City follows Seattle and San Francisco in raising minimum wage to $15 by July 2020, with city council members voting overwhelmingly in favour of legislation 
 
 Los Angeles became the largest US city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour on Tuesday, as a wage increase bill passed the city council by a vote of 14-1. 
 
 It is now up to city attorney Mike Feuer to draft an ordinance to implement the new minimum wage requirements. The ordinance will then return to the council for a final vote before becoming law. Under the proposed legislation, the city’s minimum wage would increase to $10.50 in July 2016, and would increase incrementally every year until it reaches $15 in July 2020. For small businesses with 25 or fewer employees, the wage hike would come on a modified schedule with the incremental increases starting in July 2017 and the minimum wage reaching $15 by July 2021. 
 
 Seattle workers hail 'historic moment' as city sets course for $15 minimum wage Read more 
 
 The current minimum wage in California is $9 an hour and is set to increase to $10 in January 2016. 
 
 
 
 In the past year, two other US cities have approved similar wage increase measures. In June 2014, Seattle moved to increase its minimum wage to $15 by 2017. Last November, San Francisco voted to increase its minimum wage to $15 by 2018. 
 
 Other cities, including New York and Chicago, are considering raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour. In February,New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called for a $15 minimum wage by 2019 in his state of the city address. 
 
 The shift toward raising the minimum wage by local lawmakers comes at a time when the fight for $15 movement has swelled into the largest protest by low-wage workers in US history. On 15 April, some 60,000 workers in more than 200 US cities took part in the Fight for $15 demonstrations. Many of them were low-wage employees of companies like Walmart and McDonald’s, which have since pledged to increase their workers’ pay by $1-$2 an hour, a raise activists said is still not enough. 
 
 Who would oppose a $15 minimum wage? Sometimes your neighbour Read more 
 
 “By voting to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the Los Angeles City Council has just shown what workers are capable of when we stick together. People used to think we had no chance, but we are steadily winning the fight by demanding $15 an hour to lift our families out of poverty,” said Albina Ardon, 29, a mother of two and an active member of the Fight for $15 in Los Angeles. 
 
 Ardon, who has worked for McDonald’s for 10 years, earns $9.05 an hour and relies on food stamps and Medi-Cal to make ends meet. 
 
 “My life would be completely different if I were paid $15 an hour. I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.” 
 
 The federally mandated minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 since June 2009. While the unemployment rate has dropped to 5.4% – a seven-year low – and the number of jobless claim is at a 15-year low, wages remain stagnant. 
 
 President Barack Obama previously called on Congress to raise it to $10.10 . Democrats, led by Washington senator Patty Murray and Congressman Bobby Scott recently introduced a bill that would raise federal minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020. 
 
 Advocates for higher minimum wage like Unite Here and Raise the Wage attended the Los Angeles city council hearing on Tuesday. Prior to the vote, the council opened the proposal to debate and allowed each of the sides 25 minutes to make their arguments for and against the $15 minimum wage. Those on the opposing side included small business owners and restaurant owners, who said that higher minimum wage would force them to increase prices or let go of some of their staff. 
 
 Genaro Molina (@GenaroMolina47) Members of Unite Here wait for Los Angeles City Council to vote on plan to raise the minimum wage. pic.twitter.com/ucr0plYtpa 
 
 Council member Bernard Parks has previously expressed concern about $15 minimum wage leading to higher unemployment in the area. 
 
 
 
 “Every minimum wage increase that we’ve seen, if it’s too high, causes unemployment,” Parks told NPR in February. “If you have a big city like Los Angeles doing something, you’re going to find a lot of people will fall in line without any thought, because they believe that we’ve done the research. The fact is, we have not done the research.” 
 
 The city has commissioned a report from the Institute for Research on Labor Employment from University of California, Berkeley. The report found that by increasing minimum wage to $15.25 by 2019, as some city council members had suggested in the past, would affect 542,000 workers by 2017. 
 
 “By 2019, we estimate that 609,000, or 41.3% of the covered workforce, will receive a wage increase from the proposed law,” the researchers wrote in March 2015. “Average annual earnings will increase by 30.4%, or $4,800 in 2014 dollars.” 
 
 While higher pay may lead to higher prices and to a drop in consumer spending, those who will get a pay raise thank to the new bill are more likely to spend more, according to the researchers. 
 
