Hello.

Thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

The fight for 15.

That's what millions of workers all throughout the United States say they're fighting for a federal $15 an hour minimum wage.

President Biden and his administration say workers must have a livable wage as part of what they claim is the equality and, in their words, the equity of a sustainable workforce.

Democrats in Congress, workers rights groups, labor organizations all throughout California and the U.S., well, they've been fighting for workers, insisting a $15 an hour minimum wage is vital to survive.

However, many congressional Republicans and many business owners in the Golden State and really all throughout our nation who are already devastated from COVID, they insist a federal $15 minimum wage is going to put them out of business for good.

And that's where we begin our broadcast with a divide over the fight for 15 and its effect on restaurant workers and restaurant owners.

As we hear both arguments.

My name is Lenny Rosenberg.

I'm the Michael Jordan of the restaurant industry.

Los Angeles restaurant owner Lenny Rosenberg has made a name for himself in the restaurant world here in California and throughout the U.S.. That's because Lenny is not reluctant about letting the world know he is the goat of the restaurant business.

And he let us know that all throughout this interview.

I'm the Michael Jordan of the restaurant industry.

I've been dubbed this because of a 30 year history across the country in rebranding good restaurants and making them great.

For the record, Lenny Rosenberg is the self-proclaimed goat.

He dubbed himself Lenny, who owns Marmalade Cafe in affluent Santa monica, California.

And Lenny is in the process of purchasing another restaurant also here in Santa monica.

He has had great success in this tough and competitive industry over the last 30 years, either owning or purchasing and flipping dozens of restaurants.

Prior to Lenny taking over Marmalade Cafe a few years ago, he was the owner and operator of Junior's Deli, the iconic West Los Angeles Jewish deli known all throughout the Southland for decades.

Naturally, when Lenny bought this business back in 2012, he changed the name to Lenny's Deli.

We first met Lenny at the deli several years ago.

That's because while every restaurant owner was running from the news camera back then, so not to seem heartless and cheap.

When asked about their opposition to a $15 minimum wage increase that Los Angeles was implementing.

Lenny was running to the camera with his megaphone and his message.

Shockingly, Lenny promised he was going to fire every employee if he had to to save his business from the new L.A. $15 minimum wage that he insisted was going to put him and hundreds of other restaurant owners out of business.

Well, some years later, Lenny is now on a national campaign.

His own personal crusade of sorts to fight a federal $15 minimum wage, which he claims is going to put tens of thousands of restaurant owners out of business nationwide.

Now, if Lenny's rant seems to be shtick, it's not.

We found that out because Lenny did fire some of his employees and he insists he is going to continue to fire more of his workers if, as he says, things get to the point where a $15 minimum wage, coupled with the loss of business from COVID, threatens his livelihood, his earnings.

Although he says his fight is for all the business owners everywhere and not just himself.

Now I'm doing this with a specific clause to help restaurants that have been targeted during the great pandemic that have been hurt across the country.

I want to make it clear I'm in favor of a minimum wage of $15 an hour, just not how the government has been going about it.

It's also meant to be raised a little bit at a time, maybe 25, $0.30 a year, not from $7.

And $0.25 to $15.

All of a sudden, the government just doesn't understand economics and how this is going to destroy restaurants across the country.

Lenny believes a federal $15 minimum wage is going to cause massive unemployment nationwide, with businesses shuttered everywhere from California to New York.

He says with a minimum wage increase, restaurants are going to have to double their prices immediately to offset the profit and loss margin, which he says is going to be a disaster.

They're probably going to have to fire 20 to 30% of their staff just to keep their restaurants open.

That's the lucky ones.

As far as that, doing a federal minimum wage across the board, which would bring places like Texas from 725 to $15 overnight, it's going to be a disastrous outcome.

And many of our allies, part of a campaign that led to a minimum wage increase here in L.A. City, in L.A. County.

And when we were waging that campaign, people said the same thing that if we raise the wage, that businesses are going to close down, that people are going to lose their jobs, businesses are going to leave Los Angeles.

And we found both from our research around the country that that is overall not true.

And we found in Los Angeles also that that has not happened.

So people want say that doesn't scare tactics, but it's not true.

Alexandra Steele is the executive director of Kiwa.

Cuba is the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, an activist organization in Los Angeles that has been advocating for workers rights for 30 years.

He will bring together employees from different ethnicities into different industries to try and create better working conditions.

Alexandra says the fight for 15 and the fight against discrimination in many L.A. communities is vital to this process.

Alexandra and her organization to you are part of the fight for the federal $15 minimum wage in her younger days.

Alexandra was a restaurant worker, and she says she knows all too well the challenges.

The reason why we need this across the country is that it is the bare minimum that a person needs with working full time in this country to survive.

