Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wants a $13.25 minimum wage, but labor groups are thinking $15 an hour
While Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is pushing for a citywide minimum wage of $13.25 an hour, labor groups are seeking a $15 minimum wage for all in the city. (File photo by Andy Holzman/Los Angeles Daily News)
Ratcheting up the debate over Los Angeles’ minimum wage, a coalition of labor groups is calling for a citywide minimum wage of $15, higher than Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposal to hike hourly wages to $13.25.
Members of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy plan to converge outside City Hall Tuesday to call for the City Council to pass an ordinance lifting the minimum wage to $15, said Allison Mannos, spokeswoman for Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.
Higher wages will help working families, Mannos said. She said coalition members expect City Councilman Mike Bonin to introduce a motion Tuesday to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Mannos later said that LAANE isn’t aware of the details of Bonin’s motion.
A Bonin spokesman didn’t return a phone call.
Labor groups didn’t detail the phase-in schedule for their $15 proposal. But their plan comes weeks after the City Council voted to set wages at $15.37 for workers at larger hotels. Hotel groups oppose the new law andare threatening to sue.
However, Garcetti has been cool to the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15. When Garcetti unveiled his own $13.25 proposal at a South L.A. park on Labor Day, he was asked by reporters why he didn’t support jumping to $15, a plan recently passed in Seattle.
“Different cities are different levels, you know, depending on the cost of living. You have to compare it to what the median income is in the area,” Garcetti said.
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“Working with the economists at U.C. Berkeley, (the $13.25 proposal) was an aggressive percentage of the median income, without doing any damage in terms of the job losses that we wouldn’t want to see if it were too high. We think we pegged it at the right place.”
The city’s current minimum wage is $9 an hour, following state law, and will rise to $10 next summer.
Labor’s $15 minimum proposal drew immediate criticism Monday from business groups. Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, called it “more ridiculous” than Garcetti’s $13.25 plan, which VICA also opposes.
“Expecting small businesses to shoulder a 70 percent increase is just short-sighted and detrimental,” Waldman said.
The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which also opposes both Garcetti’s $13.25 plan, dismissed a $15 minimum wage as well. Ruben Gonzalez, senior vice president at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, said the proposal would force businesses to “lay off employees, reduce hours and raise costs, move their businesses or shut down.”
Mannos said LAANE has done no studies on the $15 minimum wage proposal’s effects on business owners but said the coalition “definitely wants to partner with business and make sure research is done.”
Separately, the grass-roots group Los Angeles Workers Assembly is also seeking to pass a ballot measure that would set the city’s minimum wage at $15.
Attention to hourly wages comes amid a growing focus on the issue of economic disparity and follows efforts in cities such as Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco to raise the minimum wage.
Throwing his support behind such efforts, President Barack Obama said in a radio address in August that “raising the minimum wage would be one of the best ways to give a boost to working families.”
The president blames Republicans for blocking his efforts to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10.
Vice President Joe Biden will join Garcetti in Los Angeles Tuesday for a round-table discussion on the minimum wage.
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