Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, announced legislators and labor unions reached a tentative agreement to make the minimum $15 an hour over several years, making it the highest minimum in the nation by far.
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The deal would increase minimum wage across California from $10 an hour to $10.50 on January 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increment to take it to $15 through 2022, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a document.
That initiative would gradually raise wages by a dollar a year for the next five years, and “impose future increases with inflation”, The Los Angeles Times reports.
The minimum wage would go up incrementally and reach $15 an hour by 2022.
The deal settles debates between the state’s Democratic-dominated legislature and activists led by powerful labor unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, to increase wages for millions of California’s low-paid workers.
Leno told AP that the deal would avoid taking the matter to the ballot.
Small businesses – those with fewer than 25 employees – would have an extra year to comply with each upward increase. Only Washington, D.C., at $10.50 per hour is higher.
Besides California, other states have taken on wage increase proposals.
Sean Wherley, a spokesman for SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, confirmed that the SEIU parent union was involved in the negotiations.
California union leaders said they would not dispense with the planned ballot measure until a deal was signed into law. Additionally, some cities like Seattle and New York City have passed ordinances requiring a $15 minimum wage. “We want to be certain of what all this is”, Wherley said. Its backers are hopeful that the final agreement will allow them to formally withdraw that initiative in a few weeks. A second union proposal aims to have a $15 minimum wage by 2020, but it is not yet on the ballot.
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Brown, a fourth-term Democrat, had been reticent about a minimum wage increase, concerned about the impact of rising wages in the event of an economic downturn.
