Updated at 5:20 p.m. May 29, 2015
An ordinance to raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles to $15 per hour by 2020 will go forward without a proposed exemption for unionized workers, at least for now.
The City Council’s Economic Development Committee on Friday moved ahead with provisions to increase the minimum wage over the next five years, with the full City Council expected to vote on the proposed law next week.
The Los Angeles City Council already has tentatively supported the measure, but details about the law’s language had yet to be finalized.
The possible exemption for workers who are covered under collective bargaining agreements did not make it into the ordinance language backed Friday.
Time still exists for significant changes to the ordinance before the first step of the wage hike — to $10.50 per hour — takes effect July 1, 2016, and the City Council will continue debating whether to exempt workers covered under collective bargaining agreements from the $15 minimum wage.
Labor leaders are still pushing for inclusion of this exemption in the final version of the law. They are also seeking the inclusion of a requirement for employers to provide paid leave to workers.
Committee Chair Curren Price said Friday the discussion on these issues will “continue to be an open process.”
Council President Herb Wesson fended off accusations the City Council has been doing the bidding of local labor leaders on the minimum wage hike issue.
“What drove us to try to do this? It was not because this council or this committee was carrying labor’s water,” Wesson said. “It was not because members of this committee wanted to jam the business community.”
He said the committee, other members of council and Mayor Eric Garcetti “spoke out early” on the minimum wage issue “because we wanted to do our part in taking almost 1 million Los Angelenos from poverty to an opportunity to have a middle class life. That is the spirit and the intent of everything that we have attempted to do.”
Friday’s vote followed a flurry of last-minute lobbying efforts by local labor and business leaders over the exemption for unionized workers.
The release of a draft of the minimum wage ordinance last Friday prompted labor leaders to urge for inclusion of a provision that would exempt workers covered under collective bargaining agreements with their employers.
Labor officials said earlier this week that this provision is a “standard” part of wage laws in many other cities — including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and San Diego — and they had expected that it would also be in the Los Angeles law.
They contend the provision is aimed at respecting the existing collective bargaining agreements, and it would give employers and workers wiggle room to reach the best labor agreement for both sides.
However, business leaders who had opposed the wage increase, 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 ordinance advanced today would increase the wage beginning July 2016, when it would rise to $10.50 an hour for businesses with 26 or more employees. By then, the state wage will have risen to $10 per hour.
The city minimum 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 Economic Development Committee also backed an ordinance that would create a city office to enforce the minimum wage and other labor laws.
— City News Service