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Life & Times Transcript
07/11/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- It may be a living wage for workers, but is it a death knell for business? Jack Kyser>> The repercussions have been that the firms, in some cases, cut benefits, cut overtime, which is not good because overtime is nice to get and, in some cases, it hurt their profits. Carolina Briones>> These companies that benefit from public funding should be providing high-quality jobs so that people can support their families. Val>> And then, singer-songwriter, Loudon Wainwright III, has some wry observations about life in Los Angeles and a few choices words for computer music thieves. Those stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val>> Imagine if the minimum wage were to suddenly double to more than ten dollars an hour. Well, that's in effect what happened at LAX after the city of Los Angeles passed a living wage ordinance. So does this living wage hurt businesses more than it helps workers? Sam Louie takes a look at the impact. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> This is one of the most important terminals. Sam Louie>> Maria Louisa Mosqueda spends her work day walking up and down the terminals at LAX. She's a service agent, meaning she handles almost anything that comes along. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> We help passengers coming to us for the winter. Also we are gate guards. But especially, we are customer service. Sam Louie>> Maria has had this job for ten years shortly after immigrating to the United States from Mexico. She enjoys the variety and the excitement that comes with her job. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> Every single day, something new. You can walk, you can feel more healthy, because you are in the action. Over here at LAX, it's a lot of action and I like that. Sam Louie>> But what she did not like when she first took the job was her salary, getting the minimum wage of $5.75 at the time. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> It was very disappointing to me because every single day you have to provide money for the school, for the bus and then we have to save every single, you know, coin to give food to the kids. Sam Louie>> But in 1997, that changed for Maria and thousands of other workers. That's when the city of Los Angeles passed the living wage law. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> The living wage also raised the quantity of my check, raised the standard of my life and raised very well my children. Sam Louie>> The law required companies with city contracts or those doing business on city property to pay a living wage. It applied to LAX, the second largest airport in the country. Now they must pay workers either $10.03 an hour without health coverage or they can pay them less, $8.78 with health benefits. When the law was first being debated, companies claimed they could not afford such a steep hike in wages, that it would force them to lay off workers or, worse yet, go out of business, but has that happened? UC Riverside economics professor, Dr. David Fairris, wanted to find out. He is co-author of a study that examined the living wage in Los Angeles. Dr. David Fairris>> It's absolutely the best study we have of the impact of a living wage ordinance on workers and firms. Sam Louie>> The study says sixty-four percent of the jobs affected by living wage are here at LAX or Ontario Airport. The rest are at city-owned facilities or with private businesses with city contracts. The majority of those jobs are private airline baggage handlers, security guards, janitors, parking attendants and food and service workers. Dr. Fairris, what does the evidence from this study indicate about the living wage and its impact on employees and employers? Dr. David Fairris>> The primary findings are that wages of truly low-income, poor workers rose by virtue of the living wage by roughly twenty percent whereas the loss of employment, job loss, was only around one percent. Carolina Briones>> The intent of the law was to improve the quality of life for some of the working poor in Los Angeles. Sam Louie>> Carolina Briones is another co-author of the study. She's also the Assistant Director for LANE, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Her agency argues that certain companies have an obligation to pay employees well above minimum wage since the employers have a unique business relationship with the city. Carolina Briones>> The idea is that these companies that benefit from public funding should be providing high-quality jobs so that people can support their families. Sam Louie>> The study also found that the living wage ordinance covers fourteen thousand employees with the majority of those workers getting a significant pay raise once it became law. The average wage hike? $2,600 a year. Living wage workers also get twelve paid days and ten unpaid days off per year, two more paid days off than before. Dr. David Fairris>> I think it's absolutely crucial for people to understand that the workers who are affected by this study are indeed truly low-income, poor workers. These are not high school kids who are hamburger flippers who live in middle-class households. Sam Louie>> Despite the gains, there are still several areas of concern. Carolina Briones>> The health benefits aspect of the policy fell a bit short of the intended goals. We found that most firms did not