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Minimum wage-raising Proposition 32 to be voted on in general election

(Shrey Chaganal/Assistant design director)

By Alexandra Crosnoe

Aug. 26, 2024 11:54 a.m.

Californians will vote on whether or not to raise the state minimum wage through a 2024 general election initiative.

If passed, Proposition 32 would raise the minimum wage in California from $16 to $18 an hour. This increase would occur gradually and depend on the size of a company – for employers with 26 or more workers, the minimum wage would increase to $18 in 2025, whereas for companies with 25 or fewer workers, the minimum wage would reach $18 in 2026.

The initiative comes after a series of occupational minimum wage increases throughout California. The state raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour for fast food workers in April and approved a gradual pay increase for most health care workers to $25 an hour by 2028.

Enrique Lopezlira, the director of the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s low-wage work program, said Proposition 32 would impact workers who were not subject to recent minimum wage increases. He added that the increase would have affected a greater number of workers in 2022, when activists attempted but did not receive enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot because the occupational wage increases had not yet been instated.

“It’s going to help people, but it’s not going to have the same impact that it would have had when it was originally proposed,” he said. “It’s going to be lower than for many workers whose wage is now much higher.”

Chris Tilly, a professor of sociology and public affairs at UCLA, said $18 an hour is still not a living wage for many coastal areas in California with high housing costs – including Los Angeles, San Diego and the Bay Area.

“Unfortunately, it’s not a living wage in the big coastal cities,” he said. “Housing is a big budget buster.”

 

Those who oppose minimum wage hikes – including the California Restaurant Association – have claimed the increase could negatively impact businesses’ abilities to stay afloat.

“Even well-intentioned efforts to raise the minimum wage could wreak havoc on the state’s fragile economic state, and restaurants’ slim profit margin makes them particularly vulnerable,” the California Restaurant Association’s website says. “In a time of such economic turmoil, it’s critically important that lawmakers do no harm for the sake of employers and employees alike.”

However, Tilly said that since many establishments in California already provide a wage above $18, the increase will likely have a negligible impact on businesses.

“The evidence on the aggregate effects is that, for even larger increases in the minimum wage than this, there’s small to no significant disemployment effects,” he said. “People do get a raise – in this case, it’s a relatively small raise for a slice of the workforce.”

Critics of Proposition 32 – including the California Chamber of Commerce, California’s largest business advocate to the government, also cited that raising the minimum wage will increase inflation. If passed, further minimum wage increases would be tied to the U.S. Consumer Price Index starting in 2027, which measures the change in consumer prices over a certain period of time.

Tilly said he believes an increase in minimum wage to $18 is too small to have a significant effect on inflation. He added that the raise would not impact the price of the goods that have potential to cause inflation – including the costs of oil and housing.

Lopezlira added that while some businesses could choose to pass the cost of a higher minimum wage to consumers by raising prices, they do not necessarily have to do so.

“Businesses don’t have to raise prices to cover the minimum wage – that’s a choice that they make,” he said. “They can choose to take less of a profit margin and pay their workers better to allow them to provide for their families.”

When voting on the initiative, Californians should keep in mind that most low-wage workers are adults providing for families, Lopezlira said. One in six low-wage California workers have a bachelor’s or advanced degree, and over the last twenty years, the number of low-wage workers over the age of 55 has doubled, he added.

“Even though it’s going to be a modest increase…that’s a significant improvement for many workers who are still struggling to make ends meet and it will lift many workers out of poverty,” he said.

Contributing reports by Gabrielle Gillette, Metro editor.

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Alexandra Crosnoe | National news and higher education editor
Crosnoe is the 2024-2025 national news and higher education editor and an Arts, Copy, Enterprise, Sports and Social contributor. She was previously news staff. Crosnoe is a second-year public affairs student from Dallas, Texas.
Crosnoe is the 2024-2025 national news and higher education editor and an Arts, Copy, Enterprise, Sports and Social contributor. She was previously news staff. Crosnoe is a second-year public affairs student from Dallas, Texas.
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