Thread: Los Angeles Votes To Raise Minimum Wage To $15

Los Angeles Votes To Raise Minimum Wage To $15

Posted: 05/19/2015 4:28 pm EDT Updated: 9 minutes ago

Los Angeles on Tuesday became the biggest U.S. city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Following a hot debate, the city council voted 14 to 1 to approve a plan to gradually increase the required wage to $15 an hour by July 2020. The current $9-an-hour minimum wage was already slated to increase to $10 in January.

The pay bump will affect about 567,000 workers in the city.

“You can see over the course of two years, there’s an evolution of position on what a reasonable minimum wage is,” John Schmitt, research director at the liberal-leaning nonprofit Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The Huffington Post ahead of the vote. “There’s political activity taking place at city and state level, and it’s moved the national debate.”

The move comes less than a year after the city council voted to raise hourly pay to $15.37 for nearly 10,000 hotel workers.

The debate over the new minimum wage divided the city.

Business groups, including the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, warned that the increase would hurt small companies and lead to layoffs.

“A lot of businesses are going to struggle,” Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, told HuffPost minutes after the vote. “There’s a lot of employees are going to get raises, but there’s also some employees that are going to lose their jobs.”

Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, joins other West Coast cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, which raised their hourly wages to $15 following waves of protests across the country. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has stagnated at a paltry $7.25 an hour for the last four years, despite calls to raise it from President Barack Obama.

The city-by-city approach represents one of a two-pronged strategy by activists to increase minimum wages across the country. The second, centered around the wage activism group Fight for $15, has seen mass demonstrations against fast-food companies, which are some of the largest employers of minimum-wage workers.

“People like me, who work hard for multibillion-dollar corporations like McDonald’s, should not have to rely on food stamps to survive,” Albina Ardon, a 29-year-old mother of two who works at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles, said in a statement sent by a Fight for $15 spokeswoman. “My life would be completely different if I were paid $14 an hour. I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.”

The wage hike will face one final council vote later this year after City Attorney Mike Feuer drafts a plan to implement the new base pay.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7336932.html

Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:48pm EDT

Los Angeles City Council approves minimum wage hike

LOS ANGELES | BY DAN WHITCOMB


People stand as the Los Angeles City Council prepares to vote on a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour in Los Angeles, California June 3, 2015.
REUTERS/JONATHAN ALCORN

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday gave final approval to an ordinance raising the minimum wage in America's second-largest city to $15 an hour by 2020 from the current $9.

The measure, which still must be signed into law by MayorEric Garcetti, would require businesses with more than 25 employees to gradually increase wages to meet a $15 hourly pay level by 2020, while smaller businesses would have an extra year to comply with each step.

Garcetti, a Democrat, has said that he would sign the wage hike into law, seen as a victory for labor and community groups that have successfully pushed for similar pay hikes in other major U.S. cities, including Seattle and San Francisco.

"Today is a great day for Los Angeles and all the people who work hard to make our city a vibrant place to live and work," Rusty Hicks of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor said in a written statement issued after the vote.

"After months of public debate and study, the City Council's vote puts us one step away from changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking Angelenos," he said.

"Though there is still work to be done, all of us in Los Angeles will see the fruits of raising the wage in L.A.”

Opponents of minimum wage hikes say they place an undue burden on businesses and will force employers to lay off workers or move.

With the federal minimum wage stagnant at $7.25 an hour since 2009, supporters of raising pay for the lowest paid workers have expressed little hope for an increase from the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0OQ2DS20150610