The following comes from a March 31 news release from Senator Mark Leno:
SACRAMENTO – The California Legislature became the first in the nation to approve a $15 minimum wage with the passage of Senate Bill 3 today. The historic legislation, which will help lift California’s low-wage earners out of poverty, is jointly authored by Senators Mark Leno, Kevin de León and Connie M. Leyva. The bill passed both houses of the Legislature and is now headed to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown, who brought lawmakers and stakeholders together to move the bill forward.
SB 3 raises the state’s minimum wage to $10.50 per hour in January 2017 and $11 in January 2018. The state’s floor wage would then increase an additional $1 per hour each year until reaching $15 in 2022. The bill allows the Governor to pause an increase during the climb to $15 an hour if the state experiences an economic downturn or budget crisis.
“California’s minimum wage must also be a living wage,” said Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León. “Anyone who thinks $15 an hour is too much should try living on it.”
California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that nearly a quarter of the state’s 38 million residents live in poverty. An employee working full time earning $10 an hour brings home just over $20,000 annually before taxes, which is just 86 percent of the federal poverty line for a family of four. As a result, many cities have taken the matter into their own hands, raising local minimum wages either by government action or at the ballot box.
SB 3 is co-sponsored by the Western Center on Law and Poverty, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the SEIU California State Council. The bill is also supported by a long list of organizations and government leaders, including the Women’s Foundation of California, California Teachers Association, Children’s Defense Fund of California, California Association of Food Banks and California Catholic Conference of Bishops.
Governor Brown has 12 days to take action on the legislation.
Let’s hope the Bishops of California (& USA) lead the way by setting examples in their respective diocese, without a legal requirement.
Question? Do all the Catholic school teachers, office staff and other employees get at least $15/hour? Just asking.
If your local parish had to pay EVERY employee a minimum of $15/hr, how many of these people would be laid off? If the bishops are promoting this wage then, if they don’t already pay it, why don’t they lead the way and pay what they preach! Why wait for a law and pay a living? wage now! Maybe the parishes should depend less on volunteers and hire poorer people who could use the money.
If anything needs to be done in our parish we are expected to volunteer. Many parishioners do not make $15/hr!
So, what happens to that person whose skills are not worth the minimum wage?
Such a job should not even be offered. I assume that you are pro-family, anti- abortion and anti-birth control. How a person possibly raise a family in California on less than $15 an hour. If a wage isn’t enough to raise a family, then perhaps the job itself is immoral, anti-family, and pro-contraception. Unless you think such a family is so unworthy of a fair wage that they all should live in a cardboard box on a street.
If the person cannot provide $15 value to his employer he will get $0 which is the alternate minimum wage implied and enforced by this law. This will then qualify him for free contraception and abortion and make him a poster child for the advancement of same. And this is something a catholic can support?
Jake, after inflation incomes have been stagnant for 40 years. Corporate profits and CEO salaries, and the stock market with them, have absolutely gone through the roof. It’s not that the employees aren’t providing value to their companies , it is that companies today value their employees less as a portion of sales, and their share owners more as a proportion of sales, far far higher than ever before.
YFC when the businesses start to close due to higher labors costs who will you blame…and I assume you are pro-abortion and pro-contraception, you are therefore not a Catholic lie as you might…
Minimum wage will certainly change how employers value their employees as each remaining one on the payroll will have to be adding $15 value to the company or will be getting $0 as companies are not charitable organizations. Real concern for the working poor would seek solutions that make each dollar purchase more not less.
If a dollar goes into the pockets of a minimum wage worker, it will likely get spent on something practical and economically productive like food, housing, health care, education, etc.and therefore continues to increase the economy and create jobs If that same dollar instead goes into the bank account of a company with billions of profits already, it sits there contributing nothing to the economy, creates no jobs, and only adds to a number on a balance sheet.
YFc always ready with the leftist talking point, but devoid of facts, they pulled this same stunt in Seattle for restaurant workers. Within a year half the restaurants went under, the fast food places replaced the workers with automatic kiosks same will happen here… . You see leftist, business do not exists to hire people and provide benefits, they exists to provide profits to those who invested in them…
….and plantations didn’t “exist” to purchase slaves, but that’s exactly what their landowners did. How do you think they acquired enough wealth to build those huge mansions and staff them with servants?
