Appeals Court Upholds Berkeley Living Wage Law

[Snazzy]

Appeals Court Upholds Berkeley Living Wage Law

By David Kravets Associated Press Writer
Published: Jun 17, 2004


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court upheld Berkeley's so-called living wage law Wednesday, ruling that businesses contracting with the city can be required to pay their employees well beyond minimum wage.

The appeals court panel ruled 2-1. Berkeley's law requires employers doing business with the city to pay workers a minimum $9.75 an hour or $11.37 an hour without health benefits.

California's minimum wage law requires at least $6.75 an hour and federal law requires $5.15. Dozens of states, cities and counties have adopted living wage laws, which courts have generally upheld.

Skates by the Bay restaurant opposed an amendment to the 2000 law requiring businesses operating on the city's waterfront to pay the living wages. The restaurant claimed the law breached its lease agreement with the city to operate at the Berkeley Marina.

....

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBDN6MCKVD.html

[whistle]

1. I just watched the made for TV movie from 1991....

..."Separate but Equal" that dealt with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made segregation illegal in this country in October 1953. It stared:

Sidney Poitier .... Thurgood Marshall
Burt Lancaster .... John W. Davis
Richard Kiley .... Earl Warren
Cleavon Little .... Robert L. 'Bob' Carter

I thought it was very well done, and showed just how difficult it is to get and keep our civil and economic freedoms. I'm glad you started this thread regarding the minimum wage. We may have to fight to assure that our public schools are protected and preserved also. In the movie, they talked about how desegregation might cause those not willing to follow the law would abandon public schools altogether. In Florida right now at this very moment, the governor Jeb Bush and his supporters are trying to do that very thing but forcing the voucher system to allocate state and federal educational funds away from desegregated public schools and into the hands of private segragated schools. The battle continues as cheating on FCat (Florida Comprehensive Appitude Tests) are uncovered:

<This is a little dated but look at what the state is doing>

Posted on Sun, Feb. 08, 2004

SPECIAL REPORT | FCAT RESULTS

'Unusual' FCAT scores raise questions
BY STEVE HARRISON
[e-mail]

When students at a Fort Lauderdale charter school for Haitians took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in spring 2002, the stakes were high. The students' poor performance the previous year had put the school in jeopardy of failing under the state's A+ plan.

After school on test day, transportation director Myra Loo and another employee of the Charter School Institute Training Center Annex dropped in on a teacher still working in her classroom.

According to a letter that Loo sent to district officials, the teacher was sitting with a stack of FCAT answer booklets, methodically erasing and penciling in new marks.

<snip>

''Students who do well on one test generally do well on the other. But there are a lot of reasons why they might not,'' she said. Roca says some students don't do their best on the NRT.

The state's investigation arm, which enforces the integrity of the FCAT, doesn't use an anticheating ''erasure analysis'' that the testing company, Iowa-based NCS Educational Services, could provide. It flags a school for an unusually high number of erased answers that were corrected.

Instead, the DOE uses its own computer program to search for suspicious answer patterns. But that program missed alleged problems at the Charter School Training Institute Annex, Sunland Park and Park Ridge.

''We can't catch everyone,'' Orr said.


<more>

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7902627.htm?1c

[DieboldMustDie]

2. The 1968 federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation...

would be $8.69 per hour today. The current federal minimum of $5.15 represents a more than 40% decline. :grr:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl