Greensboro City Clerk Attempts to Thwart Minimum Wage Effort

On Monday, December 3, the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee (of which I am a member) presented a petition to the Greensboro city clerk asking that, in accordance with the City Charter, the City Council adopt an ordinance raising the minimum wage for all employees in the city to $9.36 per hour or submit it to the voters in the next citywide election. $9.36 is the equivalent, in today's dollars, of the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage in 1968, which is the highest purchasing power the minimum wage has had in US history.

Greensboro is one of a few NC cities whose citizens have the powers of initiative, referendum and recall under the City Charter. After a year's worth of outreach, education and signature gathering, the Committee had collected 6,412 signatures of registered city voters. When the petition was presented to the Guilford County Board of Elections in December 2006, the Committee was informed that a minimum of 4,972 valid signatures would be needed to force Council to consider the ordinance. This is equal to 25% of the number of Greensboro voters who voted in the 2005 municipal election, as required by the Charter.

However, the Committee has received word from a source in City Hall that the city attorney, Linda Miles, is planning to reject the petition, stating that we need a number of signatures equal to 25% of the number who voted in this year's municipal election, which saw double the turnout of the 2005 election. If this decision goes through, the Committee will need to start from scratch and collect at least 10,000 signatures by early 2009.

Thankfully, the City Council has the opportunity, and the authority under the Charter, to declare its own interpretation of the language and grant validity to our 6,412 signatures. But they need to hear from us soon. If you live in Greensboro, or are otherwise motivated to do so, please call members of the City Council (whose contact info is listed here ) and urge them to declare the Minimum Wage petition valid and use the 2005 election as the standard, given that it was the most recent city election at the time the petition was first presented to the city clerk and the County Board of Elections.

More information about the Committee and the petition effort can be found at http://www.greensborominimum.com/.