State Senator Steve Glazer issued the following Statement on Senate Bill 3, a plan to raise minimum wage to $15 by 2022.
Sacramento – “I voted today to support Senate Bill 3, a balanced plan that will lift millions out of poverty with a minimum wage increase while providing long-term stability and predictability for employers.
“The California minimum wage was established in 1916. There have been 27 increases over the past 100 years. Big spikes were followed with pauses, which has resulted in unpredictability and turmoil for businesses and workers.
“These minimum wage jobs are difficult and strenuous, and taking home a paycheck that cannot even cover rent, food and medicine is an unacceptable status quo.
“No bill is perfect, and we will need to carefully oversee its six-year phase-in to be sure it is achieving the desired results.”
SB 3 phases in gradual increases from the current $10 an hour rate to $15 by 2022. It provides an annual cost of living cap at 3.5 percent starting in 2024.
14 comments
Mr Glazer, I am on Social Security and cannot cover rent, food and medication. Are you going to support a raise in Social Security when the Feds bring that up.
Definitely VOTING NO . Minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage you stupid morons! Damn Liberals are so brain dead. If you want to make more, do more, to better your job situation losers!
Thanks for your thoughts, Mr. Career Elitist. Our politicians are finally doing something good in terms of helping folks who make minimum wage to keep up with California’s high prices. Maybe once you should look for the good in something instead of an opportunity to insult and puff up your ego. Maybe one day America can stop illogically creating a link between one’s job and one’s character.
I find it interesting that you leftists always seem to resort to 4th grade schoolyard name calling whenever you cannot support your side of any argument. Todd Stone is absolutely correct.
And people wonder why people turn to the black market, LOL
I agree with Todd Stone – Minimum Wage is not meant to be a living wage. Raising the minimum wage will help some, but also many employers of minimum wage-earners will be priced out, and the employees will loose their jobs altogether.
Obama is all proud that the unemployment rate is going down. That is because many dropped out of the job market, or because of ObamaCare, are now working less than 30 hours a week. Backfired!
Provide incentives resulting in full-time work, with increasing productivity.
Reduce waste by making sure those on welfare who CAN work DO work, to get them into productive roles in society, and an incentive to improve their situation in life. Yes, I know SOME need welfare support, but too many able-bodied recipients rely on public entitlements instead. At our expense.
The question is will this raise increase over the next 8 years be able to keep ahead of the upsetting inflation that will definitely come soon? Our businesses have been clever on ways to hide inflation (smaller packaging and volume/price changes, slow gas price decreases followed by rapid gas price increases and not in line with supply and demand).
Minimum wage is for an entry level job, you learn, get better and move up to a better job with higher pay. If you don’t care or are just not smart enough, well, you’re damned to a minimum wage job. I’m an auto mechanic, wages have dropped since 2002 in my profession. What about me and other skilled trades?…..Mr Glazer, you are pushing us towards a communist society
‘The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.’ -Ronald Reagan
For all you rightwing Republicans, Libertarians and neo-con Democrat nuts! Once the minimum wage was for youth and entry level positions. I made minimum wage of $1.25 out of H.S. and $1.75 during college before I was last of draftees in October 1972. However regular family workers (white males) made at least twice the minimum wage (of course Women, Blacks, and other minorities were often shafted), worked 40 hour weeks, had good benefits, job security and could look forward toward buying a house. This was all because of Unions, not the goodness of corporations! Unfortunately, now unions have been decimated by or capitulated to corporations and good jobs sent to the 3rd world. Now, many of the primary family workers are earning the current minimum wage and many more less than twice minimum wage. Few hope to own a home or get ahead and many look to a life of poverty! Wives didn’t have to work back in 50s-early 70s, now two incomes are needed just for family to survive! Corporations have U.S. workers competing with 3rd world slave labor! Worse yet is that gas was $0.35/gallon in 1972. Until the recent temporary gas price decline, gas was more than 10 times that of 1972. Gas prices are a good, if not simple, understanding of basic living costs. The minimum wage the past 5 years should have been $15-20/hour. No adult should be making less than twice that or at least$30-$40/hour. Jobs should be 40 hours/week with benefits. What happened: the 1% decided to keep almost all the productivity gains from the computer age resulting in an unbelievable rising income gap that has created a multitude of billionaires while many families exist on poverty wages or poverty welfare, or poverty SSI and or poverty Social Security. Women, Blacks, and other minorities were often shafted financially in the past, but instead of helping them reach a decent living standard today, many, many white males have now joined them in poverty or a life of stress filled financial insecurity. Viva la revolution!
I have been around 70 years so we have some things in common. You are a bit right about the unions, but you missed a few important details. The unions began eating themselves up when (like politicians as well) they found out they had the power to demand nearly anything, they priced themselves out of the job market, thence manufacturing started moving off-shore. The unions became their own job killers. When I was only a kid in the 1950s and heard that GM factory workers were on strike for over $29/hour, I knew at the tender age of 12 that something was terribly wrong. If my dad had a good month selling John Deere equipment, he might bring home $700. The winters were long back then.
As more and more people entered our job market, with less and less marketable job skills, the “goodness of corporations” were now competing for qualified applicants, thence driving wages and benefits up due to supply and demand, and continue to do that today.
If a person has marketable skills in an area of need, there are still plenty of well paying jobs out there … but you must have the skillset to qualify. And they don’t need college, the blue collar jobs are also still aplenty, but you must get your start while young, attend at least some trade school and work your way up. $15/hour is going to keep most teens off of the first rung of that career ladder. Too many people now seem to think the world owes them a living and the government will be there to take care of everything for them.
I believe this will create several new issues rather than resolve existing ones. Most important are the young adults that need a first job to gain experience in the work place. This will decimate that group. The only winner here with a min wage increase is the government 30 percent income tax increase they will take from this. Automation will be taking these minimum wage jobs quickly leaving the same result as today. Instead of increasing the low end. Let’s cap the high end wage. The high end or overpaid people ( everyone knows who they are) find tax loopholes and pay less share. If a corporation has a cap at the high end wage chart, the low end would fix itself because a labor tax right off would mean hiring more at a higher wage leaving the young adults an open market to progress upward. This would result in paying the average experienced worker more. Making 400k to 700k a year is more than a comfortable wage. Capping the upper end will force getting the lower end higher wages. Of course this will never happen because of the politicians.
Capping the high end??? How could that ever help the people starting out? Ask Swedes how your approach is working out for them? All their industries are moving out of the country or shutting down (eg. SAAB) because the high end wage earners aren’t willing to pay 89% income taxes, and then value added taxes and then property taxes. Swedes are paying for immigrants (many are middle-eastern) to come in and take low end jobs in order for them to start working pay for all their “free” healthcare, education and multitude of other “free” social programs. They are paying women in child-bearing years to have children for the same reason. In short, Sweden is running out of other people’s money, and their problems are mounting. Socialism is never the answer, it just makes some people feel good for awhile, then eventually they start eating their young. (That is a metaphor only, by the way)
I think you may have missed my point. In order for tax deductions on labor a corporation would need to transfer exceedingly high wages to lower tier employees as there would be caps on golden parachutes and obscene wages to the selected few. Since the minimum wage is a done deal we will see what impact it has on jobs and the economy.
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