Portland City Council voted Feb. 18 to approve a $15-an-hour minimum wage for about 150 janitors, security guards, and parking lot attendants at city-owned facilities. That makes the City the third local government body in Oregon to set a $15 wage floor for at least some workers, following the Home Forward housing agency and Multnomah County.
The resolution — approved unanimously by City Council — is an update to the City’s Fair Wage policy, a 19-year-old ordinance setting minimum wage and benefit levels for workers at certain city service contractors. The levels are currently $10.38 an hour plus $1.92 an hour for benefits. The newly passed resolution raises the hourly wage to $15 as of July 1, 2015.
The resolution also sets a $15 minimum for the City’s own employees who are in full-time, budgeted positions, though less than two dozen currently make less than that.
The Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation, however, has hundreds of part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers who are not covered by the new $15 minimum. Workers there are represented by Laborers Local 483.
To address that, the resolution authorizes a task force with members appointed by the mayor and each commissioner to “assess seasonal, recreational and apprenticeship work with appropriate compensation.” The task force is supposed to complete its work in time for the City Council to use the recommendations in the 2016-2017 budget process.
The $15 minimum resolution was sponsored by Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and co-sponsored by Mayor Charlie Hales.
Laborers Local 483, Service Employees Local 49 and other groups have campaigned in support of the ordinance.
The $15 minimum resolution was sponsored by Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and co-sponsored by Mayor Charlie Hales. Saltzman has championed the $15-an-hour cause since last year’s primary election campaign, when a challenger, Nicolas Caleb, made it an issue. And Hales pledged to enact a $15 minimum in his Jan. 30 State of the City speech. SEIU Local 49, Laborers Local 483, Portland Jobs with Justice, and the group 15 Now PDX have campaigned in support of the ordinance.
“This is an opportunity for us as a city to do what we can, with what we have, where we are,” said Hales, opening the hearing on the resolution. “Average household income is up, but for a lot of our fellow citizens, that’s not the case. The national problems of income inequality we see in Portland as well.”
Commissioner Amanda Fritz, in charge of the Parks Bureau, also said she will amend her current budget request to include a $15 minimum wage for all seasonal city maintenance workers starting in their second year of employment.
