Local business reacts to minimum wage increase

California’s minimum wage will be going up starting Jan. 1 with the wage being raised to $10.50 an hour. It’s all thanks to a law signed in April that will have the state eventually get the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

For Matthew Sam, manager of Champions Barber Shop at Westfield Palm Desert, he supported the minimum wage increase as he understood workers could use the money to help their families. Sam said he was a minimum wage worker at one point in his life. He did acknowledge that it would create additional costs for the businesses.

“With that going up, everybody knows everything else goes up around it so hopefully will be able to have everything come to plateau and everything will work out,” he said.

Gloria Vega of Cathedral City also supported the minimum wage increase as she had been a minimum wage worker as well. She said she remembered having to take care of two kids while making $8.50 an hour. She said an increase would definitely have helped her at the time.

“It would’ve been easier for me to have my own place or you know just to be OK with me and my children,” she said.

Patrick Swarthout, community development officer with the Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce said, the wage increase would make it tough for small businesses that don’t already pay above minimum wage as their starting salary.

“They’re going to have less employees at minimum wage or they’re going to have to increase their prices and pass prices along to the consumer,” he said.

The minimum wage increase to $10.50 will only apply to businesses with 26 or more employees in 2017, as smaller businesses have until 2018 until comply. It would be in line with steady increases in wages to eventually reach $15 an hour for large businesses in 2022, and small businesses in 2023. According to the law, Gov. Jerry Brown could also delay the wage increases by a year if the state suffers a economic downturn.