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Mountain View’s elected leaders on Tuesday night reaffirmed their commitment to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but they left some details open to future tweaking as to how they would implement the plan.
Under any scenario, Mountain View is set to raise its minimum wage to $10.30 an hour on July 1. After that, the council approved a tentative plan to continue raising the base hourly wage at the start of each July. In 2016, the minimum wage would increase to $12 an hour. That would jump to $13.50 in 2017, and then $15 in 2018. Further increases would be made annually based on numbers from the Consumer Price Index.
The meeting came as a follow-up to a momentous decision in October when city leaders passed an ordinance setting the goal to establish a $15 base hourly wage by 2018. The move was widely celebrated at the time by minimum-wage advocates, and it put Mountain View in the vanguard of Bay Area cities looking to better align low-end pay with the rising cost of living.
The October ordinance didn’t specify exactly how or when the base wage would incrementally rise toward the $15-an-hour goal. At the time, city leaders directed staff to gather stakeholder input and partner up with other South Bay cities to pass similar minimum-wage hikes.
Returning to the council on Tuesday, city staff laid out plans for further investigation, calling for an outreach campaign encompassing social media, a new website and a variety of advertisements. Among the goals, staff members noted they would zero in on input from the business community and collect public feedback both for and against the wage increase. Specific options for implementing the plan would come in the fall, according to the staff recommendation.
For some, this idea raised concern that the city could be backpedaling. In response, advocates with the group “Raise the Wage Mountain View” redoubled their efforts to push the council to act immediately. More than a dozen speakers urged the City Council to approve a timetable that evening for the minimum-wage increase. The October action by the city set off “ripples” throughout the South Bay, but that momentum could be lost if the city waits for regional partners, explained Meghan Fraley, an organizer with the group.
“We’re calling on the council to follow through on its commitment and give everyone a fair deal,” she said. “If we don’t vote tonight and instead set up more meetings and input, I think the regional approach is going to fizzle.”
The lone opposition speaker, Jessica LaMaack, government affairs director with the California Restaurant Association, warned that raising the minimum wage would put the pinch on food-service employers. She pointed out that many waiters and bartenders earn well above minimum wage due to customer tips, but that wouldn’t be factored into the city’s action.
“We’re asking you to hit the pause button on this,” she urged. “We’re one of the most competitive industries in California and we operate on a razor-thin margin.”
The movement to raise the minimum wage has gained traction across the Bay Area. Large cities including San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland recently passed such increases through voter-approved ballot initiatives. Mountain View’s action was unique in that it was approved through a City Council ordinance, and it encouraged other cities to follow suit. Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are in the process of reviewing similar ordinances. The cities of Campbell and Cupertino have also expressed interest, according to Mountain View city staff.
City staff explained that it made sense to try and set base wages in unison with other cities in the area so as to not have a patchwork of different rules. That rationale swayed council members.
“It needs to be done in a regional fashion,” said Councilman Michael Kasperzak. “We have to be careful with having a multiplicity of wages in the county.”
To that end, Councilman Chris Clark made a motion to follow the staff recommendation, but he amended it with a tentative schedule going forward. He explained that the schedule could be adjusted down the road based on future input, but he described it as a good way to get the ball rolling with other cities.
“What I have a problem with tonight is saying, ‘This is our schedule and we’re sticking to it,'” he said. “But there’s no reason why we can’t put something on the table.”
Two council members voiced conflicts with the motion. Councilman John Inks disputed the notion that raising the minimum-wage would solve the larger economic woes of the underprivileged. On the other side of the spectrum, Councilwoman Pat Showalter urged her colleagues to adopt a permanent minimum-wage schedule that evening.
The motion was ultimately approved in a 5-2 vote.
Do these lobbyists for “living wage” and council members really think that raising the minimum wage is going to help people?! How naive can they be??? Small businesses like myself will be forced to do some combination of reducing labor (thereby compromising the quality of service) AND raising prices just so we can make ends meet! Do they think that small business owners are simply raking in the $ and not sharing??? I would just love for these lobbyists and council members to explain how local businesses and restaurants are to survive with increased rents, higher product and material costs, higher utility costs, higher insurance and workers’ comp costs, and now, higher minimum wage! Ultimately, what will we have?… a false sense of an increased wage (after all, after the government takes their portion of taxes, what’s really left?) and higher prices for everyone! Wake up people!
At first I was strongly in favor of this, but now as time goes on I’m starting to think that while it’s a noble idea and certainly a populist one it might not be as good as I first thought.
– First, if we raise the wage it makes sense to do it at a wider and more consistent basis like state wide so workers doesn’t just flood in from neighboring towns like Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Santa Clara or wherever, which works against the intent of this
– Second, if you’re making reasonable tips probably $15 / hour on top of that is too large an increase but I’ll admit I don’t know how this minimum wage rule would work if you get tips
– Third, setting a minimum wage won’t do anything to help people who want to live in Mountain View, etc because there’s a huge demand from people who are salaried like Google, LinkedIn, etc and $15 / hour will not help you if you want to rent a place in town. That’s just a bigger problem than minimum wage.
So while a good idea maybe not the right way to do it, in my view.
How much do you need to make in silicon valley to live WITHOUT government assistance and WITHOUT going into debt??
The Self Sufficiency Standard, compiled by the School of Social Work at the University of Washington takes into consideration the Cost of Living. It was referenced in the Santa Clara County General Plan, Health Element section and was a factor in the adoption of a living wage to be paid by all County Contractors
For a family of 4 – both parents working, with an infant and a school age child
the AMOUNT IS and astounding $86,000
$86,000!!!!!!!
