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Minimum Wage

September 11th, 2006 Posted by Amelia

Many California workers are hoping that the state’s newly announced increase in minimum wage will translate into pay increases across the board.

“I would like to see an according pay raise up the chain,” said Hector Operario, supervisor at coffee house near UCLA. Operario is currently paid more than the minimum wage, but thinks he should be given an increase.

Other citizens are more concerned about rising prices. “If wages went up across the board it seems like prices would go up, so I don’t know how much that would help,” said Justin Hopkins, a student at the University of California Los Angeles. Still, Hopkins agrees that a minimum wage increase is a good thing. Hopkins, a third-year political science student, has worked minimum wage jobs, as well as jobs that paid more. Talking about his minimum wage experience, Hopkins concedes, “It would have been nice to make more. It would have been easier to make more money,”

Within the past two weeks, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reached what he calls a “common-sense” solution to increase the minimum wage while avoiding inflation. In an agreement with the Democratic leaders of the California legislature, California’s minimum wage will increase by $1.25 over the next year and a half. The minimum wage will reach $8.00 an hour by January 2008.

Final details on the new minimum wage have not yet been released. In a news release dated Friday, September 1, 2006, the public meeting of the Industrial Welfare Commission scheduled for September 5, 2006, was cancelled due to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s deal with members of the California legislature.

According to news reports, Gov. Schwarzenegger made an agreement with Democratic leaders in the legislature to raise the state minimum wage almost 20 percent by January of 2008.

If the agreement is passed by the legislature, the state minimum wage will increase from the current rate of $6.75 an hour to $7.50 by January 2007.

A second increase of 50 cents on January 1, 2008 would make the Minimum Wage in the State of California $8.00 per hour. The increased state minimum wage would exceed the current highest state minimum wage of $7.63 in Washington.