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 The council's 14-1 vote on the measure, which must come back
before the panel for final approval, would require businesses with
more than 25 employees to meet the $15 pay level by 2020, while
smaller businesses would have an extra year to comply.
Officials said the plan, which comes on the heels of similar minimum
wage hikes in other major cities including Seattle and San
Francisco, would increase pay of an estimated 800,000 workers in the
city.
"We are embarking upon, I think, the most progressive minimum wage
policy anywhere in the country," City Councilman Curren Price Jr.,
one of the main backers of the proposal, said before the vote.
With the federal minimum wage stagnant at $7.25 an hour since 2009,
labor and religious groups have increasingly pressed local
governments in liberal-leaning areas to enact their own minimum wage
hikes even as their hopes dim for an increase from the
Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.
The proposal given preliminary approval in Los Angeles, where
housing costs are among the highest in the nation, represents a
far-reaching victory for supporters of higher pay for low-wage
workers.
The 67-percent pay increase would be implemented gradually, starting
at $10.50 an hour for larger employers in 2016, and gradually going
up each year until it reaches $15 in 2020.
Companies with 25 or fewer workers would follow a slightly slower
stepped-up increase in minimum wage pay.
Opponents of minimum wage hikes, such as Los Angeles Area Chamber of
Commerce senior vice president of public policy Ruben Gonzalez, say
they place an undue burden on businesses, and would force employers
to lay off workers or move.
"There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses
to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short
period of time," he told the city council.
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Mayor Eric Garcetti, who last year proposed a pay increase that
would have brought the minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017, said in a
statement that he planned to sign the council's measure.
Other cities have also moved to increase their minimum wages in
phases.
Seattle is phasing in a pay hike that would bring the minimum wage
to $15 an hour over the next two to six years, depending on the size
of the business. Voters in San Francisco have approved raising their
minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018.
The San Francisco Bay Area city of Emeryville has given preliminary
approval to gradually increase its minimum wage to $16 an hour by
2019, in what would be the nation's highest such minimum pay. The
city council is scheduled to vote on Tuesday evening on whether to
give that final approval.
Chicago city leaders last year approved raising its minimum wage to
$13 by 2019, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for
raising the minimum wage in his city to about $15 by 2019.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Eric
Walsh and Sandra Maler)
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