Residents Demand Increase to Minimum Wage in Long Beach

Aug. 17, 2015 / By

Is it a ticket out of poverty or a strain on small business?

Long Beach’s plan to study how raising the city’s minimum wage would affect the city has residents on both sides.

About 70 residents rallied alongside city councilmembers Tuesday outside city hall in support of raising the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The demand follows recent minimum wage hikes by the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles County.

The Long Beach City Council voted Tuesday to have a study done by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation to examine a wage hike’s local effects.

In the video below, youth and workers share why a raise in wages is needed. But small business owners also share why they are not too excited about the idea.

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Michael Lozano

Michael is an editor and multimedia journalist born to Mexican parents who started their own Domestic Violence counseling center in Southeast Los Angeles. His mentorship has provided youth opportunities to share their stories online on NPR, KCET, the Long Beach Post, and other national websites. His articles have been syndicated and translated into multiple languages via New America Media and ImpreMedia, the nation’s largest Spanish-language news publisher. He was a fellow with UCLA's Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, and has recently been a Votebeat Reporter for CalMatters and the Long Beach Post. Michael graduated from CSULB in 2011 with research honors in Sociology and a Journalism minor. Follow his work @chicanochico on Twitter and @thechicanochicoreport on Instagram.