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City of San Diego $12 per Hour Minimum Wage Initiative (November 2014)

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See also: Competing $13.09 per hour minimum wage measure

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A City of San Diego $12 per Hour Minimum Wage Measure ballot question was not put on the November 4, 2014 election ballot for voters in the city of San Diego, California.

This measure, which would have sought a $12 per hour minimum wage by 2018, with built-in exceptions for many companies, was proposed by city council candidate Blanca Lopez-Brown as an alternative to a $13.09 per hour minimum wage measure proposed by City Council President Todd Gloria. Lopez-Brown was backing an initiative petition effort to put her proposal on the ballot to compete with Gloria's measure. In an outline of her proposed measure, Lopez-Brown highlighted the phased in approach to raising the minimum wage, which consisted of the following wage jumps:[1]

  • $10.10 per hour beginning January 2015
  • $11.30 per hour beginning January 2016
  • $12.00 per hour beginning January 2018

She also referred to the provisions built in to her proposal that exempt businesses with 25 or fewer full-time employees from the minimum wage increase and keep the increase from applying to the base-wage of workers who receive tips, commissions or bonuses that boost their pay above the proposed minimum wage.[1]

Support

Supporters

  • San Diego City Council candidate Blanca Lopez-Brown[1]

Arguments in favor

Lopez-Brown argued that her proposal, while still offering a wage increase to low-wage workers, would have allowed for a smoother transition for businesses, especially small businesses. She said that the phased-in approach and the built-in exemptions featured by her proposal would keep the minimum wage increase from harming San Diego's economy.[1]


KPBS San Diego video, "Competing Minimum Wage Measure Submitted To San Diego City Clerk,"

Opposition

Opponents of this initiative can be broken up into two groups: those who opposed any sort of minimum wage increase measure and those who opposed the $12 per hour initiative of Lopez-Brown because they supported the higher minimum wage increase found in Gloria's competing proposal.

Opponents

City Council President Todd Gloria was opposed to this initiative and proposed a competing measure seeking a minimum wage hike to $13.09 and containing fewer exemptions.[1]

Jerry Sanders, CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, was opposed to both this initiative and Gloria's competing measure.[1]

Arguments against

The critics of this initiative that also opposed Gloria's competing measure said any increase of the minimum wage above the state level would put the city at a serious economic disadvantage because it would drive businesses and jobs out of the city limits. They believed any such measure would ultimately harm the low-income workers it was designed to help by eliminating jobs in an already competitive job market. Jerry Sanders, CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, was among such critics.[1]

Todd Gloria supporters and members of his staff opposed this initiative because they saw it as a cop-out. They criticized the measure for being a diversion and claimed that it was designed to offer a politically appeasing minimum wage increase without providing any real benefit to the neediest of the low-wage workers in San Diego. Peter Brownell, Research Director for the Center on Policy Initiatives, defended Gloria's proposal and argued that the exemptions offered by the Lopez-Brown initiative would have applied to 93 percent of the businesses in the city, including many in the fast food industry. Brownell said that because the initiative exempts businesses with 25 of fewer full-time workers, many businesses in the fast food industry that used largely part-time workers would have been exempt, leaving a significant number of needy city workers without any wage increase.[2]

Path to the ballot

See also: Laws governing local ballot measures in California

Supporters of this initiative, led by Lopez-Brown, needed to collect about 67,731 valid signatures by late June in order to qualify the initiative for the ballot. This number amounts to 10 percent of San Diego's 677,310 registered voters as demanded by the San Diego City Charter.[3]

Similar measures

Local

Approveda City of Oakland Minimum Wage Increase Initiative, Measure FF (November 2014)
Approveda City of San Francisco Minimum Wage Increase Referred Measure, Proposition J (November 2014)
Defeatedd City of Eureka "Fair Wage Act" Minimum Wage Initiative, Measure R (November 2014)
Approveda Raise Wisconsin minimum wage increase advisory referendums
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of San Diego $12 per Hour Minimum Wage Initiative (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of San Diego $13.09 per Hour Minimum Wage Measure (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of Las Cruces Minimum Wage Increase Initiative (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot Washington D.C. Minimum Wage Initiative (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of Seattle $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage Increase Veto Referendum (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of Seattle $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage Initiative (November 2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of San Francisco Minimum Wage Act of 2014 Initiative (November 2014)
Approveda Philadelphia Minimum Wage Ordinance, Proposition 1 (May 2014)
Approveda City of Chicago $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage Referendum (March 2014)
Approveda SeaTac "Good Jobs Initiative", Proposition 1 (November 2013)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot City of Richmond Minimum Wage Increase Ballot Question (November 2014)

Statewide

Approveda Alaska Minimum Wage Increase, Ballot Measure 3 (2014)
Approveda Arkansas Minimum Wage Initiative (2014)
Approveda South Dakota Increased Minimum Wage, Initiated Measure 18 (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot California Minimum Wage Supplement for Home Health Workers (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot Idaho Minimum Wage Initiative (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot Massachusetts Minimum Wage Increase Initiative (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot Michigan Minimum Wage Initiative (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot Missouri Minimum Wage Initiative (2014)
Proposed ballot measures that were not on a ballot New Mexico Minimum Wage Amendment (2014)


See also

External links

Additional reading

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 KPBS, "Competing Minimum Wage Measure Submitted To San Diego City Clerk," April 29, 2014
  2. ↑ San Diego Free Press, "Bait and Switch – Details of San Diego’s Fake Minimum Wage Initiative," May 9, 2014
  3. ↑ UT-San Diego, "Proposal would hike pay less sharply than Gloria plan; signatures being gathered," April 28, 2014
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