As California workers seek higher wages, a program seeks to help them move up
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(California News Service) Unions representing fast food workers are asking the state's new Fast Food Council to support a 70-cent-per-hour boost in the minimum wage at its next meeting September 11.
The minimum wage for fast food workers was recently raised to $20 an hour but it works out to just over $41,000 a year, which, in California, is significantly less than the average cost of living.
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Linda Becker, director of regional partnerships in the Bay Area for the nonprofit Merit America, supports a higher minimum wage but said it is just a start.
"While raising the minimum wage offers an immediate paycheck boost for low-wage workers, it's just one piece of the puzzle," Becker explained. "We still really, firmly believe that a low-wage job should be a steppingstone and not a dead end."
Merit America offers intensive career counseling and online courses in IT support, data analytics, cybersecurity, project management and UX design. It costs nothing to start and a maximum of $5,700 total. According to Forbes magazine, it costs on average more than $53,000 a year to cover housing, medical care, food, transportation and taxes in California, the third-highest cost of living in the country.
Becker pointed out learners only start to pay Merit America back, at $95 a month, after they get a higher-paying job.
"The average wage gain that we see is about $24,000 a year," Becker reported. "Which is a significant, kind of life-changing increase of wages, post-program."
California's general minimum wage is $16 an hour. Over the next few years, the state is also phasing in a higher minimum wage, of $18 to $25 per hour, for certain health care positions.