 These findings did not appease opponents of the $15 an hour minimum wage, who have said that the report is not independent. Since the institute conducted a similar study on the effects of increasing the minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017 as proposed by the Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti last year, the opponents felt that commissioning the institute to conduct this years study was a conflict of interest. 
 
 “I asked for an independent study. Selecting UC Berkeley again for this independent analysis does not pass the smell test with me,” city councilman Mitch O’Farrell said in January. 
 
 Both Seattle and San Francisco have populations of less than one million, whereas Los Angeles population is more than 3.88 million people. The effects of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour on that large of a scale remain unknown, which is something that continues to worry Los Angeles lawmakers. 
 
 “This is an experiment,” Paul Koretz said during Tuesday’s hearing. “If anyone tells you they know exactly how this is going to go … they’re not being honest with you.” 
 
 Despite concerns about the possible effects of increasing minimum wage to $15 an hour, two hours into Tuesday’s hearing, the proposal passed. Worker rights advocates declared the vote a win for the low-wage workers. 
 
 “By a vote of 14 to 1, the council directed L.A.’s city attorney to prepare legislation setting a $15 wage floor,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. “Today, Los Angeles becomes the latest and largest city to throw its support behind the legions of workers who ask for nothing less than to be paid a fair and decent wage.” ||||| The council's decision is part of a broader national effort to alleviate poverty, said Maria Elena Durazo, former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Raising the wage in L.A., she said, will help spur similar increases in other parts of the country. 
 
 
 
 "Without a doubt, it was a very big victory," said Durazo, now with Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers' union. 
 
 
 
 Some labor leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the gradual timeline elected leaders set for raising base wages. But on Tuesday the harshest criticism of the law came from business groups, which warned lawmakers that the mandate would force employers to lay off workers or leave the city altogether. 
 
 
 
 "The very people [council members'] rhetoric claims to help with this action, it's going to hurt," said Ruben Gonzalez, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president for public policy and political affairs. 
 
 
 
 He predicted that many businesses would absorb their new labor costs by laying off employees, reducing work hours or moving out of the city entirely. 
 
 
 
 "It's simple math," Gonzalez said. "There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short period of time." 
 
 
 
 Councilman Mitchell Englander, the council's only Republican, cast the lone opposing vote. In a statement, he said the council action could "make it impossible for entire industries to do business" in Los Angeles. 
 
 
 
 "The very last thing that we should be doing as a city is creating a competitive disadvantage for our businesses with those in neighboring cities," said Englander, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley. 
 
 
 
 The council's vote followed months of public debate and back-room lobbying on an issue that has animated City Hall like few others over the last year. Unlike some of the neighborhood-specific political dust-ups that occupy city officials, the pay increase would directly affect workers and businesses throughout the city. 
 
 
 
 "That's a monumental change in wages," said Jerry Newman, a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Management. "It's going to have both an economic impact and a social impact." 
 
 
 
 The stakes for some low-wage Angelenos were reflected Tuesday in testimony from workers such as Juan Moran, a line cook in Little Tokyo. Moran told the council the current statewide minimum wage of $9 per hour isn't enough to live on. 
 
 
 
 "Sometimes I have to walk half an hour from work to get to my apartment because money's not enough to pay a ride on the bus," the Boyle Heights resident said. "Or I work 12 hours straight without stop … just to pay rent." 
 
 
 
 Backed by well-organized labor activists at the national level, the campaign to raise the minimum wage has become a focus of Democrats seeking to revive their party's focus on income inequality. Once Los Angeles' wage hike is finalized, the city will join other West Coast cities that have enacted higher minimum wages in the last two years. 
 
 
 
 New York City and Washington, D.C., are also weighing $15-an-hour minimum wage proposals. 
 
 
 
 Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at Cal State L.A., said L.A.'s move on the minimum wage fits in with California's experimentation with left-leaning policies such as regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. 
 
 
 
 The state "has been out front on a variety of things that are not as rapidly moving nationally," Regalado said. 
 
 
 
 L.A.'s proposed wage increase, he said, is "consistent with what we've seen as California has grown increasingly blue, especially urban centers like Los Angeles." 
 
