Four Los Angeles City Council members plan to unveil a proposal today to raise the citywide minimum wage above the current $9 an hour, less than a week after the council agreed to boost the minimum wage for workers at large non-union Los Angeles hotels to $15.37 an hour.
The anticipated wage hike proposal — authored by council members Mike Bonin, Gil Cedillo, Nury Martinez and Curren Price Jr. — follows Mayor Eric Garcetti’s announcement on Labor Day that he supports raising the minimum hourly wage in the city to $13.25 over the next three years.
Representatives for the council members declined to say exactly what hourly wage they plan to propose.
The state minimum wage is set to rise to $10 in January 2016, but for thousands of workers at Los Angeles hotels with 300 or more rooms, the minimum wage is scheduled to jump to $15.37 an hour on July 1 under the ordinance approved by City Council last week.
Hotels with at least 150 rooms will need to adopt the same minimum wage July 1, 2016, under the city law.
Garcetti is scheduled to join Vice President Joe Biden today at a roundtable discussion with business leaders in downtown Los Angeles to make a case for raising the minimum wage.
At a similar event Monday in Las Vegas, Biden pushed for the national minimum wage to increase to $10.10 an hour, up from the current rate of $7.25. He said it would not cost jobs and would inject $19 billion into the U.S. economy.
“All of this is disposable income and it gets straight into the economy,” he said. “It’s about time we do something. Minimum wage hasn’t kept up.”
Meanwhile, local labor and community groups are expected to rally at City Hall and call for raising the Los Angeles minimum wage even higher than Garcetti proposed — to $15 an hour — and to push for including requirements for wage-theft protection and paid sick days.
The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is opposing Garcetti’s plan to raise the minimum wage for all workers citywide, saying it would kill jobs.
The hotel industry wage hike also was opposed by many in the business industry. The hike won approval from a divided City Council last week, with dissenting votes coming from council members Mitch Englander, Bernard Parks and Paul Krekorian.
