University of California raising minimum wage to $15 an hour

The push for a higher minimum wage gained momentum on both sides of the country Wednesday, with New York embracing an eventual $15 an hour for the state’s 200,000 fast-food workers and the huge University of California system announcing the same raise for its employees. California’s minimum wage is $9 at the moment, set to bump up to $10 an hour in January.

UC President Janet Napolitano said that as California’s third-largest employer, the university should be taking the lead in ensuring its lowest-paid workers make decent wages.

Under the plan, UC’s mandated hourly minimum will increase to $13 this October, then by another dollar over each of the next two years. As UCLA’s Jacob Kohlhepp noted in a recent College Fix story, student jobs on campus tend to max out at 15 hours a week – and those now pay $9.25 an hour.

Other public university systems, including ones in Washington state, Indiana and Tennessee, have adopted minimum wages higher than those set under state or federal law.

Vice President Joe Biden promoted a higher minimum wage of at least $12 an hour during a stop Wednesday at a washroom equipment manufacturer in Los Angeles, where he chatted with employees as they assembled soap dispensers. Klein said UC also predicts that contractors will pass some of the cost of higher wages back to the university.

In a statement Napolitano said the university system “does not exist in a vacuum…”

“Through its education, research and public service missions, the University of California’s students, faculty and staff have made us into a world-renowned institution”, Napolitano said. The employees his organization represents, he said, will not be affected, since few, if any, of them make less than $15 an hour.

Spokeswoman Dianne Klein says the new minimum wage rules will affect about 3,200 university workers and an unknown number of workers hired by its contractors.

Napolitano said she is setting up a hotline and online reporting system so complaints about contractors’ labor practices go directly to her office.

“It’s like telling hundreds, if not thousands of contract workers that instead of having to survive on breadcrumbs, now you get to survive on ramen noodles”, Stenhouse said. Several cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, have already announced plans to reach that level.

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