Vaughn is a member of the small business lobbying group Main Street Alliance, which initially formed to support the small-business friendly aspects of proposed national health care reform legislation.

The Main Street Alliance, Vaughn explains, is made up of mostly smaller businesses. That’s why they tend to stand in such stark contrast to traditional business lobbying groups – and the Republican agenda.

That kind of contrast gets noticed. The White House has been in touch to get the Alliance’s views on public policy issues that affect small businesses and their employees:

“It’s actually very surprising,” Vaughn says about her sudden ubiquity in the press. “They’re actually listening to the small business voice. It’s exciting.”

Academic research backs up these business owners’ experience with “high road” economic development policies like a strong minimum wage, paid sick days, and paid family leave.

The latest research by economists comparing counties that share borders across state lines has found that increasing the minimum wage not only increases the incomes of low wage workers, it does so without decreasing the number of jobs. And it benefits employers by decreasing costly turnover.

Since New Jersey’s paid family leave policy was implemented in 2009, and researchers at Rutgers have found paid leave is not only good for families, it’s better for businesses and leads to reduced use of public assistance.

A study in the American Journal of Public Health demonstrates how a lack of workplace policies such as paid sick leave contributes significantly to illness among Hispanics — and thus the general population.

This is a welcome and exciting trend – one that bodes well for Washington’s (and America’s) businesses, families and communities as we strive to restore the promise of the middle class and build an economy that works for everyone in the years to come.

Filed under: minimum wage, paid family leave, paid sick days, state economy, work and family, American Journal of Public Health, business, paid family leave, paid sick days, Research, Seattle, Sick leave, small business

January 19, 2012 • 8:25 am 0

Seattle Business Magazine: Keep the Minimum Wage High

From the Seattle Business Magazine | By John Levesque

Now is not the time for Washington state to scale back on providing a decent living wage.

You probably heard this one before: Having a job is the new raise.

True enough. In this desultory economy, few workers are likely to barge into the boss’s office demanding a raise and a company car. They’re just happy to have a boss. But some jobholders in Washington state actually got a sweet pay hike this month. On January 1, the state’s minimum wage went from $8.67 an hour to $9.04 an hour—the highest minimum wage among the 50 states.

Woo-hoo! For minimum-wage earners lucky enough to work a 40-hour schedule, that pencils out to an extra 15 bucks a week. Those keeping score at home will note that this latest increase takes the annual gross for a minimum-wage worker in Washington from $18,033 to $18,803 a year. A family of three is officially “poor” in this country if its income is $18,530 or less, so one way to look at the 37-cent pay raise is that it lifted at least some people out of “official” poverty and into, well, the outskirts of poverty.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that’s something to be proud of. Elsewhere in this issue, an academician suggests that forgoing this year’s increase in the minimum wage might create more jobs and help jump-start the economy. He may be right, but do we really need to rescue the economy on the backs of those who can least afford to carry out the offensive?

Filed under: minimum wage, business, economy, Employment, job, Minimum wage, poverty, washington state

January 6, 2012 • 9:07 am 0

Four new economic development policies to help us recover from the recession

Stan Sorscher, EOI Board Member

Guest post by Stan Sorscher (cross-posted from Huffington Post)

Let’s look at public policies for economic development that help us recover from the recession.

In one view of economic development, the role of government is to “make business succeed.” In this view, government should get out of the way and let markets find the most efficient outcome.

An alternative view of economic development is that government policies should raise our standard of living. In this view, government plays an active role in devising trade and industrial policies that attract investment, build industrial capacity, and create good jobs that build the middle class. And make business succeed.

To be sure, markets are powerful and efficient, but markets fail. In particular, markets fail to serve non-economic interests — not just the environment, human rights, labor rights, and public health, but markets also under-invest in R&D, education, physical infrastructure and social safety nets.

Globalization has sharpened the difference in these two approaches, by de-coupling investor and business interests from the public interest. If investors are global in their outlook, then the interests of America dim from view.

In a global economy where national boundaries are blurred, we need to think about trade and industrial policies that work for America. A year ago, I mentioned 4 policies that would help reconnect the interests of investors with public interests and communities. Here are four more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: EOI, state economy, business, economic development, Employment, export-import bank, globalization, government, higher education, industrial bonds, markets, policy, public good, public interest, recession, tax incentives, united states, worker training

September 7, 2011 • 3:57 pm 0

The Stranger: Industry lobbyists trying to save Seattle’s snotty waiters

by James Yamasaki, for The Stranger

By Cienna Madrid, The Stranger

Keep this in mind as you bite into a juicy burger at your favorite digs this week: An estimated 40 percent of Seattle’s workforce can’t get a paid day off of work when they’re sick.

For restaurant workers, this means serving food while they also cough, sniffle, rub their noses… you get the picture. And according to the Economic Opportunity Institute, a research and policy center based in Seattle, one in four grocery-store employees—the people fondling your produce—report coming to work sick because they don’t have paid sick days.

But that may soon change.

On Monday, September 12, the Seattle City Council is slated to vote on legislation that would require all Seattle employers to offer up to 72 hours of annual paid sick leave to the 190,000 full-time workers in the city who currently lack that benefit. Not only useful when they’re ill, a worker could use the paid days off to care for a family member or deal with domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

“Everybody has agreed that this is a fundamental need, that this is a norm that should be provided,” declared Council Member Sally Clark at an August 10 meeting of the council’s Housing, Human Services, Health & Culture Committee. The committee then approved a robust version—with a handful of concessions to business lobbies—of the paid sick days legislation.

But don’t expect easy passage when the full council convenes on Monday.

Washington Policy Watch

Small business owners shun lobbyists, call for “high-road” workplace standards

Seattle Business Magazine: Keep the Minimum Wage High

Four new economic development policies to help us recover from the recession

The Stranger: Industry lobbyists trying to save Seattle’s snotty waiters

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