Steven Mikalan
(updated) March
31.
California is on
track to become the first state to officially raise its minimum wage to $15 an
hour. On March 31, California’s official celebration of labor leader Cesar
Chavez, Democratic legislators agreed to
raise the wage from its current $10 hourly mark to $10.50 beginning January 1,
2017, followed by continuous upticks that will result in the wage leveling off
at $15 an hour by 2022. (Businesses employing fewer than 26 workers would get
an extra year to institute the increases.) The Governor has said he will sign the bill on Monday.
After that the
minimum can rise – but not fall – according to inflation. The agreement
includes a provision giving workers three days of paid sick leave annually; it
also permits California governors to freeze the wage in times of extreme
economic downturn.
The movement
toward a $15 wage has not followed a straight line, with individual city
electorates or governments passing ordinances raising local wages higher than
the state minimum (which cities will still be allowed to do under the proposed
law), but making little headway outside of California’s liberal coastal belt.
The issue has recently been complicated by the emergence of two competing
union-sponsored measures that have sought placement on this November’s state
ballot.
At a media
teleconference held Monday afternoon March 28, labor leaders and others hailed the
coming pay hike.
“No one who works
hard should live in poverty,” said the event’s moderator, Laphonza Butler, who
serves as both president of the Service Employees International Union’s state
council and as co-chair of the Los Angeles Fight for $15 committee. And, in a
sign that labor is not taking its apparent victory for granted, she added that
until the legislation passes, unions would not cease their efforts to put the
matter of raising the wage before voters.
The mainstream
media have not been as sanguine about the benefits of the higher wage, however.
The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have focused much of
their attention on the wage boost’s predicted dire effects on small businesses.
They have repeated familiar Armageddon scenarios in which restaurant diners
will be forced to pay higher menu prices. The New York Times
described California as “a guinea pig” in an economics experiment.
On a call-in
to KPCC’s AirTalk radio
show, Jake Mangas, the head of the Redding Chamber of Commerce, warned host
Larry Mantle that the price of a pancake breakfast could rise from $3 to $5. On
that same program, United Healthcare Workers West president Dave Regan
called the raise “a historical and transformational development.” Regan said
the pay raise “is not about pancakes,” but was “about three and a half million
people who can work full time and make $21,000 a year. Everybody knows those
are not just poverty wages but deep poverty if you’re trying to raise
children.”
“There’s a lot of economic analysis behind
this that has shown that the increased purchasing power is offset by increased
costs. You’re going to see the vast number of businesses passing on their costs
to consumers.”
At the
labor-sponsored call-in news conference, University of California, Berkeley
economist Michael Reich said that “prices might go up one percent over a five
or six year period – not 50 percent,” as business critics are claiming. He
added that the wage hike will affect about 38 percent of all California
workers.
“The minimum wage
is not intended as a weapon to keep people poor,” said Reich, “but as a tool to
create an economic floor.”
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