REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Introduce an Ordinance Amending Section 3.80.040 of the Sunnyvale Municipal Code to increase the City's Minimum Wage to $15 by 2018
Report
BACKGROUND
On October 28, 2014, Council adopted a Minimum Wage Ordinance to establish a minimum wage of $10.30 per hour beginning on January 1, 2015 and starting January 1, 2016, and every January 1 thereafter, adjust the rate by an amount corresponding to the prior year's Consumer Price Index (CPI). Ordinance No. 3047-14 states that future increases will be based upon the CPI for the U.S. city average for urban wage earners and clerical workers, consistent with the City of San Jos?'s ordinance. The City's minimum wage, as well as the minimum wage in San Jos?, remained at $10.30 per hour on January 1, 2016 as the CPI decreased 0.3 percent over the previous year.
In addition to adopting the City's Minimum Wage Ordinance, Council directed staff to work with neighboring cities, specifically the City of Mountain View, with the goal of reaching $15 per hour minimum wage by 2018. On December 1, 2015, staff presented Council with RTC 15-0951 highlighting the efforts performed to seek a regional approach and reported that no city agreed to adopt the minimum wage increase using the incremental approach proposed by the cities of Sunnyvale and Mountain View.
At the Council meeting of December 1, 2015, Council directed staff to:
* Send a letter to the City of Mountain View to request they consider amending their recently adopted minimum wage ordinance such that instead of calculating CPI increases on a year over year basis, they calculate it using 2018 as a base year and doing all of the CPI adjustments based on that, in order to more accurately reflect CPI changes to account for years with a negative CPI.
* Amend the City's Minimum Wage ordinance by changing the CPI from the U.S. city average to the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CPI average.
* Revise the City's ordinance to be simi...
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