set up new health benefits plans for their employees. Sam Louie>> They also found that the ten dollar an hour living wage is still hard to live on. Carolina Briones>> Over a third of workers remain uninsured after the living wage and over forty percent rely on government assistance programs. Sam Louie>> As for the business perspective, several businesses we approached did not want to talk on camera, but they did tell us the living wage increased labor costs and cut their profits. As a result, they have passed those additional costs on to consumers by raising prices. Jack Kyser>> The repercussions have been that the firms, in some cases, cut benefits, cut overtime, which is not good because overtime is nice to get, and in some cases, it hurt their profits. Sam Louie>> Jack Kyser is the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. He would like to see the living wage eliminated, saying it's bad business. Jack Kyser>> It's just another, I would say, black mark on our little escutcheon about, you know, Los Angeles is a difficult place in which to do business. They can cite the business taxes, the living wage. Sam Louie>> The living wage impacts only a small percentage, two percent of Los Angeles's labor force. Still, Kyser feels businesses are concerned that it will grow. Jack Kyser>> What they've seen in the city of Los Angeles is this what I call the remediation effort trying to help people, the inclusionary zoning, this living wage, and I think they're afraid that, sooner or later, there will be an effort to expand that. Sam Louie>> Living wage laws are spreading. Los Angeles is among one hundred twenty five cities across the country with a living wage law. The original minimum wage was created in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation and it has increased over time. Dr. David Fairris>> For many years throughout the 1940's and 1950's and into the 1960's, the federal minimum wage was rising and indeed improved the living standards of poor workers. It peaked in real value, in purchasing power, in 1968 and has been on the decline since then. Sam Louie>> So these days, a minimum wage of $6.75 an hour in California isn't near enough to support one person, much less a family. To combat the growing ranks of the working poor, more and more municipalities are turning to a living wage as an alternative to the minimum wage, but should government at the local level interfere with the marketplace? Dr. David Fairris>> We don't allow firms to decide in a free market context the amount of pollution that they can emit and I think it's plausible to argue that we maybe shouldn't allow firms to set wages. Sam Louie>> Critics argue that the living wage does nothing but continue to keep families trapped in lower wage jobs. Jack Kyser>> It keeps them locked in that position and what you want to do is say, okay, have a program where, okay, I want to increase my skills level. This is the type of job I'd want to get. Sam Louie>> As for Maria Louisa, she has drawn her own conclusions about the living wage. Maria Louisa Mosqueda>> We can afford better to pay the bills and the food and you can feel more relaxed. Sam Louie>> While economists, business owners and city councils will continue to debate the pros and cons of the living wage, it has given thousands of workers at LAX more money, more flexibility and a better quality of life. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times". Val>> First there was ChoicePoint, now Citibank. Private information on millions of Americans is being lost and falling into the wrong hands every day. No wonder ID theft is rampant. But now there's a tool to fight it: identify theft insurance. Is it worth it? For some answers, I came to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and spoke with Executive Director, Doug Heller. Heller says breaches of privacy like the ChoicePoint data theft and the Citibank lost data are just two in a long list of cases. An estimated five percent of American adults are victims of ID theft. I asked Heller if ID theft insurance is a good idea. Doug Heller>> Well, I'll tell you first, there's a real irony in that because it's the insurance companies and their affiliated banks as well as these mortgage firms that are causing a lot of the problem in the first place by releasing our data to the public and making it so available either because they lose it or just because they trade it as though it's some commodity. So I think the first thing we've got to realize is that, when insurance companies are selling us identity theft insurance, it's like somebody slashing the tires on our car and then offering to sell us a new set of wheels. It's disingenuous in some respects. But as for the product itself, it also may be largely worthless. I mean, most people who have experienced identity theft realize that most of your time fixing the problem is spent on the phones intermittently over the course of years usually dealing with a whole host of people, be it the companies from whom you lost money or companies that are trying to collect money from you. It's just a constant intermittent thing, sort of like a low buzz of annoyance for years and years. Then it reflects on your credit report so that you end up having to make changes and tell people that, you know, if you want to get a loan from a mortgage company, you have to fix that. But what an insurance product can really do to help you is kind of an unknown quantity and we haven't really found