A Los Angeles City Council committee was scheduled to vote Friday on a draft ordinance to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, as well as a proposed exemption for businesses that have collective bargaining agreements.
Earlier this week, labor leaders, who fought for the wage increase, made a last-minute push to create an exemption that would give unionized companies the opportunity to negotiate lower pay rates with their employees, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them,” Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and co-convener of the Campaign to Raise the Wage, told the Times.
Last week, the city council voted 14-to-1 to approve the wage hike, though the actual language must be finalized by the Economic Development Committee. The increase would be phased in from the current $9 per hour over the next five years. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply.
Council President Herb Wesson said in a statement Thursday that he planned to table the union exemption to allow for further study. Others said they hoped the ordinance could move forward without the last-minute exemption.
In a statement Thursday, Hicks said the group was surprised to find the draft ordinance included no provision to protect workers’ rights.
Past city ordinances, and those of other California cities such as Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose and more, have included such protections, he said.
Jot Condie, CEO and president of the California Restaurant Association, said in a statement Friday, “The unions are being too cute by half.
“They have spent the last few months table-pounding against any exemptions or mitigations to the minimum wage increase – suggesting no one should get special treatment. Now it is clear they recognize the need for those mitigations and have asked for special treatment for themselves, leaving the thousands of small, women and minority-owned businesses in our community to suffer while they gain because of their political largess,” he continued.
Some observers saw the move as outright hypocrisy, saying unions care more about collecting dues than about the welfare of workers.
“It’s insane hypocrisy,” restaurant operator George Abou-Daoud, who opposed the ordinance, told the Times. “The unions have put forth an agenda that they themselves don’t have to comply with.”
Others found the idea intriguing.
“To be clear, this is almost surely an implicit acknowledgment by the unions that there are at least some local industries in Los Angeles, such as apparel manufacturing, where $15 per hour is too high a minimum, and workers might prefer to accept lower pay in order to keep their jobs. Otherwise, there would be no point in pushing for it,” wrote Jordan Weissmann in Slate.
“No rational employee would choose to organize and accept a lower paycheck — plus pay union dues — unless they really, truly thought their job was being imperiled by their wage.”
City Councilman Mike Bonin, a champion of the minimum wage increase, told the Times, “For me, the point of the minimum wage in Los Angeles was to raise wages and lift people out of poverty.”
The pay raise should apply to everyone, he said, including “employees of big businesses and small businesses, of nonprofits and for-profits, people who are members of unions and people who are not.”
Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected].
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