Nine months later, Garcetti signed an ordinance that is more progressive than he proposed – a citywide wage hike to $15 an hour by 2021, with automatic increases in future years.
What started as an effort to raise the minimum wage among some of Los Angeles’ largest public-sector unions has become a statewide movement, gaining support in polls and pushing mayors across California to propose hikes and sometimes to go further than planned.
“Raise the Wage” has become a rallying cry for Democrats in 2015 to fight against economic inequality. Local governments across California have heeded the call. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, there are 29 cities and counties in the United States that have wage floors higher than their state’s minimum. Fourteen of those local governments are in California.