LA County to Consider Minimum Wage Increase

Some residents of Los Angeles County could experience a wage increase if the county approves a minimum wage hike mirroring a city of Los Angeles' plan signed into law earlier this month.

County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl is expected to ask her colleagues to support drafting an ordinance to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020 on Tuesday. Kuehl is proposing minimum wage to raised to $10.50 per hour by July 2016, $12 by July 2017, $13.25 by July 2018 and $14.25 by July 2019, reaching $15 by July 2020.

The ordinance would also allow a one-year delay for businesses with fewer than 26 employees to meet the requirements and after 2020, minimum wage would continue to be adjusted based on the cost of living.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to testify before the board of supervisors Tuesday in support of the ordinance. Garcetti signed the city of Los Angeles' wage hike ordinance into law on June 13.

Kuehl said she reviewed four economic studies that examined how a minimum-wage increase would affect the city of LA and a city-commissioned peer-review of the studies. She also took into a consideration a county-ordered review of the studies on how the ordinance would impact unincorporated areas of the county, conducted by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

Kuehl said LAEDC's study found that none of the randomly-selected businesses around the county planned on closing in response to a wage hike. The report also stated that six percent of businesses planned on laying off employees, two percent planned on reducing work hours and more than two-thirds believed their employees would be more productive and happier with a wage raise.

"On March 31, 2015, this board took note of the fact that in Los Angeles County, 2.7 million residents live in poverty ...," she said last week. "These residents, constituting 27 percent of the county's overall population, represent an impoverished constituency the size of the city of Chicago, the third largest city in the nation, living in the midst of plenty. The fact that many county residents, despite working full time, earn too little in wages to cover even the bare necessities, such as safe housing, healthy food, adequate clothing and basic medical care, is intolerable in a county that values equity and fair reward," she said.