The Long Beach City Council held its first public meeting Tuesday since the completion of a minimum wage study that it requested last summer, as it continues to debate potential citywide wage increases.
The study that the commissioned Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation released last week offers insight into the possible benefits and impacts of a $15 an hour minimum wage for the city of Long Beach, increasing incrementally by 2020.
The meeting Tuesday was the fourth of a series of six public forums and roundtables that Mayor Robert Garcia and the City Council organized to give transparency and opportunity for community review and comment.
“I’ve said since day one, that one of my goals has been for this to be an inclusive, balanced and respectful dialogue because this is an issue that affects a lot of people,” Garcia said. “It clearly affects workers and their quality of life, it also clearly affects small business in particular in their ability to provide services, and of course the nonprofit sector youth programs.”
A roundtable of guests consisting of non-profit leaders, small business owners and numerous employees from different sectors of the economy in Long Beach were invited to participate in the meeting.
The minimum wage study gathered information about employment and wages in Long Beach through various sources and also surveyed many business owners to contribute to the overall report.
The study found that in a best case scenario, 33,000 workers would receive a substantial increase in their standard of living if the wage went up to $12 an hour by 2017. Furthermore, up to 45,000 workers would get an additional $5,000 in annual income per worker if the wage were to go up to $15 an hour by 2020.
According to the study, some of the negative impacts in the worst-case scenario would mean about 14,000 workers being at risk of having their hours reduced or replaced in order to cut costs and maintain business.
Small business advocates argued that some consequences of the increase in wage would result in less hiring of new workers, reduced hours for current employees, increased prices for products or services and reduced profits possibly resulting in relocation.
Joses Magno, a senior at CSULB and member of Anakbayan Long Beach, a progressive Filipino student organization, disagreed with this assessment.
“Workers making more would improve efficiency and increase sales for businesses,” said Magno. “At the last meeting, I heard about a lady who works three jobs and she only sees her daughter for half an hour a day. Business owners might say they want it to work out for everyone, but they don’t understand what a living wage means for people. They don’t know what it’s like.”
The City Council expects the hearings to be completed over the course of the next two to three weeks and then the council, as well as the LAEDC, will begin deliberations and will begin making and taking public comment in their bodies. Garcia said they will then hear some type of recommendation or action in the course of the next couple months.