The not-unexpected — inevitable, in fact — side effects of paying the estimable burger-flippers at McDonald’s in California at least $20 an hour are making themselves known, and very quickly.
Because if fast-food workers up and down the state have that number as their minimum wage, shouldn’t the perhaps more highly skilled toilers in our municipal bureaucracies be able to hit that number as well?
Such, apparently, is the logic within Los Angeles City Hall, which this month announced the coming fiscal effects of a series of pay raises negotiated with various unions that will go to about 33,000 city workers. But that $20 level is not going to be the floor for long.
“The salary agreements would lift the minimum wage of the city’s full- and part-time workers, setting it at $20 per hour this year and $25 by June 2026. Parental leave would double from six weeks to 12. Payouts for unused sick time also would become more lucrative,” David Zahniser reported in the Los Angeles Times.
The city’s administrative officer, Matt Szabo, wrote in a 40-page analysis to Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council that the salary agreements would add $316 million to the city budget within the next fiscal year. But that number will reach more than $1 billion annually by 2028, he said.
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The mayor and council members, who negotiated the raises with a coalition of various unions, say that workers deserve to be adequately compensated, which no one would argue with, as such. But in an already high-tax city, guess who’s going to pay?
“The money’s got to come from someplace,” Jack Humphreville, who volunteers with the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates, told the Times.
One place the money simply will have to come from in order to avoid outrageous hikes in fees and taxes is in the savings that will come from not filling thousands of currently vacant jobs. Szabo has called for the elimination of 1,974 city positions, some of which have gone unfilled for years. He points out that the money thus saved will be needed not only to compensate the civilian workers in question — but for the separate deal to raise the pay of police officers: $1 billion over four years.
In order to not cause an exodus of L.A. businesses and residents, City Hall, make do with the well-paid workers you have.