This fall, California voters will decide whether to increase the state’s minimum wage by $2 to $18 an hour. The ballot initiative is the latest in a flurry of efforts to raise wages for workers in the Golden State.

Official title on the ballot: Proposition 32: Raise Minimum Wage. Initiative Statute.

Understanding the $18 minimum wage initiative

Right now, there’s a patchwork of minimum wage laws around California, with most cities having no minimum wage at all and relying on the state statute.

A few cities pay more than $18 an hour, including West Hollywood, Berkeley and San Francisco.

On July 1, the minimum wage in Los Angeles will increase to $17.28. It goes up each year based on increases in the consumer price index. Meanwhile, hospitality workers at hotels with 60 or more rooms in the city will soon make more than $20 an hour because of a measure approved by the city council last year.

How we got here

In recent years, the labor movement has targeted individual industries for pay raises.

• In March, voters in Long Beach approved a labor-backed measure raising the minimum wage for hotel workers in the city to $23 an hour starting in July with an escalator to $29.50 an hour by 2028. It's the highest minimum wage in the country, according to the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy. 

• In April, a new state law mandated that fast food chain workers across California receive at least $20 an hour. The law applies to people who work at restaurants with at least 60 stores nationwide. California is home to the largest number of fast food workers in the U.S. The state is still working out the details of who will benefit from the new law, according to CalMatters.

• On July 1, a new law will begin a gradual increase of the minimum wage for healthcare workers across California. The law calls for yearly increases with health care facilities expected to reach $25 per hour by June 1, 2028, and for some rural facilities by 2033.

What people who support it say

For hundreds of thousands of workers, the pay boost could be much needed relief amid high housing, food and gasoline costs in the state.

The vast majority of L.A. County’s 88 cities rely on the state’s minimum wage.

“Regular working people can hardly afford to keep food on the table for their families and I think raising the minimum wage is a baby step in the right direction,” said Brian Justie, a senior researcher at the UCLA Labor Center.

Justie understands concerns about the measure's impact on small businesses.

“I have some amount of sympathy for small businesses,” Justie added. “I think if you can’t afford to pay your employees a living, dignified wage then you probably don’t have a viable business model.”

What people who oppose it say

Business interests don't like the measure.

“We think this is just another unfortunate scheme by progressives and labor unions to put small businesses out of business and send more people to the unemployment line,” said John Kabateck of the National Federation of Independent Business. Kabateck is the California director of the federation, which represents about 14,000 small and independent businesses in the state.

He added that “no minimum wage job is expected to be a long term job.”

Cram session

During AirTalk's Ballot Cram Session live event, Larry Mantle talked with Caltech's Michael Alvarez, Pomona College's Sara Sadhwani and Claremont McKenna College's Zachary Courser about Proposition 32.

What state analysts say

An analysis by the state Legislative Analyst's Office estimates the measure would increase costs for many businesses, which in turn “likely would raise the prices they charge for the things they sell.”

The LAO report also states the measure would increase costs for local governments while also lowering the number of people on public assistance. An estimated 2 million workers statewide are expected to be affected by the measure.

A separate LAO report looked at the minimum wage and workers. It found:

• For a single parent with three children, the statewide minimum wage is right around the poverty level. For a single parent with four or more children (not shown in the figure), the minimum wage is below the poverty level.
• For a single parent with one or two children, the statewide minimum wage is somewhat higher than the poverty level.
• For the most common types of low-wage workers — those who do not have children or who live with at least one other worker — the minimum wage is at least two times the poverty level.

Factoring in housing costs, the LAO found “housing in California’s major metro areas and much of the Central Coast is unaffordable for minimum-wage workers.”

Under federal guidelines, households that pay more than 30% of their income toward housing are considered to fall into the “unaffordable” category.

The backstory

The man behind this year’s minimum wage increase measure is Joe Sanberg, an early investor in the meal delivery service Blue Apron. Sanberg is the co-founder of Aspiration Inc., an online banking and investing firm.

Sanberg initially tried to get a minimum wage increase on the 2022 ballot, spending more than $10 million, but missed a key deadline. Secretary of State Shirley Weber, after verifying Sanberg had collected enough signatures, then placed the measure on the 2024 ballot.

According to his online biography, Sanberg was raised by a single mom who struggled to make ends meet on her public school teacher salary. His family lost their home to foreclosure after falling deeply into debt.

“Even though his own family was able to escape the cycle of poverty, Joe knew there were millions of families like his who were living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to put food on the table and draining their bank accounts any time they had an unexpected expense,” his bio states.

Sanberg first got into California politics by lobbying for the state to create its own Earned Income Tax Credit for low to moderate wage earners, known as CalEITC, in 2015.

Sanberg did not respond to a request for an interview.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to take a position on the ballot measure.

A USC Dornsife/Price Center for Urban Politics and Policy poll released in January found a majority of the state’s voters support an increase in the state minimum wage. When asked if they would support an increase to $18/hour, 59% of likely voters supported; 34% opposed; and 8% said they
didn’t know.

Listen in: Prop. 32 discussed on AirTalk

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This voter guide originally published Aug. 15.