 
 
 In L.A., the move toward a higher citywide minimum wage gathered steam last year as council members pursued a plan to raise the base pay for workers at the city's large hotels to $15.37 per hour. That measure passed last fall. 
 
 
 
 Newly elected council members representing diverse areas of the city — Mike Bonin from an affluent coastal district, Curren Price from South Los Angeles and Nury Martinez from the San Fernando Valley — led the push for the hotel pay increase, which proponents saw as a precursor to a citywide minimum wage hike. 
 
 
 
 Last summer, minimum-wage advocates found a key ally in Garcetti, who put forward his own proposal to raise base pay to $13.25 an hour. 
 
 
 
 In a telephone interview from New York City, where he was speaking at Columbia University, the mayor praised the measure passed by the council. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The labor protest movement that fast-food workers in New York City began nearly three years ago has led to higher wages for workers all across the country. On Wednesday, it paid off for the people who started it. 
 
 A panel appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recommended on Wednesday that the minimum wage be raised for employees of fast-food chain restaurants throughout the state to $15 an hour over the next few years. Wages would be raised faster in New York City than in the rest of the state to account for the higher cost of living there. 
 
 The panel’s recommendations, which are expected to be put into effect by an order of the state’s acting commissioner of labor, represent a major triumph for the advocates who have rallied burger-flippers and fry cooks to demand pay that covers their basic needs. They argued that taxpayers were subsidizing the workforces of some multinational corporations, like McDonald’s, that were not paying enough to keep their workers from relying on food stamps and other welfare benefits. 
 
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 The $15 wage would represent a raise of more than 70 percent for workers earning the state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour. Advocates for low-wage workers said they believed the mandate would quickly spur raises for employees in other industries across the state, and a jubilant Mr. Cuomo predicted that other states would follow his lead. 
 
 “When New York acts, the rest of the states follow,” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, citing the state’s passage of the law making same-sex marriage legal. “We’ve always been different, always been first, always been the most progressive.” 
 
 The decision, announced in a conference room in Lower Manhattan, set off a raucous celebration by hundreds of workers and union leaders outside. 
 
 Flavia Cabral, 53, a grandmother from the Bronx who works part-time in a McDonald’s for $8.75 an hour, pointed out the scars where fry baskets had seared her forearms. “At least they listened to us,” she said, referring to the panel. “We’re breathing little by little.” 
 
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 Bill Lipton, state director of the Working Families Party, called the decision a victory for the “99-percenters.” Mr. Lipton, who has campaigned for better pay for low-wage workers for years, said, “There’s clearly a new standard for the minimum wage, and it’s actually a living wage for the first time in many, many decades.” 
 
 Continue reading the main story Local Minimum Wages Many cities have enacted or proposed legislation in recent years to create a local minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum and their state’s minimum, if there is one. City minimum wage Passed Proposed Seattle $15 Portland, Me. $10.68 New York Oakland Chicago $15 Kansas City, Mo. $12.25 $13 $13 Wash. D.C. San Francisco $15 Santa Fe, N.M. Louisville, Ky. $15 $10.84 $9 Los Angeles $15 Albuquerque, N.M. San Diego $8.75 $11.50 City minimum wages Passed Proposed Seattle Portland, Me. $15 $10.68 New York Chicago $15 $13 Oakland Kansas City, Mo. $12.25 D.C. $13 $15 $15 S.F. Louisville, Ky. Santa Fe, N.M. $9 $10.84 Los Angeles $15 City minimum wages Passed Proposed Seattle Portland, Me. $15.00 $10.68 New York $15.00 Oakland Chicago Washington Kansas City, Mo. $12.25 $13.00 $15.00 $13.00 San Francisco $15.00 Louisville, Ky. Santa Fe, N.M. $9.00 $10.84 Los Angeles $15.00 San Diego Albuquerque, N.M. $11.50 $8.75 
 
 The decision comes on the heels of similar increases in minimum wages in other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to raise the county’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, matching a move the Los Angeles City Council made in June. 
 
 But a more complicated political terrain in New York forced Mr. Cuomo to take a different route. 
 
 Mayor Bill de Blasio has demanded a higher minimum wage in the city to account for its higher cost of living. But neither he nor the City Council has the power to set wages citywide. 
 
