By Margot Roosevelt
Orange County Register, April 4, 2016
Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Monday a hefty, if gradual, expansion of California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, a boost that will affect an estimated 605,000 Orange County workers over the next seven years. ... The new law raises the current $10 an hour pay floor to $10.50 in January 2017 for employers with more than 25 workers. Smaller businesses will have until January 2018. The wage will rise by another 50 cents the following year. It will jump by $1 annually after that, until reaches $15 in 2022 for large- and medium-sized businesses, and in 2023 for small businesses. ...
some local businesses welcome the raise. Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, chief executive of Cypress-based Earth Friendly Products, said she raised her company’s wage floor to $17 an hour in 2014. Her 350-employee cleaning products manufacturer has not had to raise prices as a result.
“Our employees are more productive, their families are healthier and happier, and the living wage we pay them goes right back into the local economy,” she said, calling the statewide $15 minimum a “a win-win for everyone.” ...
On Monday, UC Berkeley Labor Center economists analyzed the number of workers who would benefit from the new law, as well as from earlier local ordinances which are boosting pay floors to $15 in several California cities including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles County. The 605,000 workers affected in Orange County are the most of any county in the state after Los Angeles, where 1.9 million workers would get a raise. San Diego has the third largest number, 522,000 workers.
Many charitable groups welcome the higher wage. ... A 2015 study by Orange county government agencies and charitable groups estimated a minimum wage worker would need to work 110 hours a week to afford a typical one-bedroom apartment. ...
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