California's $8-an-hour minimum wage needs to go up,
says Watsonville Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo. And he may be getting the
votes he needs to make it happen.
But don't count on it; Alejo has tried this before.
Alejo is the author of AB 10, which would give the Golden State its first
minimum wage increase since 2008. The bill would raise it 25 cents an hour next
year, 50 cents in 2015 and an additional 50 cents to $9.25 an hour in 2016. In
2017 and annually thereafter, hourly pay would be adjusted upward automatically,
based on the state's inflation rate.
Raising the minimum wage "is about equity," he told the Assembly Labor and
Employment Committee last week. "It provides modest increases over time and
implements a cost-of-living adjustment ... to help ensure equity for minimum
wage workers."
Supported by labor unions and advocates for the working poor, the bill was
approved by the Democrat-dominated committee on a party-line vote. But business
lobbyists such as the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Restaurant
Assn. and the Western Growers Assn. plan to fight the bill every step of the way
through the Legislature.
They oppose it and are part of a business coalition that says "an increase in
the minimum wage starting in 2014 will negatively impact our economic recovery
by either limiting available jobs, or worse, creating further job loss." The
chamber dubs the bill a "job killer." Similar bills by Alejo died in the state
Assembly in 2011 and 2012.
California has one of the highest minimum wages in the nation, behind Washington
state at $9.19 an hour, Oregon at $8.95, Vermont at $8.60, and Connecticut, the
District of Columbia and Illinois at $8.25. Ten states peg their minimum wages
to inflation.
Sales tax cut
California's manufacturers are persistent.
For a decade, they've been trying without success to persuade lawmakers to give
them back a tax cut they enjoyed from 1994 to 2003. Now, with statewide
unemployment still high at 9.4%, they're trying again.
In the 1990s, "California attracted on average almost 6% of the country's
manufacturing investment dollars," blogged Gino DiCaro, vice president of the
California Manufacturers & Technology Assn. But, now, he said, it has slowed to
an average of 1.9%.
Projecting that a tax credit could create about 50,000 jobs directly and
indirectly, the industrialists want to all but eliminate the sales tax when they
buy new equipment. They want to slash it on such purchases from the state's
basic 7.5% statewide tax rate to as little as 1%. A bill that would do so has
been approved by a Senate committee and another is pending in the Assembly.
But there is substantial opposition. Public employee unions and advocates for
low-income workers oppose the tax credit, arguing it would lower state revenue
by as much as $2 billion a year -- when many social and health programs have
been cut.
"It's a huge amount of money and will not create any jobs commensurate with its
cost," said Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Assn.
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(c)2013 the Los Angeles Times
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