Posted on 02/12/2006 11:53:29 AM PST by NormsRevenge
YUBA CITY, Calif. (AP) - It's been almost two years since Kimberly Ward moved from North Carolina to California with her husband, yet finding a job that pays well enough to keep pace with the state's high cost of living continues to be a struggle.
She's had several jobs that paid $9 an hour - well above the state's minimum wage of $6.75 an hour - but each was temporary. The sales jobs she has been seeking at a local mall in this suburb north of Sacramento aren't likely to pay much more than the minimum.
"They should raise the minimum wage; they should raise it a lot," Ward said. "The cost of living here, compared to where I'm from - it's ten times more."
Ward could get at least part of her wish. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in one of the political moves he announced after voters resoundingly rejected his special election agenda last fall, has proposed a $1-an-hour increase in the state's minimum wage over two years.
Some Democrats have said it's not enough. Others within the governor's own party are angered that he proposed the increase at all, fearing it will hurt businesses. Whatever the proposal's ultimate fate, the modest increase is likely to provide only a slight improvement to those living on the margins in the nation's costliest state.
Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation last fall that would have boosted the minimum wage $1 an hour by July 2007 but also provided automatic increases to keep up with inflation. The governor said he opposes a minimum wage deal that provides automatic bumps.
In his State of the State speech in January, however, he said the economy has improved enough that the state's minimum wage needed to be increased over the next two years.
His office is trying to negotiate a compromise with the Legislature's Democratic leaders. Meanwhile, a coalition of social service and labor groups is collecting signatures for an initiative that asks voters to increase the minimum wage $2 by 2009. They're targeting the November election.
The last boost came in 2002, when California's minimum wage was increased by 50 cents an hour. The state's businesses already are required to pay their employees more than the federal rate of $5.15 per hour but less than other West Coast states. Oregon's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, while Washington's is $7.35.
About 60 percent of workers earning within a dollar of the minimum wage in California are between the ages of 25 and 64 and work 35 or more hours a week, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Among those is 26-year-old Jessica Sangston, who is on her own for the first time and finding it hard to make ends meet while earning just above minimum wage at a local grocery store.
"My boyfriend and I are living together and sharing expenses, but we are barely making it," said Sangston, who stopped into a Yuba County job center recently to look for a better-paying job. "It's impossible to even think about going back to school because I have to work all the time. How do you get ahead? That's the problem."
As an example of the state's high costs, the median home price in California is about $460,000, nearly twice the national average of about $237,000.
Business owners such as Victor Vosburgh, manager of the Oasis Car Wash and Lube in Sacramento, worry about pushing the wage up too far in a short period of time.
"I don't have anyone working for me at minimum wage - people can't live on that," he said.
But if the minimum wage does goes up, he said he probably will be forced to give everyone a pay increase. When that happens, it will pressure him to raise prices on customers.
"What will happen is that we will raise our prices by a dollar and then our volume will go down," Vosburgh said. "That's what happened last time."
Raising the minimum wage should not lead to job losses or inflation because the increase would be relatively small and all businesses will be affected equally, said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Industrial Relations.
"Individual business owners are looking at their books and their bottom-line. They are not thinking about this as across-the-board," he said. "All of their competitors will be covered, too. These are increases, small increases in cost, but they will be the same for everyone."
Reich studied the effects of San Francisco's boost in the minimum wage to $8.82 an hour two years ago. He found that restaurants in the city increased prices just 2.8 percent, while the number of servers actually grew.
Some restaurant owners, however, say a boost in the minimum wage is unnecessary because many of their employees already earn significantly more with tips.
"The tipped employees are the people making the most money," said Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Association, which opposes a minimum wage hike. "They are the ones that are earning minimum wage, but it's the tips that they are actually working for. Many of them are already earning $20 per hour."
Condie said most of his members don't think it's fair to give those workers such a boost when state law prohibits the tips from being shared with other workers who do not serve customers, such as cooks and dishwashers.
Whatever its final form, the minimum wage proposal is not likely to have a dramatic effect for workers or businesses in California, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
"This issue has actually taken on a bigger profile than it really warrants," he said. "It's really a very small part of the work force that earns the minimum. And let's face it, it's time to raise it some."
Dear Kimberley....There's a great big Walmart, OSH, Gottschalks, Home Depot etc in YC/Marysville, and I bet all are hiring.
