University of California sets new minimum wage

Mike Dooley

The University of California is the state’s third-largest employer, behind only the state and federal governments.

The university also plans to audit its contractors to make sure they are paying their workers the same base wage to which UC employees will be entitled and complying with workplace health and safety laws, Napolitano said. Take our quiz on inequality and incomes.

But Phil Davis, founder of PSW Investments, thinks that a $15 minimum wage would be “good for the country” in that it would reduce economic disparity.

$15 dollar minimum wage policies have already been approved in Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California and San Francisco, California.

In New York, the state Wage Board endorsed a proposal to set a $15 minimum wage for workers at fast-food restaurants with 30 or more locations. By 2017 the plan is to have the college reach $15 an hour.

Democrats, including presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, have said they support a higher federal minimum wage, which is now $7.25 per hour. Many proponents of increased minimum wages assert that the current standard is not enough to survive in today’s America.

“This is the right thing to do, for our workers and their families, for our mission and values, and to enhance UC’s leadership role”, Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, said in a prepared release.

Davis argued that a higher minimum wage forces corporations to pump money back into local communities and stimulate their economies.

More than 3,200 staff and possibly several thousand contractors work in services such as bookstores, dormitories and parking lots. A full-time worker would make $31,000 a year.

What she didn’t address is how the 20-hour threshold will affect those who are now working more than 20 hours but vulnerable to cuts in their hours, or those who would like more hours than they get now.

“Maybe you’ll be able to have meat on the table a couple of times a week instead of once a month”, Biden told workers at Bobrick Washroom Equipment, whose CEO backed the city’s wage ordinance. The mandated minimum will increase to $13 an hour on Oct. 1, 2015, to $14 an hour on Oct. 1, 2016, and to $15 an hour on Oct. 1, 2017. Opponents believe that this hike will result to less job opportunities. To some, proposed wage increases are detrimental to certain businesses.

Napolitano’s minimum wage plan does not need approval from the governing Board of Regents, who on Wednesday were scheduled to consider a 3 percent cost-of-living increase for campus chancellors, medical center directors and other top executives.

“This is just the beginning”, said Gov. Cuomo.

[Source]: LidTime.com