May 19--The Los Angeles City Council tentatively agreed Tuesday to raise the city's minimum wage to $15 per hour, joining a trend sweeping cities across the country as elected leaders seek to address stagnating pay for workers on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder.
The ordinance would boost the $9 an hour base wage to $15 by 2020 for as many as 800,000 workers, city officials say, and make L.A. the largest U.S. city to adopt a major minimum-wage increase. Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle already have adopted similar laws.
"Make no mistake," said Councilman Paul Krekorian, who was instrumental in shaping the wage increase plan's final form. "Today the city of Los Angeles, the second-biggest city in the nation, is leading the nation."
Tuesday's 14-1 vote was the latest demonstration of organized labor's clout at City Hall. Through close to a year of often-emotional debate, labor leaders never gave ground on their central demand that the minimum wage rise to at least $15. Their City Council allies ensured that a less far-reaching wage increase proposed by Mayor Eric Garcetti to allay concerns in the business community was marginalized in the final months of discussion.
Maria Elena Durazo, an official at the national labor organization Unite Here and former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said L.A.'s leadership on raising the minimum wage "makes it more real to pass it... on a broader basis, like the state and eventually federal" level.
Labor leaders say they remain dissatisfied with the gradual timeline elected leaders set for raising the base wage, but the harshest criticism of the law came from the ranks of L.A.'s small-business owners. Many claimed that the mandate will force them to lay off employees or leave the city altogether.
"The very people [council members'] rhetoric claims to help with this action, it's going to hurt," said Ruben Gonzalez of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. He said the only way for businesses to absorb their new labor costs would be lay off employees, reduce their work hours or move.
"It's simple math," Gonzalez said. "There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short period of time."
The council's vote came after months of public debate and back-room lobbying on an issue that has animated City Hall like few others over the last year.
The move toward a higher citywide minimum wage gathered steam last year when the council adopted an ordinance raising base pay for workers in the city's hotel industry to $15.37 per hour.
Driven by a coalition of newly elected council members representing diverse areas of the city -- South Los Angeles, the Westside and the San Fernando Valley -- the hotel pay increase was seen by proponents as a precursor to a minimum wage hike for all city employees.
Last summer, minimum-wage advocates found a key ally in Garcetti, who put forward a proposal to raise base pay to $13.25 by 2017. That plan did not go as far as the law sought by labor activists, community groups and some council members. But it still drew the ire of some business owners who supported the mayor in his 2013 campaign and complained that his staff hadn't adequately consulted them.
The council moved beyond the mayor's plan, with a key committee voting last week to approve the main element of the proposal adopted Tuesday. In the final stages of the process Krekorian sought to incorporate provisions that would ease the wage hike's impact on businesses, such as gradually phasing in the increase to $15 over the next five years and giving businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 25 employees an extra year to comply.
Beginning in 2022, yearly wage increases would be pegged to the consumer price index -- a key provision of the law that backers say addresses past failures to adjust base pay for inflation.
Bickering over the fine print in the legislation continued until virtually the last minute of the City Hall debate.
On Thursday, a day after the council committee approved a version of the proposal, business leaders loudly objected to an obscure provision that could have required employers to grant workers 12 paid days off each year.
Critics said the paid-leave mandate, which had not been explicitly discussed or formally studied during months of debate, was slipped into the proposal at the last minute. Garcetti last week called for additional study of a paid-leave requirement's economic impact.
Council members agreed Tuesday to place a paid time off policy on a separate track for legislative review.
The council's plan will now be submitted to the city attorney's office, which will draft an ordinance that will return to council members later this year for approval.
After that, the wage increase would be signed into law by the mayor, with the first wage boost -- to $10.50 per hour -- taking effect in July 2016.
UPDATE
12:58 p.m.: This story and headline have been updated with details following the City Council's approval of the ordinance.
This story was originally published at 5 a.m.