Honestly, it's not even enough.

So when people talk about some markets and some cities having higher standards of living, others having no world.

Well, 15 is actually the bare minimum law that we need in this country.

It is not sufficient to live decently in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, other cities like that.

It's just a bare minimum.

And so that's why we need to establish that for around the country.

Minimum wage should be raised and decided fairly from county, the county across the country, depending on the cost of living.

That is the only way to do it.

You cannot do it across the board where it's one mandate for everybody.

It makes it impossible for the restaurant to survive.

A $15 minimum wage is a social justice issue, but it's also just a social issue.

It's just an economic issue.

It's false to see that $15 is a lot.

It's not.

People are telling us it's too much, but it really isn't.

People are struggling.

People are suffering.

People are getting kicked out of their homes because they can't pay their rent because it's a massive credit card debt, because they can't pay for the basic necessities.

And by setting a $15 minimum wage, that is literally the floor.

That's literally the least we can do.

We need to set that standard and then take it higher in those states and cities where it needs to be higher.

Lenny says the fair standard that Alexandra talks about is never going to happen in the U.S. until Congress stops fighting over the wage and making this a political battle.

It's so politicized because of the fact that the Democrats want to help the employees.

The Republicans want to help the businessmen.

The problem with politics today is that no one wants to meet everybody in the middle.

If you met everybody in the middle, you'd have an equilibrium between the worker and the owner.

Without that, you have nothing.

Politicians have no idea how to run a municipality, get a loan, a business, get a loan, retail.

They've never been in retail.

They don't understand it.

They're like landlords.

They have no clue on what the working class person goes through to run the economy.

So people who signs a $15 minimum wage do not make $15.

Anyone who makes that reach knows that it's not enough.

And I. I would invite anyone who is questioning whether we need a $15 minimum wage to sit down with a pen and paper and do their own budget.

It's nearly impossible to live decently on $15.

And people are acting like that.

Say that that's a high amount.

It truly, truly isn't.

As.

As everyone who makes that amount or less notes.

This a business cannot pay its employees enough to survive and thrive.

Then it should not be in business.

Now, that may sound surprising, but why would we want to support a business that forced its workers to go into debt or become homeless or not be able to feed their family?

That's not a viable business.

Minimum wage is meant for the entry level employee.

It's not meant to feed a family.

It's meant for workers who are just starting out in the business.

Now around the minimum wage.

Sometimes people claim that it needs to be low because it's an entry level wage, that it's just for people who are teenagers or have no experience at all.

That's not the case.

The data show that the minimum wage earners are people with years of experience.

We have members who have decades of experience working in restaurants and other businesses who are still making them.

They're not teenagers.

They're people in their thirties, 40 to 56, who are still making the minimum wage.

It's impossible.

It's it's monstrous.

Drones are out today.

The ones that have survived, the lucky ones.

Are making next to nothing if not losing money every day.

And joining me now to discuss this further is Ron Herrera with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Officials, CIA.

Ron is president of the Federation, which has over 300 affiliate union and labor organizations representing more than 800,000 workers.

They've been fighting for the rights of working people and their communities for decades.

And also joining me is Rick Reef.

Rick is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

He's been with the Orange County Business Journal for over 30 years as an editor, columnist and now editor at large, reporting on businesses and politics of all sorts.

He was also a former host of several news and public affairs programs on PBS.

Thank you both so much for being here.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let's begin with you.

Explain for our viewers about your organization, the Federation of Labor, who you're fighting for, what you're fighting for, and then we're going to get to the discussion.

Thanks.

Go ahead.

We're a 300 affiliate federation.

We have about 800,000 union members in the county of Los Angeles.

And we fight for workers.

We you know, the one of the union models is wages, benefits, working conditions.

And we try to get what is actually fair.

But I had to explain it in one word, fairness.

Ron, you heard Lenny Rosenberg in my field report.

He's insisting a federal $15 minimum wage.

He says, look, it's going to kill business.

He's he's already fired many of his employees over the minimum wage increase.

I know I was there when he fired some of the employees and he says he's going to fire even more workers to save his business to be asked to.

Is Lenny right or wrong with I guess you could say it's his personal crusade on behalf of restaurant owners because he's so vehement about opposing this mandated minimum wage increase, and especially when, as he says, COVID is already decimating restaurants and businesses.

Those are blanketed statements that someone like myself who has negotiated contracts for decades against major corporations, small companies, and we hear that all the time.

Union negotiators aren't here to, you know, hurt companies.

We're out to negotiate what's fair for workers.

That's why that's our number one goal.

But those are blanketed statements that, you know, I'm pretty familiar with.