Both parents working full time at make $10/hr is less than 1/2 the standard
and making $15/ hour is 2/3 of the standard
So clearly raising the minimum wage to $15/hour is a good idea but insufficient to be able in the long run to maintain the ability of all the workers who keep the valley going to remain in the area.
The imperative of ensuring that our workers can afford to live in silicon valley is not lost on corporations, businesses, chambers of commerce and labor groups
THE FLIP SIDE of affordability is the high and continually rising rents. Families get 1-2 month notices all the time about $400/month rent increases
It is time to consider RENT STABILIZATION as is on the books in Los Gatos, San Jose, Berkeley, Hayward, San Rafael and East Palo Alto
@Local Business Owner…If everybody else in the chain that you work with gets to raise their prices, why not the worker? And if you’re paying your workers as little as you possibly can get away with, we the tax payers end up subsidizing your business when the worker has to rely on food stamps and other govt. programs just to survive. Who’s the naive one?
If you open a business and have to run it on the backs of underpaid workers (remember that the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation for decades), then perhaps the free market is telling you something.
@nikonbob: Are you for the free market or not? On the one hand you seem to infer a bias for state intervention, on the other hand you claim that the free market is telling the small business owner something.
Your logic can be equally applied to the worker: If they can only get paid $x for a job without government intervention, maybe the free market is trying to tell them something? Like change careers, get an education or a trade etc etc… (bleeding hearts may now chime in with self-righteous indignation)
That aside, the way it will work is as follows: If a restaurant raise its prices, it may or may not see less demand. It depends on how price sensitive their customers are. However, at some price point customers will no longer patronize the restaurant and will look for alternatives.
With that in mind, this will probably effect establishments whose customers are more price sensitive. This is great news, since the moneyed liberal elite that populate this town will be able to assuage their guilt by paying slightly more at their fancy restaurants, while the average person will just have to eat at home more. See everyone wins: The working poor, the rich, the middle class… well not them, but they never win anyway.
To force $15 or not to force it? Good idea for Mountain View (Not). San Francisco has had a great economic response to its $15.000 wage experiment (Not). The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article describing the anti-business and anti-employment effects that San Francisco’s $15 minimum wage mandate has had on mom and pop businesses, which typically operate at razor thin profit margins. Since the SF $15 wage kicked in, restaurants and other small businesses have been closing in remarkably large numbers. Why? They can’t afford to pay dishwashers, busboys, and other menial workers $15 per hour in such a competitive market. That’s Economics 101 for ignorant libs. I’m sure you’re all very bad students of basic market economics. How sad for people who think they’re so intelligent (Not).
The Mountain View City Council seems very proud of the plethora of mediocre restaurants (with very few good exceptions) plaguing downtown Castro St. Would they, or the people who frequent to those high rent restaurants, be proud or happy if many of those restaurants were to close because they no longer can afford to operate? The answer to that question shows how fanatically liberal you are. The answer for practical people is “No”.
Before they throw their sacred Downtown Renovation businesses out of the frying pan and into the fire, the MV City Council must do a thorough and impartial study of what effect excessively high minimum wage mandates have had upon the economic health and minimum wage employment levels of other cities’ local businesses. I don’t think that the libs on the City Council would like the results of such an impartial study. Sorry, Lenny baby and friends. Economics 101 trumps uninformed good intentions. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I’m not a student of John Milton, but he was absolutely right.
Businesses will have to raise their prices and as they do I will lower my tips from 20% to 15%. Net result for worker is zero.
Tips only work in the food industry. The vast majority of minimum wage jobs is everything else.
I liked that in Oakland, I think, when they did this, the restaurants dropped the tip line from their charge slips – saying that now that we are paying a living wage, you don’t have to tip. This is what Europe has been doing for a long time and it is so refreshing. Then a tip returns to what it once was, a payment for exceptional service.
On a different note, this is a solution to the wrong part of the problem. We have shipped all the blue collar jobs offshore so that a large portion of our work force is now forced into these minimum wage jobs. Bring the jobs back home and minimum wage will again be a non-issue. But, bring the jobs first.
Let’s ask Mcalister just how much a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone will need to cost in order to pay his workers $15/hr. And don’t forget to factor in the loss of sales volume due to that price increase on what is purely a luxury item…
Anybody want to buy a B&R franchise? Cheap?
Mcalister probably did not vote since he has a personnel interest in the min wage. It would be interesting to hear what a small business owner said. But maybe they were working a 2nd shift to offset the $10 pay rate
Minimum wage type jobs like fast food was meant to be for school kids, not people trying to make a living working there. Thanks illegals, now i don’t see any kids working there. Also if you have a minimum wage job you will not be living alone here in the bay area, you can’t. And if both parents have a minimum wage type job, best thing would be to move out of the area. Plain and simple. I hear LA has nice places.
This is only a push by the Unions that behind closed doors raised all the govt. works pays and pensions. The liberal unions control the politicians.
@Hmm
Your note reads like a textbook on bigotry.
“This is only a push by the Unions that behind closed doors raised all the govt. works pays and pensions. The liberal unions control the politicians.” I ask for proof of this assertion. I bet you can’t back it up.
Hatred, pure and simple, of those people who have less than you. Get a heart, man.
You need to do more then just watch MSnbc. Here is a article that may open your eyes, if they are not totally shut to the truth. There is way more, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
This was in the Sac bee.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article3352777.html
Cheers
Bookmarking this page to refer to when the inevitable MV voice articles titled “[______] local small business closes its doors.”