SeaTacs minimum-wage initiative has activists cheering, businesses fearing.

By now, voters in the city of SeaTac may be getting an idea of what its like to live in Ohio during presidential primary season: fliers in the mailbox, phones ringing incessantly, canvassers knocking on doors. And if theyre not registered voters, no worries: Someone will bring the form to their homes.

As this story goes to press, one of the more momentous ballot measures anywhere in the country is the subject of a flurry of courtroom filings that may or may not put a national campaign for a $15-an-hour minimum wage before voters for the first time. In SeaTac, a small King County city of 27,000 dominated by the multibillion-dollar enterprise that is Sea-Tac International Airport, a few thousand votes is all it will take to give activists and organizers their first major victory in a national effort for what they call a living wage. The SeaTac Good Jobs Initiative would create one of the nations highest minimum wages$15 an hourfor workers at Sea-Tac International Airport and surrounding hotels, parking lots and car-rental facilities. Retail stores with fewer than 10 workers, hotels with fewer than 30 workers and other enterprises with fewer than 25 workers would be exempt, along with free-standing restaurants and retail stores that are not part of hotels.

San Francisco now has the highest minimum wage for a municipality: $10.17. Presuming the measure survives legal challenges, SeaTac has become ground zero for a national campaign feared by business and cheered by labor. By October, I think most people will have made up their minds, says Heather Weiner, spokesperson for the campaign supporting the initiative. And I think there probably will be a lot of discussion aimed at the very few undecided voters that are still out there.

The initiative is the result of a petition drive from Working Washington, an organizing arm of the Service Employees International Union. It garnered more than 2,500 signatures within the city limits. The effort is on the leading edge of a national campaign in cities across America with the goal of raising the minimum wage and imposing labor-friendly standards on the workplace. But while in most cities, including Seattle and Chicago, the campaigns have involved rallies and demonstrationsoften in front of fast-food restaurantsthe SeaTac initiative, if successful, would have the force of law and could affect not only the city of SeaTac but also the operations of an airport that a 2007 report concluded generated $13.2 billion in regional economic activity.

The campaign for higher wages might be seen as an extension of the Occupy movement that two years ago highlighted the growing wealth gap in this country between rich and poor. As well, it reflects the reality that labor cant rely on state legislatures to increase the minimum wage to levels that it deems reasonable.

The SeaTac ballot initiative would raise the wages of some 6,100 workers, giving them an average $533 more a month, says Nicole Keenan of Puget Sound Sage, which has provided much of the intellectual firepower to the movement. The majority of them work for multinational corporations, Keenan says. Adds the Reverend Jan Bolerjack of Riverton Park United Methodist Church: They are working at high-end hotels, they are working for the airlines, they are working for restaurants where they could never sit at the table, they are cleaning the cabins of airplanes where they could never sit and buckle themselves in.

Leaders in SeaTacs business community worry that such a sharp increase in wages will leave the city as windswept as the airports vast runway system. I am going to be forced to lay off people for something that is not their fault, says Scott Ostrander, general manager of Cedarbrook Lodge, one of the smaller hotels near SeaTac and certainly not a multinational corporation. This initiative will destroy this community.

In some respects, SeaTac the city and Sea-Tac the airport are already a step behind California, where four airports have implemented successful living-wage campaigns. The highest minimum wage was established by the governing body of the Los Angeles International Airport at $15.37 an hour for workers without benefits. But those measures do not include the businesses around the airport. A separate Los Angeles city ordinance imposes a lower minimum wage for hotels in the airport district of about $12 with benefits and $13 without. The SeaTac initiative goes further than the California deals by imposing a $15 minimum wage both on the airport and on many private businesses in the city of SeaTac.

The SeaTac initiative also includes other provisions that bolster labors position, such as a mandatory sick leave clause as well as a requirement that displaced workers be hired first when a new contract is awarded. That clause may have been aimed at SeaTac-headquartered Alaska Airlines, which discharged 500 union baggage handlers in 2005 and replaced them with workers from a nonunion contractor. Also, language in the initiative states that any wages determined through a collective bargaining agreement would not be covered by the initiative, creating an incentive for businesses to allow their employees to unionize.