I think that, you know, individually we have to look at things and individualize and we just can't blanket a statement and say, you know, because the federal minimum wage goes up, it's going to, you know, cause bankruptcies and companies are going to go out of business.

Rick, to you now and I am going to say you are nothing like Lenny Rosenberg.

There were thousands of critics of Lenny on YouTube after he did some other minimum wage reports.

And they're saying he's the most annoying, the most arrogant person ever.

He's dubbed himself the Michael Jordan.

How many times in the report at the beginning of this broadcast.

However, with that said, I'm guessing you do agree with Lenny that a federally mandated, a federally mandated $15 minimum wage increase.

Not good, right?

It's not good.

The government should not be doing this, Rick.

Is that correct?

And if so, who should decide wages and prices?

Well, partially correct.

I do think the government has a role to set a floor.

In other words, you have to have, in my opinion, a minimum wage to avoid exploitation, slave labor, sweatshops, that sort of thing.

So I think most people would agree with that.

But we're talking about more than doubling the federal minimum wage and, you know, run around, talked about negotiations, and that's true.

Everybody blows smoke, you know, and employers are going to take a stance.

But that's the beauty of having a union and negotiating is that you sit down and rhetoric aside, both sides finally settle on reality when you put it in the political sphere like this.

Unfortunately, I think it's much more that the rhetoric can take over and decisions can be made, which are really bad decisions.

And I think raising the minimum wage, especially this drastically, you know, minimum wages periodically get bumped up, but this is more than a doubling.

And, you know, let me just cite the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, that is the not a nonpartisan arm of the federal government.

It's respected by economists and politicians all across the spectrum.

And based on their best guess.

More people will lose their jobs When you take if you raise the federal minimum wage to 15, then we'll be lifted out of poverty.

Their estimate is like one 1.4 million will lose in lost jobs.

About 900,000 people will be lifted out of poverty.

And you say, well, how can there be all these people are going to get raises?

And that's true.

There's going to be a lot of people getting raises.

But a lot of those minimum wage jobs don't go to the working poor.

Their spouses with second incomes are, you know, having a second income to supplement the family budget.

It's people working second jobs.

It's college kids off for the summer.

And so some of that raised goes to those people.

And so you will have, you know, people that benefit.

But but the losers, the 900,000 estimated lost jobs are the very people you're trying to help.

For the most part, the unskilled, all the people with with low education, they're looking to gain a skill, get into the job market, and then they move up.

Most people don't stay in those low paying jobs.

They move up.

That's that's the beauty of this system.

And eventually a lot of them become members of one of Ron's unions.

And they, you know, they get really good money there.

So anyway, that's why I think mandating a federal minimum wage more than doubling it is a terrible idea.

So, Rick, what do you say to all the folks like Ron Herrera, who insists these workers must have a livable wage?

They say it's as simple as that.

And you know what?

That is where the social programs of society come in.

All right.

And it's the job, the low paying jobs are not the vehicle.

In a way, we shouldn't think that the minimum wage is going to be able to support a family.

I think, roughly speaking, if I'm right now at where the minimum wage is.

725, I think that works out to 15,000 bucks a year.

That's just about at the poverty line.

Okay.

So one person, yeah, they can probably support themselves on that.

You can't support a family on that.

And then you get kids, you have kids, spouses and stuff.

And so they're not there for that.

They're training jobs, they're stepping stones.

And if for those people, they can't step up higher, which we have other things, I think, and I think maybe we'll get into it later.

But the earned income tax credit could be enhanced.

I think that's a much better way to go.

The other beauty that David, is that it takes the burden away from just restaurants and those industries with the low paying people and basically the government, the taxpayers say all of us are going to have to share in this.

All of us have to accommodate people who need their incomes supplemented.

But the answer isn't, in my opinion, the minimum wage, because you create winners and losers and some of the losers are the people you're trying to help.

Ron, as you know, there is concern with a $15 federally mandated minimum wage.

The business owners, they're crazy with worry these days.

They fear that $15 is eventually going to become $20, even $25 an hour.

And they say it's not sustainable.

And again, as we've talked about, COVID has already killed business here in L.A. and throughout the United States.

I like the statement that he made that the federal government should have a floor.

I think that's very important.

But when the floor hasn't been risen since 2009, of course, it's going to be double digits.

But if there was a progressive increase that was gradual from 2009, we might be above $15 an hour.

So that's that's an interesting statement because I do agree with that.

But there has to be a vehicle that the numerics of wage increases.

And I mean, it would be idealistic of me to think that they could follow the costs, the average costs and deficits nationally.

But something that something.

Also, Ron, in fairness to Lenny Rosenberg in my field report, isn't minimum wage, as he pointed out, meant for the entry level employee he kept telling us that over and over again.

