The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote today on an ordinance that would raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles to $15 per hour by 2020.
The City Council gave its tentative support to the measure last month, and the panel is now voting on the language of the law.
Under the proposed ordinance, the city minimum wage would increase to $10.50 per hour in July 2016 for businesses with 26 or more employees, with a one-year delay for smaller businesses. By 2016, the state minimum wage will have risen to $10 per hour.
The wage would then go up to $12 an hour by July 2017, $13.25 per hour by July 2018, $14.25 per hour by July 2019 and ultimately to $15 by July 2020.
Businesses with 25 or fewer employees would start raising their wages one year later and have until 2021 to reach the $15-an-hour mark.
Once the wage reaches $15 per hour for both small and large employers, the ordinance calls for the minimum wage in 2022 to continue increasing based on the cost of living.
The ordinance would need the vote of at least 12 members of the City Council to be adopted immediately. Otherwise, it would need to return for a second reading.
Councilman Mitchell Englander voted against the wage increase in last month’s preliminary vote.
Even if the ordinance is adopted today, city leaders are expected to continue debating potential tweaks to the law, such as a proposed exemption from the $15 minimum wage for workers covered under collective bargaining agreements.
Labor leaders who led the campaign to raise the minimum wage are pushing for inclusion of this exemption from the wage for their own union members.
Labor officials say this provision is a “standard” part of wage laws in many other cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and San Diego, and contend the provision is aimed at respecting the existing collective bargaining agreements, as well as give employers and workers wiggle room to reach the best labor agreement for both sides.
However, business leaders who had opposed the wage increase, have lashed back at the labor groups, saying the same people who had wanted the minimum wage hike in Los Angeles now want to exclude their own union members from the proposed law. They pointed to Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law, which does not have an exemption for unionized workers.
The City Council is also expected to consider including a requirement for employers to provide paid leave to workers, and a provision that would require that employers pass service charges onto the employee who perform the task.
Homeboy Industries, a group that runs transitional employment programs, is also urging the City Council to give it a reprieve from the city wage over the 18 month duration of their program.
Members of the City Council are also looking for more clarity on what constitutes an employee in Los Angeles. The current ordinance defines an employee as someone who works at least two hours within Los Angeles city limits, which means businesses outside of city could potentially be paying the higher wages for hours their employees work within Los Angeles.