Min. wage creates an artificial floor. People currently making $1.50 above the current min. wage will expect to be paid $1.50 above the newly imposed min. wage.
Jessica---26 years old and on her own for the first time? Where has she been hiding?
I went to work at 17 for Kroger divisional offices in Wisconsin. Never looked back.
Ask all these people who cry over not making enough money:
Do you own a cell phone?
If yes, how many?
Do you own a car newer than 6 years old?
How high are your car payments? Insurance payments? Tags?
Do you have furniture that is purchased new? Or did you look for used?
Do you own a HD TV ? A plasma TV?
Do you own any tv that is larger than 25 inches?
Do you have Dish TV or cable?
Do you change out your wardrobe continually? Have to have the latest "fashions"?
Have kids? Nanny? Private school?
All these kids today under 35 are living large.
They think they have to have the latest clothes, cars, dish TV packages of 486 channels, etc.
They don't know how to build a lifetime gradually....They want it all at once.
Don't feel sorry for them a bit.
Why is the state micro managing restaurant operations?
"Do you get your nails done weekly?"
"Do you eat out more than 1-2 times a week?"
"Do you eat fast food?"
"Do you purchase a daily coffee drink?"
B.S.....I worked FULL TIME at a challenging job while I went to school FULL TIME....
Apparently, this nitwit slept her way through economics in high school. Ok, sweety, why don't we raise the minimum wage to 30 dollars an hour? After all, if raising the minimum wage has no impact on jobs and the economy, lets go whole hog.
It also forces businesses to raise the cost of their goods and services or cut back on the number of employees. You either end up with everything costing more (thus eating up what was gained in the minimum wage increase) or you end up with no job.
Fine. Raise it to $15, $20, maybe $25 per hour, because I think the only way to teach these numbnuts an economics lesson is to give them what they want and let them live with the consequences of high unemployment and businesses that can't afford to pay it. Not that they would ever figure out the connection.
Oriental Noodles are still 5 packs for a $1.
Noodles, packaged mac & cheese, bread, peanut butter and jelly. All washed down with home made ice tea.
What ever happened to the days young people could eat on $10 a week? I had it down to an art form.
This is a union deal. Most labor union contracts are pegged to the minimum wage. If the minimum wage goes up, all of the union thugs get a raise too.
Good for the worker in the short run, bad for business and eventually bad for both and the state. IMO.
I'll take this opprotunity to share with all here, that the the local (San Luis Obispo) newspaper ran an article today qouting DOCTORS as saying that, even they could hardly afford to live here!
Median house price range---a half a million dollars!
Rent for even a "studio", one room apartment can go as high as a thousand dollars a month. More realistically, one can find a one bedroom apt. for $1000, a new nice one, goes for $1200 or more.
One can find cheaper rents, (IF you get lucky!)but it difficult to avoid having to share rentals.
As to economics, when more folks have at least "some discretionary" funds, what can they do with it, but either spend it, or save it?
When they spend locally, it helps support local businesses, and so help these same businesses pay higher wages to their employees.
Don't forget that part...
The MOST efficient way to boost economic activity---is to share the wealth, instead of concentrating it in increasingly fewer hands.
Some freepers here might think "market forces" alone could find and set equitable pay scales.
History, generally, shows us quite diferently, happy examples such as the former style of Hewlett Packard (the vaunted "HP Way, in which the lowest level employee, once with the company long enough to qualify for medical benifits
would be covered identically to the CEO), aside.
How can "anything approaqching "equity" occur when there is a flood of immigrants willing to live, not three or four (adults) to a house), but six or twelve??? Even ten dollars an hour, is not enough to raise one above the so-called poverty line. If the wage is say, $8.00 an hour, how many hours would it take to pay rent of $700, utilities (not including cable t/v) being close to another hundred, a month.
You guys need to re-think your glib positions on this, "always pay labor the least possible" that you do seems to hold. Go ahead, flame away, get yourselfs all worked into a tizzy.
i agree with everything youre saying but owning a cell phone actually is cheaper than a land line nowadays. if i was poor, id pick one up over a land line.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I completely understand how you felt, exhausting, wasn't it? When I was in college I was working two jobs (announcer at two radio stations) which amounted to slighly over 40 hours a week while taking a full-course load. My doctor, though, advised me to stop this after five or six months; he told me that there was a possibility that I could permanently damage my health. I dropped one of the stations, fell back to about 30 hours.
Sure wished that I had chosen the right parents.
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