The chefs at Understory in East Oakland fried up chicken while labor leaders, community organizers, and workers gathered in the dining room on Thursday.
They say a $30 minimum wage has been a long time coming. Zach Norris is the Executive Director of the Black Organizing Project. He said there’s a gap between the skyrocketing cost of living and stagnating wages.
"And in that gap is human suffering. In that gap is black people being pushed out of this region. In that gap is educators and folks supporting students in OUSD, sleeping in their cars as they try to support students."
The wage increase would be implemented gradually. Large businesses with over one hundred employees and more than a billion in annual revenue would need to get to $30 by 2030. Businesses with twenty-five or fewer employees would have a full decade to get there.
Right now, the majority of Alameda County workers do not earn the cost of living. A 'Living Wage calculator' from MIT shows that one person in a two-parent, two-child household must earn over forty dollars an hour to cover rent, groceries, childcare, and other expenses.
The current minimum wage in Oakland is just over $17. The federal minimum wage has been seven dollars and fifty cents since 2009. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage. She said last year seven states launched campaigns to increase their minimum wage to twenty five dollars an hour or more.
"I've heard from so many working people across California, across the country, they tell us, you know, I work three jobs. What has democracy done for me? Why is democracy worth saving? And we have to prove to them that democracy can deliver on the issue they keep telling us is the most important thing, their ability to survive."
Now that the measure has been filed, organizers have 180 days to gather enough signatures to get it on the November ballot.
If the measure doesn’t pass, annual wage increases would reflect “the prior calendar year’s increase, if any, in the Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers for the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA metropolitan statistical area.” If it does pass, the measure won't go into effect until June 2027.
