Pasadena Debating Whether To Raise Minimum Wage
PASADENA (CBSLA.com) — Only weeks after the City of Los Angeles and L.A. County took the lead, Pasadena lawmakers are making a move towards increasing the city's minimum wage.
The Pasadena City Council is scheduled to meet on Monday to discuss a potential minimum wage hike and how that would play out.
The city's Chamber of Commerce is asking the public to weigh in online.
On June 13, Garcetti approved raising L.A.'s minimum wage incrementally to $15 per hour by 2020. He called it the largest anti-poverty measure in the city's history.
"Today is a major victory for our city, our communities, and working Angelenos across Los Angeles," Garcetti said. "While our city's economic health continues to roar back — we have the highest employment levels on record – too many Angelenos are still being left behind. Today's minimum wage increase addresses that gap, enabling working families in LA to lift themselves out of poverty and tying our minimum wage to the cost of living to make this justice last. LA as whole will benefit from this boost: we have always prospered the most when everyone is able to spend money into our economy."
Under the new law, the minimum wage will rise from $9 per hour to $10.50 an hour beginning in 2016. The rate will then jump to $12 in 2017; $13.25 in 2018; $14.25 in 2019; and $15 by 2020, taking place on the first of July each year.
Small businesses with 25 or fewer employees will have the increases moved back by one year.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors followed suit on July 21, voting to raise the minimum wage, also incrementally, to $15 an hour over the next five years.