(The Center Square) – Alameda County and the city of Oakland are considering an increase in their minimum wage to $30 an hour.
A ballot measure in both the county and the city would require Bay Area employers to pay their employees no less than the new rate, advocates told The Center Square. The organization backing the initiative, One Fair Wage, added that at least $30 an hour is required for workers to afford to live in the area.
“Every time there has been a downturn or a serious challenge to the economy, in the end, we raise wages as a stimulus,” said Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage. “It’s basically a stimulus in the hands of working people, who spend a much bigger percentage of their income than higher-income people because they have to. It’s survival.”
The initiative would phase in the minimum wage hike in both the city and the county, according to One Fair Wage. Large businesses with more than 100 employees and $1 billion in annual revenue would have until 2030 to raise their minimum wage to $30 an hour, while small businesses with fewer than 25 employees would be given until 2037 to reach the $30 an hour minimum wage hike. Companies between 25 and 100 employees would have until 2035, Jayaraman told The Center Square.
One Fair Wage has 180 days from the date it files the ballot measure to collect enough signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The effort to require a minimum wage increase in Oakland and Alameda County is in response to an increasingly higher cost of living in the area, which One Fair Wage said includes astronomical rent, rising food costs, record-high transportation expenses and rising costs related to child care. An increased minimum wage would also result in increased revenue for small businesses that rely on the community, Jayaraman said.
“This is really, really needed for small businesses to have the kind of clientele they need to survive,” Jayaraman told The Center Square.
The Living Wage Calculator tool from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that the cost of living in Alameda County for a single, childless adult is $32.31 an hour, which rises to $62.53 for a one-adult, one-child household and $87.76 for a one-parent, two-child household.
A two-parent household with one child would have to make $33.34 an hour to afford to live in Alameda County, according to the MIT living wage calculator. A two-parent, two-child household would have to earn $44.65 an hour.
According to a study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, some businesses react to increased minimum wage requirements not solely by increasing costs to customers, but by reducing hours for employees to reduce expenditures. Other studies found that with previous minimum wage hikes, job opportunities went down as businesses eliminated jobs to retain profit margins, according to the Pacific Research Institute.
“All you’re actually doing is creating unemployment, and you’re just taking away people’s opportunities to work and get higher skills,” said Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in business and economics at the Pasadena-based institute.
“It’s just a terrible idea that’s going to make the situation worse,” Winegarden told The Center Square. “It really is not the right way to go.”
One Fair Wage also launched minimum wage hike initiatives in other states, including in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, while California’s minimum wage is $16.90 an hour, according to the state Department of Industrial Relations.
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and David Haubert, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment on Monday. Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, also did not respond.
