The San Francisco Chronicle opposed the November 2003 initiative that created an $8.50 per hour city minimum wage, believing that the $6.75 state minimum was sufficient. Now that a new study has shown that none of the predicted negatives associated with the wage hike has occurred, the Chronicle’s January 4 article on the report continues the paper’s anti-wage hike crusade. Forget the fact that the current $8.82 per hour remains far below what city contractors must pay, or that the state minimum has not kept up with inflation. With its Season of Sharing charity program over for the year, the paper can get back to putting the needs of the Committee of Jobs ahead of San Francisco’s low-wage workers.
When a think-tank affiliated with the University of California releases a study, the media typically covers its findings and does not challenge its credibility. Reporters customarily seek dissenting or contrary opinions, but not to the extent that critics, particularly those lacking empirical data, get nearly equal time.
But this is precisely what occurred in the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of a study conducted by the Institute of Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley on the impact of the minimum wage hike passed by San Francisco voters in November 2003. The study found little to no adverse economic impacts to the wage hike, while it raised salaries for 54,000 workers.
The study’s chief author, UC Berkeley economics professor Michael Reich, stated that the results should encourage other cities and states to raise their minimum wage levels. But this is an anathema to the Chronicle, which used its coverage of the study to undermine the integrity and credibility of its authors and their conclusions.
In its January 4 piece, “Minimum wage law praised in new study,” nearly half (7 of 16) of the paragraphs were devoted to those challenging the report’s conclusions. And none of these challenges were accompanied by data collected by an academic institution, or any other credible source.
Moreover, the Chronicle did not accompany the article with a chart showing how the state and federal minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation, or one showing how a worker earning the minimum $8.82 cannot afford an apartment in San Francisco. Instead, the Chronicle used a chart that had San Francisco’s minimum towering over the state ($6.75) and the federal minimum ($5.15)—-entirely omitting the city’s much higher cost of housing and other living costs.
It’s hard to believe that there are people in San Francisco who would begrudge paying a worker only $8.82 per hour, but Nathan Nayman of the Committee on Jobs had nothing but scorn for the study’s findings. In response to the report’s conclusion that the wage hike passed by voters in 2003 did not adversely affect the city’s economy, Nayman called it “highly suspicious” and questioned who funded and requested the study.
How shameless. And this from a man who heads a group with CEO’s earning in the millions of dollars each year.
The other longtime minimum wage opponent cited extensively in the Chronicle story was the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. Its head, Kevin Westley, claims that the group conducted a survey in 2004 showing that 98% of restaurants raised prices, 54% reduced the number of employees, and 91% reported lower profits.
But Westley offers no prior year data for comparison. We have no idea whether restaurants also raised prices prior to 2004, or what role, if any, the minimum wage hike played in any of the survey results.
Moreover, the Chronicle writer who covers the restaurant business stated in a December 29, 2004 article (“Dining scene is finally looking up,” by GraceAnn Walden) that “this year was much better for the restaurant industry than 2003.” Walden also described 2004 as a year in which “the restaurant business in San Francisco bounced back.”
This seems to confirm the study’s findings that the wage hike had no detrimental impact, as restaurants did better after the January 2004 wage hike than before.
The Chronicle’s distorted account of the minimum wage study comes as Governor Schwarzenegger seeks to pass a watered-down version of the wage hike bill he vetoed last year. But it is clear from the UC Berkeley report that the Governor’s fears that a meaningful minimum wage hike would have adverse business consequences are misplaced.
After running weeks of Season of Sharing stories about the plight of San Francisco’s low-wage workers, Chronicle editors should understand the difficulties of getting by on $8.82 per hour. But restaurants provide important advertising revenue to the financially-reeling Chronicle, so an important study on the benefits of raising the minimum wage had to be distorted to serve the paper’s agenda.
