Starting Friday, Los Angeles area employers will begin paying a higher minimum wage under city and county laws that will eventually increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Businesses with more than 25 workers are required to increase their minimum wage from the state-mandated $10 to $10.50 per hour. The city's law also require those employers to offer at least six days of paid leave benefits, which goes beyond the three days currently required under state law.
Workers in Los Angeles and a few nearby cities, including Santa Monica and Pasadena, and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County will see the increases starting Friday. Smaller businesses have an extra year to implement both provisions.
Mayor Eric Garcetti will join other city officials and speakers at the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center Friday morning to discuss the wage increase, which is the first step of a gradual minimum wage increase to $15.
A free resource fair will also be held today at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles for workers to learn more about efforts to enforce the new wage.
Under the city and county ordinances, the minimum wage will reach $15 per hour in 2020, with future increases pegged to the Consumer Price Index. Employers with 25 or fewer workers have an extra year to adjust to the new city wages, with the minimum wage reaching $15 per hour by 2021.
The $10.50 minimum wage will soon apply to all businesses across the state with 26 or more employees. Under the state's own phase-in of a $15 per hour minimum wage, the $10.50 wage goes into effect six months later than the city laws — on Jan. 1, 2017.
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The statewide wage is set to reach $15 in 2022 for large businesses and in 2023 for small ones.
Other California cities have also enacted wage increases, some even earlier than Los Angeles. San Jose's wage rose to $10.30 per hour in Jan. 1, 2015, and is set to continue climbing depending on the CPI. San Francisco's minimum hourly wage, now at $12.25, will go up to $13 on July 1 and to $15 in 2018, followed by further increases based on CPI, under a measure approved by that city's voters in 2014.
City News Service contributed to this report.