Unions have reason for concern. Nationwide, their power has steadily eroded. The decline in union membership has been accompanied by a broader decline in inflation-adjusted wages of American workers. Some 26.3 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed or have simply given up looking, according to July federal labor statistics. That situation has put downward pressure on wages, particularly for unskilled workers. It has been four years since the federal minimum wage was increased to $7.25. Though President Obama has endorsed an increase to $9, activists say thats not enough. They argue that increasing worker wages to $15 would not only give a boost to the working poor by raising their pay to roughly $30,000 annually, but it would also help the broader economy.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would inject about $450 million into the economy each year, wrote Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in an op-ed piece that has served as a keynote address for the movement. That would give more purchasing power to millions of poor and middle-class Americans, and would stimulate buying, production and hiring.

Incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn and State Senator Ed Murray, the two candidates in Seattles mayoral race, have both expressed support for a $15 minimum wage, though both say there would have to be a broad discussion within the community.

Critics, however, say that pushing wages to $15 an hour is going too far, too fast. Washington state already has the highest minimum wage in the country at $9.19 per hour. Pushing it to $15 in SeaTac would mean the new minimum wage there would be close to the national median wage of $16.71. This increase could force some employers to retrench. In particular, SeaTac could see itself losing hotels and other business to downtown Seattle or low-cost nearby cities like Tukwila.

Hoteliers up and down the State Route 99 strip adjacent to the airport say they are reconsidering expansion plans and might be forced to close their restaurants if the initiative passes. Parking-lot operators say their property values will fall because no one will be interested in purchasing their land to build new hotels. Within the airport, restaurant operators say they would be forced to charge more than the traffic will bear. Asks concessionaire LeeAnn Subelbia: Do the citizens of SeaTac realize, in the quest to increase wages by 63 percent, many companies will be forced to lay off employees or close their doors? I pay similar wages as large companies. There is no way a small company will survive under the requirements of this ordinance.

Subelbia, who operates Big Foot Food and Spirits and The Great American Bagel Bakery at the airport, has joined with the Washington Restaurant Association and Alaska Airlines in a suit to throw out the initiative on multiple grounds, including a pre-election challenge that sought to invalidate enough signatures to keep the measure from the November ballot.

Other issues will not play out until the election is decided. Meanwhile, a business-community group, Common Sense SeaTac, is fighting the campaign at the door-to-door level. It will be a difficult initiative for business to defeat, says Washington Research Council President Richard Davis, author of a report on the initiative and its effects.

Labor picked a ripe target. Incomes are low in SeaTac. The median yearly income for males was $35,334 in 2010, about 15 percent lower than that for Washington as a whole. Among women, it was $26,618. Only 58 percent of SeaTac residents speak English at home, suggesting a population of recent immigrants. The city poverty rate is 15.4 percent versus the King County average of 10.5.

I think the living-wage movement targets two types of placessympathetic cities or vulnerable cities, says Davis. It has caught on in places like San Francisco because San Francisco is a very liberal town and it is an easy sell there. SeaTac is not politically that liberal, but it is vulnerable because a targeted campaign can focus on a relatively small number of voters.

Davis says studies suggest 3 to 5 percent of affected jobs will be lost. Investment in hotel properties will decline as hoteliers are forced to raise room rates to Seattle levels, giving the trade a good reason to head north. To survive, many will change their business models. Hotels, for example, might stop offering room service and provide more buffets to reduce their need for wait staff. That decline in service could make them less competitive. And while a $15 wage at least would allow employers to hire the best and the brightest from throughout the Puget Sound region, it would mean fewer entry-level jobs for people in the immediate community.

Weiner counters that such arguments are scare tactics. Theyre talking about the community drying up and blowing away, she says, but I dont think thats going to happen. The airport is not leaving.