SACRAMENTO (KMJ) — Governor Jerry Brown has officially announced plans to put California’s minimum wage up to $15 per hour for everybody by 2023.
The announcement in Sacramento comes after rumors over the weekend. But now the deal is official, it’ll affect almost a third of the state’s workers.
“What really cemented this deal was the flexibility, the long term implementation, and quite frankly the specter of the initiative”, says Governor Brown. “This bill is doable, I think it will work in all parts of the state, in all conditions”.
“This program of a $15 minimum wage will happen over time in a gradual way and there’ll be flexibility in the event that there’s a recession or a budgetary downfall, as prescribed in the bill”.
The wage currently stands at $10 per hour, and for employers with 26 employees or more it’ll rise 50 cents by January 2017, and another dollar per year until 2022. For employers with 25 employees or less the same levels stand, but they’ll be delayed by a year meaning the $15 per hour wage will be in place for them by 2023.
But not everyone is behind the change.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of small business simply going out of business, and small business does really create most of the jobs in the state of California”, says Valley State Assemblyman Jim Patterson.
“We’re going to see this hurt significantly young workers and particularly new workers who use jobs and the minimum wage to get into a work life and then move on beyond the minimum wage”.
Hear the report from Dominic McAndrew as it aired on KMJ:
