State Panel Hears Minimum-Wage Testimony

In what could be the first step toward raising California’s minimum wage, members of the state Industrial Welfare Commission heard emotional--and predictably divided--testimony from workers and employers at a packed Los Angeles auditorium. Union members, affordable housing advocates, food servers and home-care workers contended that the current state hourly minimum of $5.75 condemns low-skilled workers to lives of poverty. Employers, on the other hand, said raising the minimum wage could bankrupt small-business owners and eliminate jobs. The panel’s five appointed members have the authority to raise the state minimum without legislative action. It has been more than a decade since the commission took such action, but the group’s composition changed drastically this year, with four members appointed by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and a new chairman from labor--Chuck Center of the California Council of Laborers. Center said the commission’s next step is to appoint “wage boards” made up of workers and business owners who will analyze the state’s economic climate and make a recommendation, a process that could take as long as a year. The last California increase resulted from a ballot initiative in 1996.