Alameda County $30 Wage Won’t Appear on November Ballot

Alameda County is proposing to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour, following similar proposals in Los Angeles, the Globe reported in March.

However, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to “study” the $30 per hour minimum wage ballot proposal, rather than approve it for the ballot immediately.

The Board aims to determine if the ballot proposition would cause any “unintended consequences.” Imagine that. As if California doesn’t already have plenty of evidence of “unintended consequences” for inflated minimum wages.

The proposed measure would phase in a $30 minimum wage requirement over a period of 10 years from its current level of $16.90 in Alameda County’s unincorporated areas,” the SF Chronicle reports.

Under the plan, larger employers would be required to reach the $30 hourly wage sooner, while smaller businesses would have more than a decade to comply, ABC 7 is reporting.

The study has 30 days to be completed, meaning the proposal will likely appear on the next statewide election or if they approve a special election ballot.

The group behind the minimum wage increase, Living Wage for All, currently is pushing the “living wage” in 13 states and two locales in California – Alameda County and Los Angeles.

They are also pushing a $25 per hour federal minimum wage. Rep. Delia Ramirez (IL-03) introduced H.R. 8555 alongside co-leads Reps. Analilia Mejía (NJ-11), Chuy García (IL-04), and Lateefah Simon (CA-12), which would be “phased in over several years with a first-year floor of $12/hour — that ends every subminimum wage. Backed by SEIU, AFT, NEA, RWDSU, NAACP, and 100+ organizations.”

The Living Wage for All steering committee and partners are One Fair Wage, NAACP, NEA, Popular Democracy, and PolicyLink.

“One Fair Wage is a national organization of nearly 300,000 restaurant and service workers, nearly 1,000 restaurant owners, and dozens of organizations nationwide all working together to end all subminimum wages in the United States and raise wages and working conditions in the service sector in particular. One Fair Wage policy would require all employers to pay the full minimum wage with fair, non-discriminatory tips on top, thus lifting millions of tipped and subminimum wage workers nationally out of poverty.”

“Popular Democracy is a network of 47 grassroots organizations across 32 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico that unapologetically demand transformational change for Black, brown, and low-income communities. We upend politics as usual to forge a representative, multiracial government and society where we all thrive — no exceptions.”

Policy Link claims theAmerican promise that all are created equal “remains unfulfilled.” “It is our duty to transform our democracy and economy, closing the chasm between those for whom this nation has always worked and those who have yet to reap its benefits.”

Yet they never acknowledge how many workers are laid off, have their hours reduced, are permanently terminated, or businesses suffer and close when the minimum wage is increased dramatically.

In California, the ill-advised $20 per hour fast food minimum wage was passed and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 AB 1228, California’s $20 wage law for fast food workers, cost non-tipped restaurant workers 250 hours of work annually, equating to up to 7 weeks of lost work – up to $4,000 in lost potential income, the Globe has reported since the bill was passed in 2023.

Thousands of fast food employees lost jobs, employees’ hours were cut, and business owners had to do more with less.

A paper from economists at UC Santa Cruz confirmed what the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) has been warning from the start – these drastic wage hikes hurt workers by costing jobs, increasing inflation, and increasing automation of employee tasks.

The bottom line according to UC Santa Cruz Economics Lecturer Stephen Owen and his students is that costs are rising for both businesses and consumers.

“The working poor struggle to get by in California, and that’s a fact,” Economics lecturer Owen said. “So if we’re serious about helping the working poor, then I think it makes a lot more sense and would ultimately be more effective for the government to focus on other types of policies, such as deregulation to promote business growth and targeted income assistance to families working at or below the poverty line. Freeing businesses from unnecessary regulations would be a much better way for California to empower business growth, leading to increased hiring and higher wages as businesses are allowed to prosper.”

The findings should have served as a warning to lawmakers and advocates across the country pushing for $25 and $30 an hour minimum wage laws, which only result in even more economic decline.

But alas, instead we have leftist groups like Living Wage for All, One Fair Wage, NAACP, NEA, Popular Democracy, PolicyLink agitating irrationally, doing the opposite of what would help minimum wage workers – tax cuts, regulations cut, shrink government, free market health insurance, more charter schools, no tax on tips, and the like.

“The Board of Supervisors is right to want to study the impacts of the proposed $30 wage, and analysts shouldn’t ignore the impact drastic wage hikes have had in their own backyard,” Rebekah Paxton, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, said about the impending study. “The $20 fast food wage led to tens of thousands of lost jobs and increased prices, and the vast majority of economic studies spanning three decades come to the same conclusion.”

Rebekah Paxton reminds us that the impacts of California’s recent minimum wage hikes have been severe, and offers a quick history of how wage issues have played out at the ballot box:

• In November 2024, California voters rejected an $18 an hour minimum wage—the first wage proposal to fail in state history, and the first to fail nationally in 30 years.

• Several analyses have found California’s $20 fast food wage has cost tens of thousands of jobs, including those published by EPI and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• Those who kept their jobs under Gov. Newsom’s $20 fast food wage lost nearly two months of work annually due to a decrease in shift availability.

• Another National Bureau of Economic Research study found the law increased prices felt by consumers. An EPI policy brief reviewing decades of studies shows a $1 wage hike can cause up to 5.5% increase in prices, especially for food, rent, and childcare.

• An EPI survey of 166 American economists found 96% of respondents oppose wage mandates as high as Alameda’s, with 96% saying it will cost jobs and 84% saying it will worsen the cost of living. Nearly all (98%) of respondents say this will make it harder for small businesses to operate.