You know, he's saying in a capitalist society, a worker should strive to achieve greater success and not have to constantly rely on $15 for the rest of their adult life.

You know, I have a lot more confidence in our legislators than that.

That's that's sensational Nazism at its finest.

I think that, you know, we got to keep the drama and dramatics out of it because we have a lot of people suffering.

You know, with all due respect to Rick, he mentioned subsidies.

But, you know, subsidies come from taxation.

And we're critical of of raising taxes to create these subsidies.

But if if you know, we're looking in through the lens of, let's say, a smaller employer, but what about those employers that are a lot larger than that that are taking advantage of this?

And and I just feel, you know, just get it out there that progressive increases to the floor is vital because it keeps things real, you know, And it has got look we can small.

I'll give you an example.

If somebody was selling to open a restaurant, he was selling a hamburger.

Did that hamburger go up in price from 2009?

I'm sure your products.

Did you know what he's what he's paying for for whatever it takes for a restaurant to be run.

And, you know, labor has to be respected as such.

And wages have to be respected because all we are we're talking about, we don't want to be a society of poverty.

Well, let me ask you, doesn't the earned income tax credit cap that do the same thing?

And isn't that even more targeted?

The beauty of the earned income tax credit is, you know, that that's a fair that's an offset.

The earning tax credit is an offset on your taxes.

So if you're working poor and your taxes, your tax can come down, You can even get a rebate.

You get a check from the government.

If if your if you're if you don't pay any taxes and you still haven't hit that certain income level, it's done by by filers.

So it's the whole family.

So takes into account what everybody earns.

It just seems to me a much more targeted way and a fairer way to do it.

And yes, you bring up a good point, then the taxpayer foots the bill.

But the way it is now, businesses foot the bill.

They wind up cutting jobs.

Consumers pay more.

Why not do it in a way that I think is really fair?

The earlier in something like that, the earned income tax credit, there's other proposals, but they're all based on that sort of an income test sort of deal.

Why isn't that better than the minimum wage?

I think my answer to the subsidy, it falls back in line with that.

We're relying back on the federal government for aid to companies or, you know, to restaurants, to to businesses.

And I don't think that that should be our escape path to this.

And, you know, a worker let someone goes to where they're not me, and you write a worker goes to work for dignity and respect.

And I think that that there's always compromise.

You know, that we I stated that that I've negotiated contracts and been pretty successful and on both sides, we've been able to keep companies, you know, flourishing and we've been able to keep our members working.

And we've shared in profits because of that first word that I said, fairness.

Right.

And I think that if we can, you know, in a perfect society, right, that word goes, Miles.

Right.

But if we're closed off to it and we keep using the subsidy angle, right.

That we always have an escape, go to the federal government.

I don't think that's the way that the direction that we should be going.

Rick, talk about what Ron just mentioned and also talk about the cost of living.

I've heard you talk about this before in relation to the minimum wage.

In other words, life is so different financially speaking, and let's say here in Los Angeles or in New York, as compared to, you could say, Iowa, North Dakota, West Virginia.

Rhode Island.

Right.

Is an across the board federal minimum wage unfair to those states, right?

No.

And that's that's a good point.

You bring up.

And it not this, for instance and I'd be interested to hear Ron's take on this, but California this this increase in the minimum federal minimum wage will have no impact on California.

California, it will phase in I believe it's 2023, but they're soon we're already on our way to $15 in California and that's two years ahead of this this federal proposal.

So in California, New York, high, high cost states, they've already raised that and states, I think, have a better sense of what the minimum should be than the federal government.

Interestingly, Joe Manchin, Democrat senator from West Virginia, he's basically the guy I think, that kept this federal minimum wage out of the current COVID legislation.

You know, I think he's saying that he wants to see the minimum wage raised in West Virginia, but he wants it to go up to $11 an hour, not $15.

So in many states, $15 an hour starts getting close to what the average wage is.

And so that's that could have a very serious impact on jobs.

The way I look at things, this is bipartisan.

This isn't a party issue because both parties have affiliated workers that that are getting the federal minimum wage.

But, you know, I look at it like $7.25 in 2009.

That's approximately $290 a week.

Right.

$15,080 a year.

That has to be looked at.

I mean, I don't care what state you're in, that would not sustain a family.

And that's what we're talking about is sustaining, you know, a family, no matter if they're from Montana or they're from Illinois.

I think it's something that we really, really have to look at and create that Florida.

I agree with Greg.

We create a floor and see what the states do from that point.

Thank you both so much, Ron Herrera and Rick Perry for a great discussion.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rob.

Thank you very much.

And now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions or your comments, even your story ideas so we can hear from you.

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Thank you all so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.