Are unions pushing too far in demanding a $15 minimum wage at SeaTac?

Things are expensive in San Francisco, the fourth priciest city in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported in March.

Thats no secret, or even mildly surprising, but this is: Proponents of a $15 an hour minimum wage for workers in and around the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are using the San Francisco International Airport as a yardstick for fair wages.

A graphic on the website for proponents of the Good Jobs Initiative compares SeaTacs baggage handlers pay of $9.19 an hour to their counterparts at SFO, who get $14.18.

Same airline. Same flight. Same work. Same bag. Different pay, the graphic states.

Alaska Airlines joined the Washington Restaurant Association to block the initiative from the November ballot, but the effort failed. The SeaTac City Council voted earlier this week to send the question to voters after a petition signed by more than 2,500 people forced its hand. SeaTac, an outlying suburb of Seattle, has a population of about 27,000.

A CNN cost-of-living calculator shows housing costs, when comparing Seattle to San Fransisco, are 119 percent more in the California city. Groceries are 4 percent more; health care about 5 percent more.

Sage Wilson, a spokesman for Working Washington, a coalition backing the so-called Good Jobs Initiative, said the comparison with San Fransisco was meant to show evidence of living-wage ordinances already in place at airports on the West Coast. He said $15 an hour for SeaTac $30,000 a year was a modest and a reasonable place to start.

What happens when you raise wages? The community thrives, he said.

The groups website, itsourairport.org, includes a study called First Class Airport, Poverty Class Jobs, which says workers at SeaTac are living in poverty and dealing with poor working conditions. It points to citations from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries that fined Alaska Airlines and subcontractors $68,000 after employees argued they were not properly trained on safety measures and were exposed to things such as human waste and toxic chemicals.

But critics are concerned about the potential unintended consequences of the forced $15 an hour minimum wage, which would be the highest in the country .

You can try and force employers or businesses to pay more for a position than the value produced by the worker, but in the end thats only going to result in the worker losing their job, said Max Nelsen, labor policy analyst for the Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank in Washington.

Neslen released a study on the proposed minimum wage requirement Thursday.

He testified during the council meeting and argued the reasoning behind the high minimum wage is flawed, would hurt the economy and is more a move by labor organizations to expand their membership than a move to help workers.

Personally, I would be very skeptical of this being for the worker, he said.

Nelsen refers to the initiative itself, which, he said, reads like a collective bargaining agreement and gives wiggle room on minimum wage and paid sick leave requirements if an employee is a union member.

We think that there should be flexibility for collective bargaining agreements, Wilson said.

The fear of an increased minimum wage is that employers will hire fewer workers and raise prices, Nelsen said. Already, a plan for three major hotels would be scrapped if the minimum wage goes into effect.

When workers have more money, Wilson argues, the economy benefits.

We think the evidence is pretty clear that when low-wage workers get more money, when they get enough to afford the basics, then they boost the economy, he said, referring to airports such SFO, LAX and San Jose, which have living-wage ordinances and are still operating. We havent seen any of the kinds of sort of scare stories that folks at the Freedom Foundation are telling.

Nelsen said the majority of airports in the country dont have living-wage ordinances. No one is trying to argue good wages are a bad thing, he said, but upping the minimum wage wont fix problems such as an inability to advance or a lack of access to higher education.

To a certain extent, though, there is really only so much you can do about it on the wage side, he said, adding that its best to let the free market reign.

Contact Shelby Sebens at [email protected]