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BizFed Opposing L.A. Minimum-Wage Increase

The Los Angeles County Business Federation, or BizFed, on Wednesday formally announced its opposition to proposals to hike the minimum wage in Los Angeles to at least $13.25 an hour. “The dramatic minimum wage increases proposed for the City of Los Angeles would push jobs elsewhere while still not creating real paths out of poverty for those workers who remain,” said David Fleming, BizFed’s founding chairman. The Los Angeles City Council is now considering two minimum wage hike proposals: one from Mayor Eric Garcetti to hike the wage to $13.25 an hour by 2017 and one put forward by several councilmembers to tack on an additional $2 hike to $15.25 an hour by 2019. The statewide minimum hourly wage is currently $9. BizFed also said it opposes a move by the city to have the same UC Berkeley institute that previously supported Garcetti’s wage hike proposal conduct an independent study of the impacts of the wage hike proposals. “It’s absurd for the City of Los Angeles to spend taxpayer dollars contracting UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment to tell them what they’ve already told them previously, especially when that organization has been helping advocate for the mayor’s proposal,” said BizFed Chief Executive Tracy Rafter. Two councilmembers, Mitch O’Farrell and Felipe Fuentes, have called for another entity to conduct the study, as have several other local business groups. On Wednesday, Councilmember Curren Price called for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to each submit their own studies of the wage hike proposals.

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