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Updated 6/23/2004; 9:00:23 AM
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004 |
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) District
925 Collection goes to Wayne State University
June 21, 2004
Wayne State University's Walter P. Reuther Library and the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs are pleased to announce the opening of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) District 925 Collection. Comprising 15 linear feet and spanning the years 1973 to 2004, this collection is an invaluable resource for historians and other scholars seeking to understand the interplay between the women's movement and the labor movement in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The collection is a significant addition to the Reuther Library's substantial holdings on women and work, including the papers of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Mildred Jeffrey and the 20th Century Trade Union Woman oral histories.
For twenty years, until its restructuring and merger with other SEIU locals in 2001, District 925 successfully organized thousands of librarians, college and university support staff, day care, local government workers and other office, technical and professional employees. This organizing took place in hard-fought campaigns
primarily in Massachusetts, Ohio and Washington. Along with 9to5, the National Association of Working Women, it lobbied for equal pay, affirmative action, child care, office health and safety and against age discrimination and sexual harassment.
In launching District 925, SEIU signaled its recognition of the growing presence of women in the workforce and of clerical work as the single largest sector in that workforce. To meet the needs of both these constituencies, the International simultaneously announced the creation of its Clerical Division, later called the Office Worker Division.
The "SEIU District 925 Collection" documents the activities of this effort and is sure to attract scholars pursuing research on this SEIU affiliate and related subjects.
Kristen Chinery, Librarian
The Walter P. Reuther Library
College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48202
Phone: 313.577.8377
8:46:48 AM 
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Court upholds Berkeley 'living wage'
San Francisco Business Times
June 16, 2004
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2004/06/14/daily28.html
The city of Berkeley was within its rights to insist that a restaurant operator at the city's marina pay its workers the city's "living wage," a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
In its 2-1 vote, the panel said the move did not violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on legislative interference with valid contracts.
A "living wage" requires certain employers, usually those which do business with a city or use city facilities for private business, to pay their employees wages approximating the real cost of living in the locality, which is often significantly higher than the applicable state or federal minimum wage. In California, living wage ordinances are in effect in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Marin counties, as well as a number of cities, including San Jose, Pasadena, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Berkeley.
Berkeley enacted a living wage law in 2000, after RUI One Corp., a subsidiary of Restaurants Unlimited, Inc., signed a lease with the city for its restaurant at the Berkeley Marina.
The crux of RUI's argument was that it was unfair to target only it and a small number of other businesses in the marina. RUI conceded the city's authority to regulate wages, and to enact the original living wage ordinance, but challenged the legislative decision that imposed the ordinance's terms on Marina businesses but not upon other similar businesses elsewhere in the city, the court noted.
"It is more than reasonable that the city should expect marina businesses, which receive so many benefits from the city in the form of improvements and lack of competition due to the development moratorium, and which operate on land held in the public trust, to contribute to the welfare of the surrounding community and not to exacerbate its problems," said the majority opinion, written by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw. "Although RUI claims that any benefit it receives is offset by the rent it pays the city, it is certainly 'plausible' for the city legislators to believe that rent alone does not adequately discharge marina businesses' responsibilities to the public and city. Furthermore, it is certainly 'plausible' that certain members of the public might be deterred from patronizing the Berkeley Marina if they knew that the businesses there paid their employees less than a living wage.
In the dissenting opinion, Judge Jay Bybee said the city overstepped its authority.
"[T]he City effectively rewrote RUI's lease by ordinance," he writes. "Berkeley used its sovereign authority to achieve what it failed to negotiate in its proprietary capacity. The Contract Clause protects parties doing business with the government from such arbitrary exercises of sovereign authority."
Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited, Inc. owns and operates 31 full-service restaurants in 19 markets, according to its Web site. A call to the company for comment was not immediately returned.
8:35:39 AM
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