Government is the enemy
YFC spoken like a true bolshevik … you know very. very, very little about starting or running a business, but think you can dictate to those who do…
You might be surprised about what I know about business, canisius.
By the way, tuition alone at St. Ignatius prep in San Francisco works out to about $16 per hour of class time. Just for some perspective.
The Bill’s Author is Mark “Kiddie Porn King” Leno, de-facto leader of the Larry Brinkin caucus in the Demi-krat party – after Leno’s failed attempt to service his constituents by reducing Racist Pederast Toddler Rape-Porn to a Misdemeanor, thus leading to his hero Larry Brinkin’s Felony Guilty Plea.
SEE
California’s Fight Over Jessica’s Law
https://humanevents.com/2006/02/03/californias-fight-over-jessicas-law/
Mr. Leno’s Assembly Bill 50 – would have allowed 100 items of knowingly possessed child pornography before triggering penalties. “Items” might include CD-ROMs, capable of containing tens of thousands of pornographic images.
&
San Francisco’s Gay Icon Larry Brinkin Guilty of Felony Child Porn…
Red Verney, AMEN to that wise thought. Ditto in regards to our dear Pope’s political off the cuff comments. Love them, pray for them every day BUT your point is a good one. God willing we do not abandon our core principles by being unwilling to openly support them. Example – what about supporting the man (David Daleiden) who exposed Planned Parenthood selling aborted babies’ body parts? He is being sued by Planned Parenthood and defended by the Thomas More Society Law Center. Has any USCCB official spoken out to support him? Why spend time/energy/talent with such a small thing (relatively) like minimum wage, when the bigger issues go without comment? (Why Lord?)
Simple economics, as the price of a good goes up the demand for the good goes down. Raising the minimum wage will accelerate those the options for employers to replace low skilled workers or they due without them if they are unable to produce $15 value to the employer. Thus more unemployment and poverty. Second, the minimum wage is a product of the progressive era promoted to cause unemployment, increase welfare and promote contraception and abortion as a solution to this undesired condition. Last, the minimum wage law has to two minimum wages $0 and $15 if you can’t produce $15 you will earn the $0 by law.
if all producers of a “good” have their prices rise by a similar amount, then either the good was a nonessential good, or people will pay the price. Which is better….giving people a living wage or making non essential items more affordable?
If all goods rise by the same amount what is the reason for a forced rise in the first place and how is anyone better off?
How sad. The economic ignorance of our bishops hurts the poorest and least skilled among us. Setting price floors/ceilings in markets always lead to gluts/shortages. Setting a price floor for wage prices will make it more difficult for someone to reach that first rung on the employment ladder. Our bishops would do well to read what the Spanish Scholastics of the 16th & 17th-century thought about just wages.
It will kill small businesses. My family and I ran a small eatery for over fifty years. Here’s what happens every time the minimum wage goes up: all of our suppliers raised their prices. So we’re paying more for everything from napkins to meat to produce. We’d have to raise our prices to keep up. Customers would complain and go to a big chain whose volume and bulk purchasing power (not to mention lower quality) allows them to maintain lower prices. Been there, done that. I’d never own another small business in California. And the taxes, fees, and license costs are insane now.
An astute observer once said the Poor have the Same Rights as the Rich to sleep under bridges & beg for food
Our Lord said it is “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
If all boats float on a rising tide, then there must not be any leaks in the economy. Ahem.
Still – Others do have their points on How Best to Help, and should be considered as Part of a Solution:
SEE
“Helping The Poor By Hurting Them
https://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/helping-the-poor-by-hurting-them/?utm_source=CAPoliticalReview.com&utm
It appears that a $15 minimum wage will become law in California. Almost invariably, the rationale offered by proponents includes the assertion…
They are already planning to raise our gas taxes, too. Everything will go up, especially union dues. How long will it be before we will need a wheelbarrow to carry around the money needed to pay for a loaf of bread?
It is simple economic principals. When the minimum wage is increased, all other wage rates go up as well. In other words, the workers currently making $15 an hour will have to be paid more. Once this massive wage bump works it way through the system, with the concurrent inflation, essentially everyone ends up back just where they were at the beginning.
