Los Angeles Expected to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour (xpost from GD)
\http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/us/los-angeles-expected-to-raise-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour.html
LOS ANGELES — The nation’s second-largest city is considering on Tuesday whether to increase its minimum wage, making it $15 an hour by 2020, in what would perhaps be the most significant victory so far in the national push to raise the minimum wage.
The increase — which the Los Angeles City Council is considered likely to pass — would come as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages, and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wage by referendum.
The impact would be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, more than 40 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour.
“The effects here will be the biggest by far,” said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was commissioned by city leaders here to conduct several studies on the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase. “The proposal will bring wages up in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s. There’s a sense spreading that this is the new norm, especially in areas that have high costs of housing.”
h/t steve2470 
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