At the Culver City Council meeting on October 9, 2023, the City Council approved hiring Berkeley Economic Advising and Research (BEAR) to conduct a study on the economic impact of a potential minimum wage ordinance in Culver City.
The city of Los Angeles currently has a minimum wage of $16.78 per hour, and the minimum wage rate for all employers in California is $15.50. The state is scheduled to raise that rate to $16 in January of 2024.
The idea of creating a minimum wage for the city came before the council initially on May 9, 2022 and resulted in the creation of a sub-committee with then – Vice Mayor Albert Vera and Council member Yasmine Imani McMorrin to study the topic.
Council member Freddy Puza noted that “tying this into the minimum wage for Los Angeles makes sense, but I think having the study to support that will be even better.”
Council member Dan O’Brien “We should be including the people who will be paying that wage in the study, to see how they can support it…our utility tax is higher, our parcel tax[es] are higher … there are a lot of factors involved, and these are important questions. What is the impact on these different businesses? I need to see all that.”
Vice Mayor McMorrin cited a number of studies over the last decade showing that standardizing the minimum wage was helpful to the economy and did not hinder growth. ‘It helps to retain workers … so many studies have been done in regard to this issue, and nothing has come up to show that this harms [businesses.]”
BEAR will be paid a maximum of $145,000 to do the study. The City Council discussed, but ultimately did not approve, asking BEAR to additionally study the economic impact of adopting the City of Los Angeles’ minimum wage ordinance in Culver City.
Judith Martin-Straw
