University of California Hops on Minimum Wage Bandwagon

In yet another sign of the American left’s leftward pivot, a $15 per hour minimum wage has quickly moved from fringe thinking among progressives (in his 2014 State of the Union, President Obama only called for an increase to $10.10 per hour) to conventional wisdom. Blue cities from Seattle to New York are adopting the $15 minimum, and now the University of California has become the first public university system in the country to follow suit. The New York Times reports on UC’s decision:

At the University of California’s 10 campuses, the minimum wage increase will be phased in over the next two years for about 3,200 employees, reaching $15 an hour in October 2017 for those who work at least 20 hours a week. Thousands of people working for contractors will also be paid at least the same rate…

Officials estimated that the wage increases would add about $14 million a year to a total university payroll of more than $12 billion. Dianne Klein, a University of California system spokeswoman, said the cost increase would be paid for by “auxiliary enterprises” like parking garages, book stores and medical centers, and would not come from tuition or state tax dollars.

But that assurance did not satisfy critics, who said that the cost would ultimately be borne by students, who have already seen repeated tuition increases in recent years.

Republican Assembly Leader Kristin Olsen, who opposes the increase, told the LA Times: “It is concerning that UC would implement this proposal just after spending an entire year arguing they do not have the funds necessary to keep tuition flat and enroll more California students.”

She might have added that the increase may well hit the poorest UC campuses hardest. Relatively wealthy campuses like UCSF and UCLA will barely be affected by the system-wide raise itself, because San Francisco and Los Angeles are already in the process of implementing $15 dollar minimums. Berkeley (home to UC’s flagship campus) and San Diego (home to UCSD) have also passed ordinances setting the local minimum wage above the current California minimum of $9 per hour. In other words, the UC minimum wage increase will place only a small burden on the the most prestigious UC campuses, which have the largest endowments and educate the wealthiest students and are already required by law to pay a higher wage.Meanwhile, the counties home to the UC campuses with the smallest endowments and less wealthy student bodies—Merced, Riverside, Santa Cruz and Irvine—either do not have minimum wage ordinances or are in the process of repealing them (in part because these areas have a lower cost of living than the major metropolitan areas). These campuses will therefore probably face the steepest hikes in labor costs compared to existing requirements when the UC wage increases go into effect.To the extent that the $14 million dollar a year cost is borne by individual campuses rather than the UC as a whole, it will likely disproportionately affect the most vulnerable campuses in the cash-starved system. Yet another example of how dramatic minimum wage hikes hurt the parties they are supposed to help.