L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti announed on Labor Day that he would be bringing a plan to city council to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017. The wage would gradually rise over time: $10.25 in 2015, $11.75 in 2016 and $13.25 in 2017.
“I’m proposing to responsibly and gradually raise the minimum wage in L.A. to $13.25 because it’s deplorable and bad for our economy to have one million Angelenos stuck in poverty, even when working full time” Garcetti said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Seattle is getting ready to fight a lawsuit from the International Franchise Association against the city’s “discriminatory” $15 minimum wage, signed into law in June, which will phase in quicker for national franchises. Everybody’s favorite initiative-happy conservative activist Tim Eyman is also collecting signatures and ironically trying to raise millions of dollars to overturn Seattle’s minimum wage law.