CALIFORNIA TO RAISE MINIMUM WAGE
Minimum-wage workers in California would earn $10 an hour under a bill passed Thursday by the state Senate and expected to clear the Assembly later Thursday, although that higher rate would not go into effect until 2016 under a compromise deal.
The bill, which Gov. Jerry Brown said he will sign, would increase the minimum wage for hourly workers from its current $8 per hour to $9 per hour next July and to $10 by January 2016.
No other state pays $10 per hour to minimum-wage workers. The current highest is $9.19, mandated in Washington State.
— Reuters
Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed a bill Thursday that would force Wal-Mart and other large retailers to pay their employees at least $12.50 an hour, calling it a “job killer” that would not advance the goal of a living wage for District of Columbia workers.
The bill put Washington at the center of a national debate on how far cities should go in trying to raise pay for low-wage workers — and whether larger companies should be required to pay more. Supporters — including unions, clergy and other labor advocates — said Wal-Mart could afford the higher wages, while opponents said the bill unfairly singled out certain businesses and would have a chilling effect on economic development.
Wal-Mart fought the legislation vigorously, pledging not to build three of the six stores it has planned for the nation’s capital if the bill became law. But Gray, a Democrat, said the bill would have a much larger impact than many people realized.
“The bill is a job-killer, because nearly every large retailer now considering opening a store in the district has indicated they would not come here or expand here if this bill becomes law,” Gray said, citing Target, Home Depot, Wegmans and others.
The D.C. Council approved the bill in July on an 8-5 vote, one short of a veto-proof majority. It will consider overriding the veto on Tuesday.
Councilmember Vincent Orange, a lead sponsor of the bill, said Wal-Mart’s threats had prevented the mayor from standing up for the working poor.
“Wal-Mart put a gun to the mayor’s head, and the mayor capitulated,” said Orange, a Democrat. “Wal-Mart and the mayor should be ashamed that they’re going to provide poverty wages to people who get up every day and go to work.”
In an interview, Gray said he would work with the council to introduce a bill raising the district’s minimum wage for all workers, and he credited the large retailer bill for driving the conversation about fair wages in the fast-growing city. The district’s minimum wage is $8.25 an hour, $1 higher than the federal minimum.
San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M., and other cities have approved across-the-board minimum-wage increases in recent years, but the district would have been the first to single out large retailers. The Chicago City Council approved a similar bill seven years ago, but it was vetoed by then-mayor Richard M. Daley. Wal-Mart ultimately opened several stores in Chicago.
The bill applied only to retailers with stores of 75,000 square feet or larger, at least $1 billion in annual sales and non-unionized workforces.
Gray said supporters of the bill had their hearts in the right place but that the measure was too narrowly targeted to help low-wage workers earn a better living.
“The more I delved into the bill,” Gray said, “the more I realized how few people would benefit from this.”
Two of the stores that Wal-Mart had threatened to abandon are in majority-black communities east of the Anacostia River, where Gray lives and where unemployment is much higher than in the rest of the city. Wal-Mart said it would resume its plans to build all six stores.
“Mayor Gray has chosen jobs, economic development and common sense over special interests,” Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo said. “Now that this discriminatory legislation is behind us, we will move forward on our first stores in our nation’s capital.”
The Rev. Graylan Hagler, one of the leading advocates for the bill, said the mayor had been listening more closely to Wal-Mart’s lobbyists than to city residents. He also suggested that the mayor and the council weren’t serious about a possible minimum wage increase.
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