Thread: Bill hiking California minimum wage to $15 passes state Assembly, goes to Senate

Bill hiking California minimum wage to $15 passes state Assembly, goes to Senate



By Sharon Bernstein
March 31, 2016

Fast-food workers and their supporters join a nationwide protest for higher wages and union rights outside McDonald's in Los Angeles, California, United States, November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy NicholsonMore

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A plan to raise California's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 cleared its toughest legislative hurdle on Thursday, putting the state on track to become the first in the nation to commit to such a large pay hike for the working poor.

The measure, incorporating a deal Governor Jerry Brown reached with labor leaders and fellow Democrats in the Legislature, was approved in the state Assembly, where it faced opposition from Republicans and some moderate Democrats, and was expected to go before the more liberal state Senate as soon as Thursday afternoon.

"If you work full time, your family shouldn't live in poverty," Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Southern California Democrat, said in support of the bill during debate on Thursday.

Lawmakers from the state's poorer regions said the measure could harm small businesses that are barely hanging on amid double-digit unemployment, ultimately leading to job losses.

If enacted, the bill would put California, home to one of the world's biggest economies, among a growing number of U.S. states and cities that have moved in recent years to surpass the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

The measure would gradually raise California's hourly minimum wage from the current $10 to $15 by 2022 for large businesses and by 2023 for smaller firms.

It also would head off two competing ballot initiatives lacking a provision to allow the governor to suspend increases in hard economic times, a deal breaker for Brown.

The proposal, expected to pass easily in the state Senate before heading to Brown's desk, sped through the legislative process after the governor's office reached a deal with labor unions pushing a similar minimum wage hike in the form of two ballot initiatives.

With polls showing strong support for those measures at the ballot box, Brown emphasized that a version passed through the legislature would allow lawmakers to amend it if needed over time instead of going back to voters to request amendments in expensive and uncertain campaigns.

Moreover, the deal allows the state to opt out of minimum wage increases if the economy is doing poorly, a provision not in either of the union-backed ballot initiatives.

Even so, several moderate Democrats and most Republicans complained that it was being rushed through, and would disproportionately harm businesses in poorer parts of the state, where the cost of living is not high enough to warrant such a dramatic wage hike.

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