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Saturday, September 14th, 2013

California Legislature Approves Raising Minimum Wage to $10 – the Highest of Any State

Author:     JOSH RICHMAN and MIKE ROSENBERG
Source:     San Jose Mercury News
Publication Date:     09/13/2013 05:47:01 AM PDT
 Link: California Legislature Approves Raising Minimum Wage to $10 – the Highest of Any State
Stephan:   I consider this excellent news for California, but also further evidence of the Great Schism trend. The Federal minimum wage, as you probably know, is $7.25 an hour. A vast majority of these jobs are not 40 hour and come with no benefits. Thirty hours a week, a standard ploy by corporations who exploit labor to get around a full-time workweek, which leads to benefits, is $217.50 a week. Could you live on that? Blue value states are beginning to recognize this. Here in Washington minimum wage is $9.19. In Oregon it is $8.95. Still paltry, but better. Now, California, the nation's largest labor market is taking the next step, as this report describes. That is good news.

SACRAMENTO — California’s lowest-paid workers are in store for a 25 percent raise after lawmakers late Thursday boosted the Golden State’s minimum wage to the highest of any state in the country.

In the final hours of its 2013 regular session, the Legislature voted to hike the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $9 next July and $10 by January 2016 — a move Democrats praised as a boon to struggling workers and Republicans lambasted as a ‘job killer.’

Gov. Jerry Brown has already promised to sign the bill, making California a leader in a growing movement to increase wages for the working poor spurred by protesting fast-food workers across the country.

‘The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs,’

Brown said Wednesday. ‘This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy.’

The state Senate voted 26-11 on Thursday to pass Assembly Bill 10 by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, and the Assembly followed suit by agreeing 51-25 to Senate amendments, sending the bill to Brown. The Assembly had passed an earlier version of the bill in May.

But Republican lawmakers and business groups excoriated the Democrats, saying they were placing California’s slow economic recovery at risk.

Noting that […]

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