SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new campaign called "Living Wage for All" launched on Wednesday. The campaign believes the California's $15.50 minimum wage is not nearly enough, and they are working with lawmakers to try and change that.
Joe Thompson works at Starbucks. “I know the struggles that baristas, cashiers, servers and all hospitality workers face," Thompson said. "This is a crisis”
Aaliyah Muhammad is formerly incarcerated and now a paralegal for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
“I earned $1 an hour," Muhammad said. "This is clearly exploitation”
They want the minimum wage in California to be raised to somewhere between $22 and $24 an hour.
"With stagnant wages, lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of childcare, working families are struggling to make ends meet," Assemblymember Ash Kalra said.
Kalra introduced Assembly Bill 1516 that would require the Labor and Workforce Development Agency to study the impacts of minimum wage in California, and to suggest recommendation to the legislature.
"It will be replaced by an actual bill to raise the minimum wage," UC Berkeley Food Research Center Director Saru Jayaraman said. "That's why we're saying this is a two year process. It begins with a study and assessment and it goes into actual legislation."
Jayaraman said prisoners must be included. In the past, Newsom’s administration said it could cost the state billions.
“We know there's incredible support for this, and what is different this year is that we have been able to have some conversations with the Department of Finance and new calculations that show that there are actually incredible savings from paying incarcerated workers a full minimum wage,” Jayaraman said.
Political Reporter Morgan Rynor reached out to the business community and Republican lawmakers, but no one was available for comment by the time this aired.
“We need everybody to have enough to live on," Jayaraman said. "Otherwise, it's going to harm those same small businesses in multiple ways. They're not going to have enough staff to be open, and they're not going to have enough consumers who actually can afford to consume in their businesses.”
There is already a ballot measure in 2024 that voters will have a say in to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour. Jayaraman said the authors of that ballot measure are also a part of this new campaign.
WATCH RELATED: Push for $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers (Feb. 2023).