much value in that. Val>> On the other hand, they are offering it for as little as twenty-five dollars or whatever for six months or a year. They do say that they will cover hard costs like faxes and notary publics and all that kind of thing. And if necessary, I think some of them will even refer you to a specialized company that deals with identity theft. I mean, there are some things they can offer and help with. Doug Heller>> Well, yeah, there are some things that can be done to make dealing with identity theft better. Insurance companies, in some instances, are actually providing it free, as are some banks. I don't think people should be looking to buy these products particularly because of the pricing. Some, as you said, are twenty-five dollars and some are more like ten dollars a month, and it doesn't get reflected in the value that the average consumer will get back from it. I mean, one of the things that we're seeing with the insurance industry across the board is the breaking down of insurance. Instead of selling us just one big policy like a homeowner's policy, they're selling us ten different little policies. Yes, each one seems like it's a little bit of money, but between your identity theft insurance and your cell phone insurance, you end up paying a lot more on a monthly basis than we ever historically would have. That's the insurance industry's new game, just to segregate all these different problems in our life and sell us insurance for each and every one of them. It's like with health insurance. You want to buy a whole health insurance policy. You don't just buy cancer insurance or diabetes insurance. You need to buy the whole package. That's the same with other kinds of insurance. Don't let these companies break it down so we start picking and choosing what we get protection for. Val>> Doug Heller knows about ID theft. His wife was a victim. The thieves opened a credit account and bought furniture and other items in her name. Doug Heller>> They eventually got so brazen because they were able to buy so much and sign up for so many accounts that they went ahead and bought furniture only to have it delivered to the house that they lived in. We think that the police are tracking them down and we hope, though we haven't confirmed it yet, that these people will be arrested. That's a foolish criminal. Some of the people that are doing this are really high-tech and pretty savvy and they're not doing identity theft to get a new couch. Even still, this sort of bumbling identity thief has caused us so much headache. I say us, my wife has gone through so many hours of frustration with this. It doesn't mean we're going to buy identity theft insurance because I don't think that's a good product. I do, however, think that our banks and our insurance companies should be a lot better about helping us solve these problems and, more importantly, stopping them from occurring in the first place. Val>> Many companies give consumers a chance to opt out which prevents the company from selling or trading your personal data, but Heller says -- Doug Heller>> -- even that isn't going to protect us fully because what the opt out rules don't prevent is a lot of in-house sharing. What that means is, these banks and insurance companies can move our data within their affiliates. You take a company like Citigroup. It's got sixteen hundred corporate affiliates. Val>> Wait. There are sixteen hundred separate companies under Citigroup that can all share our information? Doug Heller>> And they can share their data back and forth. So, okay, Citigroup might not be giving our information to Bank of America, but there are sixteen hundred companies that they can. It just means that our data is out there. It's in so many different realms that the public is not protected even by the laws that we have in California and we do have the strongest laws. Sadly, they're not strong enough. You can go on the internet right now and, for some twenty-five or thirty-five dollars, buy peoples' social security numbers. We've done that. To make the point, we bought the social security number of the CEO of Citibank. But the problem is, how do we keep that data in private hands rather than out there in the public? That's why the California law is a good start, but it is not really entirely sufficient. We would prefer the companies to require you to opt in to sharing data. I want you to share my data and I'm telling you proactively. Otherwise, no go. What the banks and insurance companies won in California and have won across the board is the ability to basically default to sharing your data. We want it to be the other way around. The default should be everything is private and only if you give us the go-ahead will we then either sell or share your data. So there is that problem. We're not there yet. We haven't the solution. It's easily enough done if only the banks and insurance companies didn't have so much influence in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C. where, of course, they would never stand for such a reform. Val>> Doug Heller with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, thank you so much and good luck with your identity theft problem (laughter). Doug Heller>> Thank you very much, Val. To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val>> If you know someone who likes to download music without paying for it, you may want to remember Loudon Wainwright III. He's the musician from the 1960's who's got a few