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January 26, 2016 <br />Dear Mayor Cutter, and Honorable Members of the San Leandro City Council, <br />Thank you for your leadership on and consideration of raising the minimum wage in the City of San <br />Leandro. <br />As you may know, the movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 is growing across the Bay Area and <br />in Alameda County. Cities like Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, and other surrounding cities are showing <br />that raising the wage helps not only workers make ends meet, but helps build stronger communities <br />and economies as those extra dollars re -circulate in our local economy—in our local shops and <br />restaurants. <br />We are a coalition of labor, community, and faith organizations committed to ensuring strong minimum <br />wage policies are adopted at the local level. Many of our groups endorsed and drove the passage of <br />minimum wage policies in Oakland by an 82% ballot initiative vote, shepherded the policy that passed in <br />Emeryville with 3 unanimous readings, and support the amendment of the Berkeley policy to increase <br />wages beyond the current flatline of $12.53/hr. We recommend policy solutions, rooted in what is <br />needed for workers and our local economy, that are based on the best practices from neighboring cities. <br />We encourage you to consider these key issues as you and the City staff contemplate a city-wide <br />minimum wage policy for San Leandro: <br />Pathway to $15: We support the City's consideration, like many cities in the East Bay, of <br />increasing the minimum wage beyond that of the current state minimum wage of $10/hr. <br />Emeryville and San Francisco have established a $15/hr minimum wage by 2018. More and <br />more cities are creating a pathway to $15, which amounts to a little over $30,000 a year. This <br />creates a pathway out of poverty, although still barely enough to afford the median rent in <br />Alameda County, much less pay for other essential expenses. <br />We know the importance of raising wages for the lowest earning in our economy-- the food <br />service workers, retail workers, hotel workers, and more. Currently at $10, many minimum wage <br />workers toil in poverty, juggle multiple jobs, and struggle to keep a roof of their heads and food <br />on the table. We support getting to $15/hr as quickly as possible, because minimum wage <br />workers can't wait to pay the bills or the rent, and we know increased wages get spent in our <br />local restaurants and stores. <br />CPI indexing: In particular, we want to support the automatic indexing of the minimum wage to <br />the consumer price index (CPI). Such increases, in recent years no more than 2-3%, are common <br />and a best practice in local minimum wage policies. Increasing the minimum wage annually <br />based on CPI helps ensure that the value of the wage does not erode as much over time. Just as <br />workers see increases in the price of milk and clothing due to inflation, so should the wages of <br />workers see an automatic increase. <br />Applying an annual indexed increase to the minimum wage for private sector employers is <br />fundamentally different and doesn't present an "unfunded liability" to private employers-- a <br />term used in public employee settings. Often times small labor cost increases due to indexing <br />