Alameda County voters will get to decide the fate of a $30 minimum wage ballot measure thanks to a procedural vote Tuesday by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.
By law, the supervisors were required to put the measure on any ballot for a statewide election no earlier than 88 days following Tuesday's vote because it was the result of a signature-gathering drive.
The next such scheduled election is in March 2028, but it could go to voters sooner if the state calls a special election before then.
In July, the Alameda County Living Wage for All coalition completed a drive that netted more than 100,000 signatures from registered voters throughout the county. The coalition is part of the national One Fair Wage campaign, which aims to establish a living wage at the federal level, in eight states, and the District of Columbia. The proposal could have been placed on the Nov. 3 ballot but supervisors voted 3-2 in August to delay a decision in order to study the potential impacts of a $30 minimum wage.
Supervisors David Haubert, Nate Miley, and Lena Tam voted to delay, while Elisa Marquez and Nikki Fortunato Bas voted to put the measure on the November ballot.
At Tuesday's meeting, supervisors heard the results of the study, which identified some clear benefits to workers and some potential pitfalls for employers, including the county, whose employees would be covered by the new wage rules. The measure would apply to all county workers but only public-sector workers in the county's unincorporated areas. It would raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour gradually depending on company size -- large companies with 100 or more employees or more than $1 billion in revenue would have until 2030, medium-sized companies with 26 to 99 employees would have until 2035, and small companies with 25 or fewer workers would have until 2037.
"It is quite complicated and when you layer on state and other local jurisdiction requirements, it's even a more kind of complex policy framework," said Paul Peninger of BAE Urban Economics, a consultancy hired by the county to produce the report.
Family childcare workers follow the small-employer schedule while janitorial workers follow the faster large-employer schedule regardless of their employer's size, according to the report. The measure forbids employers from offsetting the cost of wage hikes by cutting benefits or other non-management staff pay. Peninger said there are 26,400 total private sector employees in the unincorporated areas of the county working at 3,100 businesses, and about 2,100 public sector employees.
"What's interesting about the distribution of businesses is that based on our analysis, 76% of all businesses would be considered small businesses under this measure," he said. "At the same time, about 80% of all employees are employed in either medium or large-size businesses."
The report estimates that it would cost the county between $32.9 to $34.3 million per year to comply with the measure. "As noted in the report, these costs would likely be partially offset by tax revenues generated by increased wages and consumer spending associated with the measure," Peninger said. Also, because higher wages would likely mean more people exiting public assistance programs like CalFresh or Medi-Cal, the county would save money in those areas, as well, as Marquez pointed out.
While the report didn't say how much the measure would cost private-sector employers, it did suggest they would be put at a competitive disadvantage compared to employers in neighboring cities that don't have to abide by the new rules, which could lead to job losses or companies moving to other areas.
As for benefits, the higher wages would lead to improved employee retention, improved household financial security and some increased spending in the local economy. Also, Peninger said there hasn't been a significant increase in the cost of goods or services in counties that have enacted minimum wage rules in the past.
Several people spoke in favor of the measure Tuesday, with some proponents saying the report vastly overestimates what it would cost the county to implement. "I think, in fact, the policy will improve the county's budget overall and along with that goes a judgment that the cost estimates are too high," said Michael Reich, a professor of economics and chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at University of California, Berkeley. Other speakers expressed skepticism about the wage hike proposal, with members of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and the California Restaurant Association saying they prefer the longer lead-up time to the 2028 election over a "rush" to the November ballot.
As required by state elections law, supervisors voted 4-0 to place the measure on the ballot at the end of Tuesday's meeting, with Fortunato Bas absent. They also, however, voted to begin working on a minimum wage ballot measure of their own that would compete with the one discussed Tuesday. Supervisors Miley and Haubert said they were unhappy that the measure would only apply to the unincorporated parts of the county and that it is written in such a way as to be vulnerable to legal challenges. "I just want the public to know that we do feel there's some legal concerns with this measure," Miley said. "So I just want that to be stated, and we will disclose those should the measure pass."