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Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to delay adding a $30 minimum wage proposal to the November ballot, opting instead for additional study to be conducted on the measure’s effects before going before voters.
After proponents with the Alameda County Living Wage for All coalition gathered signatures to qualify the initiative, the Board of Supervisors under state law had the choice of adopting the measure, placing it on November’s ballot, or asking for a study to measure its impact that would be received by the board within 30 days. The board opted to ask for a study.
On a 3-2 vote, the board’s decision to delay will put the measure past the deadline to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot, postponing it until the next countywide election, currently the presidential primary election scheduled for 2028. Supervisors David Haubert, Nate Miley and Lena Tam voted to delay, while Elisa Marquez and Nikki Fortunato Bas voted to put the measure on the ballot.
“Yesterday’s procedural vote will not prevent a living wage for all from reaching the ballot in Alameda County. It simply means voters will pass these critical reforms in the next election,” the leadership group for the coalition said in a statement Wednesday. “What workers needed from these supervisors yesterday was courage to stand up to big business – and on that, three supervisors failed dramatically.”
The ballot measure would raise Alameda County’s minimum wage to $30 an hour in stages over the next decade. The measure would only apply to employers in the unincorporated parts of the county, not those doing business inside any city boundary, although the group is working to put a similar initiative on an Oakland ballot. Large companies in the county would be required to raise their minimum pay to $30 an hour by 2030, while small businesses were given until 2037 to do the same.
During the hearing, Fortunato Bas said that she believed everyone deserved a living wage for one job and said that the board should honor the signature-gathering efforts, noting that over 100,000 people had signed.
Haubert and Miley both stood firm in the need for additional study, eventually receiving the support of Tam on the vote to delay.
The Alameda County Living Wage for All coalition is part of the national One Fair Wage campaign, which aims to establish a living wage at the federal level, in eight states, and the District of Columbia.
The coalition led the signature gathering effort to put a $30 minimum wage measure onto the ballot, collecting over 100,000 signatures and submitting those to the county for certification on July 8.
On July 24, the signatures were certified by Alameda County, clearing the way for the Board of Superiors to vote on Tuesday.
Edward Escobar, founder of the Coalition for Community Engagement, which led a press conference earlier in the day in opposition to the measure, said he was extremely pleased with the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, saying it will give him and his organization enough time to mount the opposition to the measure.
Escobar shared his perspective that the measure would harm local business and speed up automation of sectors in the age of artificial intelligence, adding that the advocates for the measure were part of a national group promoting a policy and did not represent the workers and small businesses of Alameda County.
– Story by Eric Urbach, Bay City News Service
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