More than 100 Central Valley and Central Coast farm and other low-wage workers push for minimum wage hike

 
     At the last in a series of hearings around California considering an increase the minimum wage, state officials on Thursday in Stockton will face more than 100 farm workers and other low-wage laborers from California’s Central Valley and Central Coast.
 
     Labor groups want the state Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) to boost the minimum wage to $6.75 an hour from its current $5.75. They also urge further hikes, to $7.50 on Jan. 1, 2002, and to $8 by Jan. 1, 2003. The IWC has proposed raising the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour and then
reviewing it again in two years.
 
     Hourly earnings adjusted for inflation dropped by 40% between 1969 and 1997. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.65 an hour. To realize the same purchasing power, today’s minimum wage would have to be $8.04 an hour. A recent study shows that if workers enjoyed the same 535% pay raise the nation’s CEOs pocketed in the last decade, the minimum wage would have to be $24.13 an hour.
 
     The last increase in the California minimum wage occurred as a result of voter approval of labor-sponsored Proposition 210 in 1996. Other IWC hearings on the minimum wage were held in San Diego and Oakland.
 
Who:              More than 100 farm and other low-wage workers.
 
What:             Demanding a major increase in the state minimum wage.
 
When:            10 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 5, 2000.
 
Where:          State Office Building, 31 East Channel Street, Auditorium, Stockton.
 
 
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