Election Year in California: Minimum Wage Workers Finally Get Boost

by Mike Hall, Aug 22, 2006

Following several years of strong advocacy by California’s union movement to increase the state’s $6.75 an hour minimum wage, the state’s minimum wage workers will see their pay jump to $8 an hour by 2008. The pay hike will be included in a bill similar to one previously passed by the state Legislature that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has agreed to sign.

Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer, says Schwarzenegger is signing this bill this election year after twice vetoing proposed minimum wage legislation.

The long wait for an increase has hurt workers. Three years of inaction by Arnold Schwarzenegger caused the minimum wage to lose its purchasing power. Under the political pressure of a re-election campaign, Arnold Schwarzenegger finally relented and proposed a dollar increase. We said it wasn’t enough. After continued resistance from the governor, we now have an agreement for $1.25. Workers had to wait for an election year to receive an increase in the minimum wage and that’s just not fair. Arnold Schwarzenegger has become just another politician by turning the minimum wage into a political football.

The California victory is the latest in the AFL-CIO’s nationwide America Needs a Raise campaign that is mobilizing union and community activists to push for a minimum wage increase on the state level through legislation or ballot initiatives and on the federal level through congressional action. The Golden State’s minimum wage agreement was announced one day after the 10-year anniversary of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 signing of the last federal minimum wage increase.

The two-part California pay increase will raise the state’s minimum wage to $7.50 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2007, and to $8 an hour the following Jan. 1, making it one of the highest in the nation. Some 1.4 million workers will benefit from the pay increases, according to the labor federation.

The $1.25 an hour wage boost will allow workers to pay for basic necessities many are struggling to afford today. Figures from the labor federation show the extra $2,600 a year for a full-time minimum wage worker translates into 5.25 months of food for a single-parent family with two children or nearly three months rent for the average one-bedroom apartment in the state.

The most recent bill vetoed by Schwarzenegger included indexing the minimum wage against inflation to protect its buying power. But this agreement does not include indexing.

Says Pulaski:

Indexing the minimum wage is still the most fair approach and would remove politics from the process. But we got what we could out of a governor who consistently chooses corporations over workers.

Indexing is critical to protect workers’ wages against erosion, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides says, if elected, he will support and sign legislation to tie the minimum wage to inflation.

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