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By Sharon Bernstein
SACRAMENTO: A plan to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 cleared its toughest legislative hurdle on Thursday, putting the state on track to become the first in the nation to commit to such a large pay hike for the working poor.
The measure, incorporating a deal Governor Jerry Brown reached with labor leaders and fellow Democrats in the Legislature, was approved in the state Assembly, where it faced opposition from Republicans and some moderate Democrats, and is expected to go before the more liberal state Senate as soon as Thursday afternoon.
“If you work full time, your family shouldn’t live in poverty,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Southern California Democrat, said in support of the bill during debate on Thursday.
If enacted, the bill would put California, home to one of the world’s biggest economies, in the vanguard of a growing number of U.S. states and cities that have moved in recent years to surpass the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
The measure would gradually raise California’s hourly minimum wage from the current $10 to $15 by 2022 for large businesses and by 2023 for smaller firms.
It also would head off a pair of competing ballot initiatives lacking a provision to allow the governor to suspend the increases in hard economic times, a deal breaker for Brown.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
Reuters
