Columnist Jeff German: Minimum wage boost is overdue

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 | 10:50 a.m.

At 22, with three young children, Anna Galvez knows what it's like to go through life earning a minimum wage.

Galvez and her boyfriend, Alex Martinez, live with their children in a small two-bedroom apartment near Sahara Avenue and Lamb Boulevard. She earns $5.15 an hour -- minimum wage -- as a cashier at McDonald's, and he makes $10.50 an hour driving a delivery truck.

"It's been really difficult for us," says Galvez, who last week had to pawn some jewelry to buy food and diapers and gasoline for the couple's only car, a 1992 Toyota Corolla, which has a penchant for overheating.

Galvez was forced to find a job two months ago after the family had trouble surviving on food stamps and the salary of Martinez, which came to less than $22,000 a year.

Her meager McDonald's pay, however, hasn't pulled the family out of its financial woes, so Galvez is learning housekeeping skills at the Culinary Training Center in the hopes of finding a better paying job.

At the moment Galvez and Martinez have no health insurance, no phone, no cable, no money to go to the movies and very little cash to buy clothes and toys for their kids.

Life is a struggle every day, and every time gasoline prices go up or the power company raises its rates, Galvez and Martinez are hit hard in their pocketbooks -- harder than couples earning much more than they.

It is why they are among the thousands of workers in this state supporting the AFL-CIO's petition drive seeking a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour.

And it is why angry AFL-CIO leaders went to court this week to overturn what they contend is a ludicrous and discriminatory ruling by Secretary of State Dean Heller, who disqualified the minimum wage petition from the November ballot.

"People at the bottom can't live without being subsidized by the people at the top, so you have to bring up the people at the bottom," says AFL-CIO boss Danny Thompson. "You can't live on $5.15 an hour."

Nevada follows the federal minimum wage standard, which hasn't been raised for seven years. If labor can qualify the petition this year, for it to become law it will have to win the approval of the voters in November, repeat the process in two years and get the Legislature to pass the measure in 2007.

AFL-CIO lawyers this week obtained a temporary restraining order putting Heller's ruling on ice until a hearing Tuesday before District Judge William Maddox in Carson City.

Heller, acting on the advice of Attorney General Brian Sandoval, disqualified 13,994 signatures in Clark County on documents that didn't include a "valid affidavit signed by a registered voter who had signed that particular document."

It has left the petition drive 2,618 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot and suspicious labor leaders crying foul. Sandoval is a pro-business Republican who labor worked to defeat in 2002.

Thompson insists the AFL-CIO followed proper procedures outlined by the secretary of state's office -- the same procedures that weren't challenged in petition drives in previous years.

He doesn't understand why the law is being interpreted differently this time, and his lawyers have gotten the attention of Judge Maddox.

In his restraining order, Maddox said the AFL-CIO is "likely to prevail on the merits" of its legal argument, which means its petition drive might be validated, after all.

If that happens, there's a good chance it one day will make life easier for the likes of Anna Galvez and some 51,000 other minimum wage workers in Nevada who deserve better from their employers.