Mayor Seeks Citywide Minimum Wage Ordinance

Berkeley’s mayor is asking the city manager to write an ordinance that would raise the minimum wage in the city from the state-mandated $8 an hour to the $10.55 an hour enjoyed by minimum wage workers in San Francisco.

Companies that do business with Berkeley must now pay their employees a minimum rate of $9.75 per hour plus $1.62 per hour for benefits, or $11.37 per hour without benefits. The ordinance would apply to all businesses operating in Berkeley.

Mayor Tom Bates asserts that "an adequate minimum wage advances the interests of the City as a whole." 

A worker earning $8 an hour would have an annual income of $16,640 given 52 40-hour workweeks. The federal government defines a "very low income" for a single-earner household in the East Bay as $31,250, according to Bates.

Supporters of citywide minimum wages argue that such measures reduce income inequality and provide the poorest participants of the local economy with more discretionary income. Opponents claim that forcing business owners to pay employees more depresses demand for workers and stifles entrepreneurship.

A 2007 academic study of San Francisco’s restaurant workers in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review found that a voter-approved minimum wage ordinance “compressed income inequality” and did not create “any detectable employment loss among affected restaurants."

A minimum wage ordinance might allow more Berkeley workers to live in the city.

"Only about 17.1% of the jobs in Berkeley are actually held by Berkeley residents, a proportion that has declined over time as the somewhat higher than average rents and home prices in Berkeley has caused more people employed here to look elsewhere in the region for housing," according to a report released in March by the city's Economic Development department.

The mayor's request for a draft of a minimum wage ordinance is on the city council's consent calendar for its April 30 meeting.

What do you think? Should Berkeley adopt a citywide minimum wage ordinance like those in San Francisco and San Jose.