 When lawmakers in Albany balked at the idea, Mr. Cuomo convened a board to look at wages in the fast-food industry, which is one of the biggest employers of low-wage workers in the state, with about 180,000 employees. 
 
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 After hearing testimony from dozens of fast-food workers, the board members decided the state should mandate that fast-food chains pay more. Advocates often pointed to the giant pay packages the chains gave to their top executives. 
 
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 The board’s decision removed the last significant hurdle to raising wages, since the acting labor commissioner, Mario Musolino, who must act on the recommendation, is widely expected to accept it. 
 
 The board said the first wage increase should come by Dec. 31, taking the minimum in the city to $10.50 and in the rest of the state to $9.75. The wage in the city would then rise in increments of $1.50 annually for the next three years, until it reaches $15 at the end of 2018. In the rest of the state, the hourly wage would rise each year, reaching $15 on July 1, 2021. 
 
 The mandate should apply to all workers in fast-food restaurants that are part of chains with at least 30 outlets, the board said. They defined fast food as food and drinks served at counters where customers pay before eating and can take their food with them if they choose. 
 
 The restaurant industry has chafed at these decisions. “We continue to say that we think it’s unfair that they singled out a single segment of our industry,” Melissa Fleischut, the executive director of the New York State Restaurant Association, said. 
 
 McDonald’s, a multinational corporation that paid its chief executive more than $7.5 million last year, said in April that it would raise the minimum wage it pays workers in company-owned stores to $9.90 by July 1 and to more than $10 next year. 
 
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 But the association noted that the impact would be felt at much smaller chains than McDonald’s or Taco Bell. Companies as small as Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, a chain of about 100 casual restaurants in New York City, would appear to fit the board’s definition. 
 
 Economists predicted the increases would ripple out to other restaurants and other industries that pay low wages. 
 
 “It will likely put pressure on employers in other industries to raise wages in order to compete for workers,” Irene Tung, a policy researcher for the National Employment Law Project, said. “It would be very attractive for somebody working at the Gap, making around $9 an hour, to look across the street and see Chipotle paying $2 or $3 or $4 more and decide that they would rather work at Chipotle,” she said, referring to the fast-food burrito chain. 
 
 Ms. Tung said this would be the first time that a state had raised the minimum wage for a particular industry. 
 
 Laura Jankowski, who owns three Tropical Smoothie cafes on Long Island, said she had already raised prices to offset the increase in the state minimum wage that took effect last year. Though she was not certain that the new wage rules would apply to her businesses, she feared customers would complain at paying much more than $4.99 for a 24-ounce drink. 
 
 Most likely, she said, she would have to make do with fewer workers, all of whom she said were high school or college students working part-time. “It really is going to come to less people,” Ms. Jankowski said by telephone from her cafe in Port Jefferson Station. “What I envision is cutting labor, hiring less people, having less people per shift.” 
 
 Already on Wednesday afternoon, some retail workers in Manhattan were wondering, what about us? “We deserve it, too,” said Mary Gomes, 51, who works at a Duane Reade drugstore, where she said she earned $9.20 per hour. 
 
 Brittany Thomas, 20, who works at a Lady Foot Locker store, said it would not be fair to raise wages only for fast-food workers given that “there are a lot of jobs that require more work than serving food.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas said, “We all work hard for our checks.”
– The push for a higher minimum wage just got a major boost courtesy of Los Angeles. The city council has approved raising it to $15 an hour by 2020, reports the Los Angeles Times. Under the plan, the rate will rise from $9 to $10.50 in July 2016, then tick up annually to $12, $13.25, $14.25, and $15. Businesses with 25 or fewer workers will get an extra year to phase it in. Though a handful of other cities have voted for a $15 rate, including Seattle, Los Angeles is the biggest city to do so. The move doesn't become official until the city attorney's office drafts an ordinance and sends it back to council members for their approval, but once it does, it's going to affect a lot of people, notes the New York Times. The newspaper cites one study showing that about 40% of workers in the city make less than $15 an hour. The city's chamber of commerce predicts layoffs as a result. "It's simple math," says one official. "There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short period of time." But one longtime McDonald's worker, a mother of two now making $9.05 an hour, tells the Guardian that the move is overdue. “My life would be completely different if I were paid $15 an hour," she says. "I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.”