LA Councilman to Unions: Pay for Own Minimum Wage Studies

VOICES-Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price on Wednesday asked business and labor groups worried about the effects of raising the minimum wage to pay for their own studies on the subject. 

Price chairs the council’s Economic Development Committee, which is considering a proposal to raise the minimum wage from $9 per hour to $13.25 by 2017 and to $15.25 by 2019. 

Responding to criticism over the city’s choice of UC Berkeley economists, Price asked the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to submit their own studies to be done at their own expense. 

Price’s request comes a week after business leaders from the Valley Industry & Commerce Association, a San Fernando Valley-based business group, took issue with the choice of UC Berkeley to study of the plan. 

Members of the VICA contend UC Berkeley economists would be biased because they did a study on which the mayor based his raise hourly wages to $13.25. 

Council members Mitch O’Farrell and Felipe Fuentes took up the business group’s concerns last week by urging city staffers to reopen bidding for consultants to do the study. 

Price, who did not address O’Farrell and Fuentes’ request, instead asked top city staffers to prepare a peer review process for all three studies to be done by the business and labor groups — due March 6 — as well as the UC Berkeley study, which is expected to be finished in early February.

 

(Posted at mynewsla.com) 

-cw

 

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CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 5

Pub: Jan 16, 2015