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Oakland workers are ready to be paid a lot more.
Worker advocates in Oakland are pressing for a $30 minimum wage, mirroring a similar goal from socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani from across the country.
A worker’s organization, One Fair Wage, is hoping to put forward a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in the area. The organization believes the wage increase will help workers with the expensive cost of living in the Bay Area, especially with the affordability crisis.
“Every time there has been a downturn or a serious challenge to the economy, in the end, we raise wages as a stimulus,” Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage, told Center Square.
“It’s basically a stimulus in the hands of working people, who spend a much bigger percentage of their income than higher-income people because they have to. It’s survival,” she added.
One Fair Wage says the proposed ballot initiative would gradually institute the $30 minimum wage within the city and Alameda County until reaching the proposed amount in 2030. Oakland’s current minimum wage is $17.34 an hour, and California’s minimum wage sits at $16.90 an hour.
A $30 minimum wage would be the highest in the country. New York City legislators introduced a bill last month to also introduce a $30 minimum wage.
Ken Dorsey, an East Oakland resident, told The Guardian that the added wages would take stress off workers.
“You don’t have time to do anything on your own when you’re working so hard, but this $30 an hour minimum wage would take a lot of burden and stress off of people,” he said.
“I do a lot of jobs. I go to temp agencies to keep my options open so I can continue to stay above water with paying bills. I’ve been working off of 98th avenue in Oakland all this week and next week, I’ll be in San Francisco all week. I just have to go where the money is,” he added.
But minimum wage increases aren’t all sunshine and roses, economics experts say. There was criticism from the academic community of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s previous fast-food minimum wage increase to $20 an hour.
“Based on what we’ve found, I think this legislation is a classic case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished,’” UC Santa Cruz Economics Lecturer Stephen Owen said in a March 18 news release. “There are unintended consequences and knock-on effects, and overall, I think the results have definitely not been as positive as policymakers had been expecting.”
It’s unclear if Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee is supportive of the mimimum wage hike. She once supported a $50 federal minimum wage when she ran for California Senate in 2024.
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