Will California’s $10-per-hour minimum wage push other states to act?

California is boosting its hourly minimum wage from $8 to $10, which would make it the highest in the US. President Obama wants to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.

|
Nick Ut/AP
California Gov. Jerry Brown signs a bill to raise California's minimum wage. The new law raises the state's minimum wage to $10 an hour within three years, from the current minimum of $8 an hour.

California is on track to have the nation’s highest state minimum wage: $10 an hour.

That would top the current highest state figure – $9.19 an hour in Washington State – as well as the federal minimum wage of $7.25, which is the level in all but 18 states and the District of Columbia.

Business organizations fought the law, which Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed Wednesday. The California Chamber of Commerce calls it a “job killer,” and the California Restaurant Association said it was a "blow to small businesses” at a time when the state’s unemployment rate (8.9 percent) is well above the national rate (7.3 percent), making it one of the highest in the country.

"Small-business owners will now be forced to make tough choices including reducing employee hours, cutting positions entirely, and for many, closing their doors altogether," said John Kabateck, head of the California branch of the National Federation of Independent Business.

But with a Democrat as governor and union-friendly Democrats controlling the state Legislature, it likely was inevitable that the increase to $10 an hour would become law, if only (as the restaurant lobbying group suggested) to avoid a ballot measure on the issue next year.

Calling it a "matter of justice," Governor Brown cited the growing disparity between rich and poor as a prime reason for raising the minimum wage.

"Our society over the last 30 years … has experienced a growing gap between those who do work at the bottom and those who occupy the commanding heights of the economy," he said during the bill-signing ceremony in Los Angeles. "It’s my goal and it’s my moral responsibility to do what I can to make our society more harmonious, to make our social fabric tighter and closer, and to work toward a solidarity that every day appears to become more distant."

That’s good news for the estimated 3 million Californians – 1.5 million in full-time, year-round employment – currently in minimum-wage jobs.

Anthony Goytia, who works the overnight shift at a Wal-Mart store and lives in a garage with his wife and two children, told The Huffington Post, “If I had a higher wage, we would be able to rent an apartment. [Right now] we’re living in poverty. I have to live check to check.”

Under Assembly Bill 10, California’s minimum wage will rise from $8 (where it’s been for five years) to $9 an hour on July 1, 2014, and then to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016. The state wage level is not indexed for inflation, which means that Washington State’s (which is) could rise to above $10 an hour by then. A few cities – San Francisco among them at $10.55 – already have set their hourly minimum wage above $10.

A review of US Census data by The Sacramento Bee newspaper paints this picture of minimum-wage workers in California:

Teenagers in fast-food and other low-wage jobs account for just 5.3 percent of minimum-wage workers; the rest are adults older than 21, including 34 percent who are older than 40. Hispanics make up 40 percent of California’s population but account for nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage workers, many of them in the agriculture industry.

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 provides $15,080 a year assuming a 40-hour work week, which is $50 below the federal poverty line for a family of two. More than 15 million workers nationally earn the national minimum, which compares with the median national salary of $40,350, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

President Obama has pushed – unsuccessfully – for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015, then indexing it to inflation. At that amount, a full-time minimum wage worker would earn roughly $18,000 a year, still below the poverty level for a family of four.

The last time Congress raised the federal minimum wage was in 2007, when a three-step increase from $5.15 to $7.25 in 2009 was approved. According to the National Employment Law Project, a minimum wage that had kept pace with inflation since 1968 would be $10.56 today.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Will California’s $10-per-hour minimum wage push other states to act?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0926/Will-California-s-10-per-hour-minimum-wage-push-other-states-to-act
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe