From PasadenaNOW and conversations with City of Pasadena staff: Pasadena Minimum Wage to Increase to $16.11 BY ANDRÉ COLEMAN, MANAGING EDITOR
Local minimum wage earners will see a jump in pay of more than $1 an hour later this year.
Pasadena Now has learned the city’s minimum wage will increase to $16.11 in July.
The increase has left some concerned about the impact on small businesses.
The minimum wage is the starting hourly wage an employer can pay an employee for work.
Locally, the Pasadena City Council adopted a Minimum Wage Ordinance on March 14, 2016.
The wage increased on July 1, 2016 to $10.50 and increased by $1.25 every year on that date until it reached $15 in 2020.
Businesses with 25 or fewer employees and qualifying non-profits have an additional year to comply with the sequential wage increases.
The increase to $16.11 is based on a provision that increases the wage based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Inflation has slammed local consumers.
The CPI measures the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.
Inflation has slammed local consumers.
“Inflation affects all of us but has the greatest impact on lower wage workers,” said Vice-Mayor Andy Wilson. “So while I appreciate increases in the minimum wage often put additional pressure on small businesses and restaurants especially as they look to recover from pandemic challenges, I believe they are better able to absorb these increases than low wage workers who often struggle to make ends meet.”
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared the minimum wage a livable wage when the law was passed in 1933.
But some say the local minimum wage is not a livable wage as $15 an hour does not cover the high cost of Pasadena rent.
Small businesses, especially restaurant owners, continue to struggle to recover after being closed for nearly a year to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former restaurant owner Robin Salzer said there should be a pause to allow business owners to get back on their feet.
“Now is not the time to even consider raising the minimum wage,” he said. “With gas prices at an all time high, with many businesses closed and store fronts with for sale or lease signs and with many businesses large and small operating with fewer hours due to lack of staff, now is the worst time to add another nail in the coffin of business sustainability.”
According to Salzer, the cost of operations will rise and businesses will be forced to operate with a smaller staff resulting in an even higher unemployment rate than what is now straddling our country.
“The majority of businesses in Pasadena are just now slowly recovering from the pandemic. Let them become solvent again before raising the minimum wage.”
Despite those factors local Chamber of Commerce CEO Paul Little said he believes the increase will go forward.
“I fully expect the City Council will increase the minimum wage,” said Chamber of Commerce CEO Paul Little. “The increase will be one more burden on locally owned small businesses after two years of a crushing economy.”
Jon Pollard with the Code Compliance Manager with the City confirmed that finance director Matthew Hawkesworth would be recommending the increase to $16.11. He told me the minimum wage hike is based on a a CPI increase of 7.4%.
It is very unlikely that the Pasadena City Council would enact a smaller increase or defer the increase to later years, despite the excessive burden any increase in cost would have on Pasadena's local small businesses.
California’s minimum wage will jump to $15.50 per hour next year, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced Thursday, an increase triggered by soaring inflation that will benefit about 3 million workers.
The increase is required by a state law passed in 2016. But it comes at a good time for Democrats in the nation’s most populous state as they rush to find ways to boost taxpayers’ bank accounts in an election year marked by rising prices that have diluted the purchasing power of consumers.