Editorial: The Year of Minimum Wage in L.A.

The year 2015 was a good one for low-income workers in Los Angeles. Both the city and the county approved a gradual raise of the minimum wage to reach $15 in the next few years. The measure is a much-awaited respond to the marked inequality currently existing between the salaries earned by workers and the cost of life in our city.

With this move, Los Angeles joins other California cities – such as San Diego and San Francisco, as well as Chicago and Seattle throughout the rest of the country – which have raised the minimum wage. This was an urgent issue in our city.

Years ago, a report by the United Way organization in Los Angeles described our region as a “tale of two cities,” not just because of its vast geography but for the wide differences regarding access to opportunity, quality of education and, especially, financial conditions. The ample annual income – ranging between $208,000 in Bel Air and $26,000 in Pico-Union – translates into an economy that establishes set prices that are too high for a large number of workers.

Real estate in cities like New York and San Francisco is more expensive than in Los Angeles. However, prices seem higher in our area because inequality and poverty are more widespread. Los Angeles’ tenants are paying up to 40% of their income in rental, the highest rate in the country. That means that other sectors of the economy of these households are being sacrificed, including buying food, clothing and medications, among other basic needs.

For full-time workers, poverty is unfair and humilliating, and it is detrimental to the economy. It is unreasonable to have a category of workers who are forced to supplement their meager incomes with welfare and public assistance. Neither the government nor taxpayers are in a position to subsidize the low wages currently paid by the private sector.

Raising the minimum wage has a broad impact. The price of some products may increase and some people may lose their jobs, but the benefits are bigger for employed people who have more money to spend on the economy, and public assistance funds will be saved. Most importantly, this measure reestablishes the value of labor and the person who carries it out.