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City’s new minimum wage law signed despite opposition

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed recently an ordinance that will make the city the nation’s largest municipality to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

There were shouts of “Si, se puede” (“Yes, we can”) as Garcetti signed off on the new law at a South Los Angeles park. He called it a “major victory for our city” and touted the wage increase an opportunity for working families to lift themselves out of poverty.

“L.A. as a whole will benefit from this boost,” Garcetti said. “We have always prospered the most, when everyone is able to spend money into our economy.” The law will increase the minimum wage to $10.50 in July 2016, followed by annual increases to $12, $13.25 and eventually $15. Small businesses and certain nonprofits will get an extra year to phase in the increases.

Calls have grown in cities nationwide for increasing the minimum wage as the nation is still struggling with fallout from the Great Recession, as well as worsening income inequality, stagnant wages, persistent poverty and the challenges of immigration within a global economy. Seattle and San Francisco have phased in minimum wage laws that eventually will require hourly pay of $15 per hour, or annual pay of about $31,200 yearly for a full-time job. Chicago last year passed a phased-in minimum wage increase to $13 an hour. Last week, the California Senate approved a plan to raise the statewide minimum wage, lifting it to $13 an hour in 2017 and tying it to the rate of inflation after that.

There were few business leaders at the signing ceremony. Both the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association have rejected the wage increase, while the Los Angeles Business Council—which originally supported Garcetti’s $13.25 proposal—has reportedly expressed concerns about the $15 plan, stating in a recent letter to its members that the new law  “… goes too far.”

The ceremony had its share of socio/political commentary; a woman passed out leaflets promoting the populist presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), while others held aloft yellow signs that read: “Ezell Ford would have wanted a living wage,” in reference to the South L.A. resident shot dead by LAPD officers last year.

Critics have said that the minimum wage increase may place Los Angeles within “uncharted territory,” with even supporters acknowledging that the experimental nature of the city’s actions will make the result of the increase largely unknown. Garcetti pushed back against the argument.

“We aren’t entering new, uncharted territory, but, in fact, we’re coming home,” he said. “We’re coming home to an America that believes that we reward hard work.”

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