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California approves minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour by 2022

Xinhua, April 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

Lawmakers in California on Thursday approved of raising minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour by 2022, making the state the first to mandate such a pay hike.

California's current minimum wage of 10 dollars an hour is the same as Massachusetts, ranking them the highest paying states in the nation.

Pushed by Democrats in the state legislature, where they hold majority seats, the Senate passed the minimum wage bill by 26 to 12 and the Assembly by 48 to 26.

Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said he would sign it into law on Monday.

While the widening income divide has been a reality across the United States, and a topic on the campaign trails for Democratic presidential candidates in this election year, it is more of a problem in California.

The economy in California is generally good and Silicon Valley in the northern part of the state is robust, but the working poor are struggling.

California is the most populous among all states, and a legislative analysis estimates that 2.2 million workers in the state are earning minimum wage.

According to a December 2014 report by KCBS, a radio station operating in and around San Francisco, one out of every 25 California schoolchildren was homeless, twice the national average, and more than 20,000 Bay Area schoolchildren did not have fixed home addresses.

By California's plan, as a result of Governor Brown's negotiations with labor unions and state legislature leaders, the minimum wage will increase to 10.50 dollars an hour on Jan. 1 next year and then further go up to the next whole dollar amount in each of the following five years.

Brown has the authority to delay increases during the state's economic or budgetary downturns.

Republicans in the state legislature and business groups opposing the increases have expressed concerns that the law could drive some businesses out of California and lead to layoffs and price increases.

However, researchers at the Center for Labor Research and Education of the University of California, Berkeley, released a study on Wednesday, projecting that the gradual hiking of minimum wage will benefit 5.6 million workers with an average pay raise of 24 percent.

In a profile of workers likely to get higher pay, the researchers represented their key findings:

-- Some 96 percent of affected workers are in their 20s or older, and nearly three-quarters of the workers who will receive raises are in their 30s or older. Of all impacted workers, 37 percent are parents.

-- On average, the workers' wages account for half of their family income.

-- An estimated 55 percent of affected workers are Latino, compared to 38 percent for the workforce as a whole.

-- Retail workers account for 16 percent of affected workers and restaurant employees 15 percent.

In conclusion, Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center, said: "We expect the proposed law to have large positive effects on living standards for a large number of California workers and very small effects on employment." Endi