choice words for high-tech theft in the new millennium. But don't get the idea that Wainwright is cranky. He's just outspoken, as Philip Bruce found out when he met the singer-songwriter at Largo, a popular nightclub in Los Angeles's Fairfax district. Philip Bruce>> So you are a man who purportedly has no computer, yet you're worried about file-sharing. How did that happen? Loudon Wainwright III>> Well, I've broken down and gotten a computer finally. I think I'm enjoying have a computer. File-sharing makes me a little queasy. I mean, that's a mild word actually. Angry is closer. Philip Bruce>> Now let's go back and tell people what file-sharing is if they've never downloaded a song. That's tapping into the internet and lifting somebody's work. Loudon Wainwright III>> Right, for nothing basically. Unless, you know, you're doing it through licensing or something. I wrote this song called "Something for Nothing". It was inspired by some heated arguments I had with some young kids, young men, who are the children of a friend of mine. You know, bright, well-educated kids who were telling me they were doing this. I thought it's strange that they're not ethically bothered by this, that they do it merely because they can do it or their friends do it or they've somehow villainized the record companies. Philip Bruce>> All those guys who are making a ton of money. Loudon Wainwright III>> Well, that's a separate issue and that's an issue which needs to be addressed. But for me, who writes songs and spends a lot of time and work on it and spends time in the recording studio, I feel that file-sharing is not the right word. I think ripping of files is a more accurate word. [Film Clip] Philip Bruce>> Their attitude basically was that we're not doing anything wrong, right? We're taking it off the internet. It's out there. It's free to grab. Loudon Wainwright III>> No, but as I say in the song, you know, a PC is like a crowbar. It's only a tool. There is something wrong with it. Just because you can take something and not get caught -- of course, now they are getting caught at it -- but there is something wrong with it. Ethically, there's something wrong with it. I mean, everybody wants something for nothing. If the parking meter is broken, you're going to take a chance and park there. But when they give you a ticket, I don't know if you should complain about it really. It's against the law. The music is copywritten and protected, so they are doing something wrong. [Film Clip] Philip Bruce>> So, Loudon, you've been at this a long time really since the 1960's as a songwriter, but you got this combined career as both a musician and an actor. Which do you like best? Loudon Wainwright III>> Well, you know, show business is my life (laughter). I love all aspects of it. I think I like acting because of all the makeup I get to wear, but singing and playing is fun and it's more a steady gig for me now although I've recently gotten a couple of acting jobs. I'm in the new Tim Burton movie out at Christmas. I was in a series on Fox for a while called "Undeclared". I studied to be an actor. My original intention was to be an actor, but both jobs are fun when you can get them. Philip Bruce>> But through all the years, you've played in a lot of nightclubs like Largo and, in fact, your new album was recorded live here. Loudon Wainwright III>> Right here on this stage. Philip Bruce>> And at the Mystic Theatre up in Petaluma. Loudon Wainwright III>> That's right. Philip Bruce>> So you've had a good taste of both. And you're a Los Angeles guy now. Let's not forget that. You are a Los Angeles guy. Loudon Wainwright III>> I'm Mr. Los Angeles (laughter). Yes, I'm a Los Angeles guy. I moved here about a year ago from New York and like it very much. Philip Bruce>> Still having withdrawal? Loudon Wainwright III>> No, no. I'm having problems breathing (laughter), but once they put the fires out, I'll get back to loving Los Angeles. Philip Bruce>> And you've written a song about Los Angeles which, if people get your album, they'll get to hear. But just as a little teaser, what are you pointing out about Los Angeles? Loudon Wainwright III>> Well, the song I wrote about Los Angeles is called "Here Come the Choppers". It's kind of about just all the choppers and then it turns into kind of this fantasy thing where they started strafing Ralphs and attacked the Screen Actors Guild. It's a kind of a bizarre fantasy. Philip Bruce>> Well, you know, strafing Ralphs, I know some picketers that would probably go for that (laughter). [Film Clip] Philip Bruce>> Loudon Wainwright, thanks a lot for spending some time with us on Life and Times and for playing for us here. Loudon Wainwright III>> I enjoyed it. Thank you. [Film Clip] Loudon Wainwright III>> That's just a piece of it. Val>> "Here Come the Choppers" is the name of Wainwright's newest CD. He takes jabs at love, his grandmother and intrusive fans. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val>> Next time on Life and Times -- Could it really be possible to get rid of gasoline engines and use hydrogen to fuel our cars? >> Almost two-thirds of this planet is made up of hydrogen. The key is, you make hydrogen. So if you lived in the Pacific Northwest, they could use hydroelectric power and water to make hydrogen. If you lived in Texas, natural gas and steam. Val>> That's next time on Life and Times. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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