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City Wage Hike Plan for Workers Advances

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A compromise version of a proposal to boost wages and benefits for some of Los Angeles’ lowest-paid workers advanced Tuesday when a panel of two City Council committees voted to fashion a new draft ordinance incorporating several key recommendations from a city-authorized study.

While members of the Personnel and Budget and Finance committees gave a tentative nod to the scaled-back wage and benefit requirements for private firms that hold city contracts, the community and labor groups pushing for the measure said the new version did not go far enough to lift workers out of poverty. And the business groups opposing it said the compromise proposal still would put a chill on the city’s fragile business climate.

The study’s authors, seeking to minimize the cost of the wage-boosting program while still providing help for some of the city’s neediest workers, proposed a city program encouraging poor families to apply for the federal government’s $3,500-a-year Earned Income Tax Credit--an idea that found favor on both sides of the debate. Other recommendations included limiting the ordinance’s scope to about 100 firms with city service or concessions contracts and setting a wage floor of $7.25 an hour with health benefits and 12 paid days off a year or $8.50 an hour without the benefits and paid time off.

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“We’re definitely getting closer” to fashioning an ordinance to take to the full City Council, Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said at the end of the meeting. The committees asked the city attorney’s office to have the new draft ready when they reconvene jointly in two weeks and also ordered an analysis by the city’s fiscal and legislative policy offices.

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