The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.44           November 27, 1995 
 
 
Reactionary Minnesota Jobs Bill Defeated  

BY DOUG JENNESS

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - A "Jobs and Fair Wage Initiative" that became the most debated issue in the weeks leading up to the November 7 elections here was defeated by a vote of 60 percent to 40 percent.

The ballot initiative would have required all private businesses receiving more than $25,000 in city aid to hire St. Paul residents through city-designated hiring halls at no less than $7.21 per hour. This wage is the federal poverty level for a family of four. The proposed ordinance was placed on the ballot last summer through a petitioning effort by the New Party and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Opposition to the measure was spearheaded by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, with big-money corporations such as Northern States Power, US West, 3M, and several big insurance companies bankrolling the war chest. The editors of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the big-business dailies in the Twin Cities, both campaigned against the measure.

Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) mayor Norm Coleman was the chief political spokesperson for the big-business drive to defeat the initiative.

The main political voice favoring the ballot measure was City Council president Dave Thune of the DFL. Seven DFL state representatives and senators also sided with the proposal, as did former Minneapolis mayor Donald Fraser. A broad range of religious institutions and liberal activist groups joined the fight for the jobs initiative, including the Minnesota National Organization for Women, Women Against Military Madness, Macalester College Peace and Justice Coalition, and the University of Minnesota DFL.

Both ACORN and the New Party are local units of national organizations and they hoped that a victory in St. Paul would provide momentum for comparable efforts in other cities. A similar measure has been adopted in Baltimore and one is being discussed in Milwaukee. The St. Paul initiative was promoted by the Nation, a liberal weekly magazine distributed nationally.

The fissures in the DFL, which has dominated politics in St. Paul for many years, were also reflected in the trade union officialdom in the city.

The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly suffered contortions over the issue, taking different stands at three successive meetings. At its August meeting the assembly voted to endorse the initiative, and its publication, the Union Advocate, followed with prominent coverage promoting it. A month later the labor body voted to oppose the measure at a meeting where there was larger than usual participation by representatives of construction unions. The construction union officials argued there was a conflict between the hiring halls they operate and those proposed in the initiative. In October, the assembly decided to be neutral, letting each local take its own stand.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 was among the most ardent supporters of the jobs initiative. Many of its members are grocery and drug store workers making less than $7.21 an hour. One of the points of contention around the proposed measure has been the development of the Midway Marketplace, a complex of department stores and supermarkets that is getting more than $11 million in public subsidies, mostly in the form of no-interest or low- interest loans.

Cub Foods was one of the first enterprises to open, with 320 new jobs. Seventy of the jobs are full time, paying $12.40, and in accordance with the union contract will be filled by Cub employees from other stores regardless of where they live. The other 250 jobs will be part-time at $5.40 an hour. If the proposed ordinance had been adopted Cub supposedly would have had to fill those positions with St. Paul residents at $7.21.

This would have accepted the reactionary notion that certain jobs are reserved for only a section of the working class based on residence - thus strengthening the employing class's attempt to pit sections of the working class against each other on the basis of nationality, sex, citizenship, country of origin, or religion. Moreover, it would have accepted the framework of part-time work and the two-tier wage set-up that is being institutionalized in many workplaces.

Even the Jobs Now Coalition, a liberal lobbying association that favored the ballot initiative, issued a report in October defining a "livable wage" for a family of three as a full-time hourly rate of $10.23.

The opponents of the measure argued that the $7.21 wage would discourage businesses from investing in St. Paul and consequently lead to a decrease in jobs. It was a "scud missile" that would have killed jobs, Coleman contended.

Supporters of the initiative accepted the same framework of subsidizing big-business profiteers to provide jobs, but with the stipulation that they hire St. Paul residents, pay poverty-level wages, and prove that they had increased jobs.

The only voice that didn't start with what the employers should do but with what workers, with our own forces and independent perspectives, can and must do was the Socialist Workers campaign. Four days before the November 7 vote the Pioneer Press ran a letter from me explaining that as the Socialist Workers candidate for city council, who didn't make it into the run-off after the September primary, I had campaigned for jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no reduction in pay, a public works program, and affirmative action in hiring. I also proposed a big wage increase and cost-of-living escalator clauses to cope with inflation.

These proposals are the basis for workers through their unions to conduct a serious fight for jobs for all at union scale wages. The Jobs and Fair Wage Initiative was a diversion from this course that could only lead workers to count on collaborating with political representatives of the employing class around a very narrow reform orientation. That's why the Socialist Workers campaign called for a vote against it.

Doug Jenness is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 15199 in Anoka, Minnesota.

 
 
 
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