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By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES: California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday signed into a law a bill gradually raising the minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour by the year 2023, making the nation’s most-populous state the first to boost pay to that level for the working poor.
The move marks the culmination of a deal Brown brokered with labor leaders and state Democratic leaders and puts California, home to one of the world’s biggest economies, at the forefront of U.S. states and cities that have moved to surpass the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
Both houses of California’s state legislature approved the measure on Thursday, fast-tracking proposed legislation announced two days earlier by Brown, a popular Democrat.
Raising the minimum wage has cropped up on many Democratic candidates’ agendas ahead of the November elections in the hopes it could help mobilize voters to the polls. Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.
In New York on Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that will eventually raise the minimum wage in New York City and surrounding areas to $15 per hour.
Other parts of the state will see the current $9 per hour rate rise to $12.50 within five years under the legislation, a compromise between Cuomo and other Democrats and Republican lawmakers who resisted a statewide flat rate of $15.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Sara Catania and Alistair Bell)
Reuters
