The Long Beach City Council agreed on an ordinance Jan. 19 that will gradually increase the minimum wage up to $13 by 2019.
The ordinance calls for a study in 2019 to determine the overall economic effects of the
increase. If positive, the wage will be raised gradually up to $15 by 2021.
“Nobody that works full time should be forced into poverty,” said Robert Nothoff, director of the Campaign to Raise the Wage, referring to a different report by Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor predicting the raise would bring 6,500 workers out of poverty.
A provision for non-profits and small businesses will be in place, giving them an extra year to adopt each wage increase. Some allowance will also be made for training programs.
The minimum wage will go up to $10.50 in 2017, $12 in 2018, $13 in 2019, and if all is going well, $14 in 2020, and finally $15 in 2021.
The details of the ordinance were based on the findings of a council-commissioned report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation to determine the effects of a minimum wage increase to $15 in Long Beach.
The report looked at similar wage increases already in place in other cities, perspectives from small business owners, municipal leaders and employees that had been provided in various public forums, as well as the results of a new survey of 600 small businesses.
Conversely, the LAEDC report’s worst case scenario estimated 20,720 workers may face cut hours or job loss under an increased minimum wage. However, of the 600 small businesses surveyed, the majority did not believe they would need to cut hours or dismiss employees.
The greatest number of affected workers will be in restaurants, retail trade, education, transportation, warehousing and health care, according to a report by the AFL-CIO.
When Trevor Meyer, a barista at Recreational Coffee, left a cruise ship where the minimum wage was lower than ten dollars, he felt like he was making less even though his income was higher in Long Beach.
“It’s just an expensive place to live. You can’t live in SoCal without a car, and cars are expensive,” he said.
Ryan Serrano, owner of Earth Steward Ecology, a sustainable landscaping business, said he has paid his employees $15 an hour since 2013.
“I think what it will do is produce more creative solutions or more creative alternatives to the way conventional businesses are run, [such as] cooperative worker owned businesses or even consumer owned businesses,” Serrano said.
The owner of Kress Market, an organic deli and grocery market, was less optimistic.
“$10 is not a lot of money. It’s [the wage increase] only fair for the employee, my only concern is that big businesses can compete more than us,” said Javier Ortiz, worrying that bigger businesses would be more capable of absorbing the increased cost.
He said he was nevertheless confident he would cope with the change, whether good or ill for his business.
The ordinance is up for the council’s final approval next month.