Beyond that, since many businesses will not be able to pay the new minimum wage, they will either go out of business or lay off workers. More people out of work in CA, and more businesses leaving the state.
Unfortunately everyone will not be where they were at the beginning. Many more will be unemployed and remain unemployed. The goods and services that would have been provided by these people is not available to society, all of society is poorer in general and many of those who are better off has been at the expense of the poor. Those who supported the minimum wage will once again blame it on the greed of employers and push for another round resulting in more poverty.
Businesses are not leaving the state. San Francisco has the highest minimum wage and we are adding jobs faster than we can build homes for them.
Hope bishops are willing to take responsibility for many who will lose their jobs. Such as students who are interns each summer in Government, State, County and City offices. Such as higher taxes. Such as failure to replace all government workers.
This is an effort to destroy McDonald’s, Wal Mart and other similar establishments who are not in the union. It will backfire as automation will replace workers.
So everyone at Taco Bell is worth $15 an hour? Folks it does not work that way and just how long are companies going to keep employees at those wages. The Church is destroyed the Mass is a “train wreck” and the bishops are worried about the mininum wage, just amazing.
So if the company makes $60 profit per employee during the hour that that employee works, isn’t $15 an hour justified? Besides, maybe those tacos are underpriced. If they priced those lousy tacos fairly, maybe the folks at the local family owned taco joint could sell their better tacos for a wage that would put their kids through college!
Note to YFC, you appear to believe a profit is immoral. In a free market a profit is the only feedback mechanism you have to tell that you are making the best use of your resources. No profit and someone else will get to use those resources because you go broke. You only make a profit by satisfying your customers. The size of your profit indicates how well you use the resources available to satisfy the greatest number of people with them. In this context there is no such thing as to large a profit. You know, like the steward who returned 10 fold to his master when he returned.
WRONG. I believe EXCESSIVE profit is immoral when it causes the people who work for them to live in poverty. Please see the last two centuries of Catholic moral teaching on the subject.
The amount of grace earned in pleasing God can never be an excess. Reflected temporally in pleasing our fellow man there is no such thing as excess profit. To sit aloof and judge an employer and employee on that price for services freely agreed upon is only possible by God.
I say it is long past time that Money Donated by Parishoners – be used to purchase Outside Vendor Services & Goods. We should be keeping Catholic Dollars working within the Catholic Community.
For example – Many of our schools need jungle gyms for recess (a very important part of the day) but can’t afford them – or at least the commercial models available.
Better We Catholics set up a Training & Grant Program that Teaches skills like playground construction that can be used elsewhere, and pays local Parishioners to Supply the Parts & Labor to help with the donated project.
This would be a Grant System – Not for Profit – and thus Not subject to the Social Engineering Mandates of the Gaystapo at city hall.
The Church teaches that all people should have the opportunity to have meaningful work and be paid a living wage. Most people agree with that. The devil, however, is in the details. What is a living wage? I would define it as the ability of a father or mother or both, who work 40 hours a week, to be able to live and raise a family. Fifteen dollars an hour is only $31,200 per year, a living wage in many parts of the country. In San Francisco and other cities where a one bedroom apartment rents for $4,000 per month, it is not a living wage. One city is trying to build low-income homes for people earning less than $125K per year.
And how, pray tell, does an altar boy raise a family of four on mere wedding tips and volunteer work? Pay up Bishops!
minimum wage should be $14.8742 per hour or possibly
$14.8743, give or take.
Those seeking work are better off idle and untrained at $15/hour than employed and honing new skills at $10/hour. –A public service message brought to you by the good people over at Big Bishop and Big Catholic.
Amen, Hymie. Amen, my brother.
Doe this apply to those in the Religious life ? So much for living under the vows of poverty, I’ll save the other vows for later articles, you know the whole sex thing. Madness, utter madness.
I think this is great, but there is one problem. When the minimum wage rises, all wages should rise too. The whole thing doesn’t work if only those making the minimum go up. The private sector doesn’t do that unfortunately. Those making higher than minimum stay at their level, without a rise. That is a gross injustice.
They the modern bishops care more about care and feeding of the body, than care and feeding of the soul. Actions speak louder than words.