It’s possible that later this year the San Diego City Council could vote on a proposal to raise the minimum wage for hospitality workers to $25 per hour.
Businesses that would be affected would include hotels, amusement parks like SeaWorld, and Petco Park, home field of the San Diego Padres.
The hospitality industry generates more than $14 billion dollars annually while paying some of the lowest wages in the city.
San Diego’s current $17.25 minimum wage is already higher than state and federal minimums. A hike to $25 would be a 45% increase in pay.
The Sun unscientifically polled people on downtown San Diego’s Embarcadero and found very little consensus of opinion.
San Diego tourist and former Atlanta business owner Arzo Li favors the minimum wage increase.
“The better off people are in their general day to day, the better their lifestyle is, the better they will participate in their surroundings and the prouder they are to represent their employer,” Li says.
When he owned a business in Georgia, Li says he had better employee rapport, lower staff turnover and a thriving work culture in large part because he paid staff $10 over minimum wage.
“People will complain and say you’re taking away from the business owners and the prices will have to go up,” Li says. “Well, maybe the business owners should not take as much profit, therefore sharing. In the United States, we’re giving more to the top business owners and corporations and less to the people.”
East Coast visitor Junior Page disagrees with the proposal to boost the minimum wage for hospitality workers.
“It increases inflation, which in turn lowers everyone’s wages,” Page says. “It’s unfortunate that people have to live at minimum wage, but I don’t think they should raise the minimum wage because ultimately it just destroys inflation.”
North Park’s Austin Akas is absolutely for an increase – not to $25, but to $19 or $20. “It makes people more happy in their workplace, and it should be raised,” he says.
Reyna notes that San Dego already has one of the highest minimum wages in the United States.
“For me, as a San Diego resident, $17.25 is of course not enough to live,” Reyna says. “But we cannot expect that the government should regulate how much we should make per minimum. I think this is our responsibility.”
Ron Hansen, who works in the San Diego tourism sector and lives across the Mexico border in Tijuana, citing the lower cost of living there. He questions how raising minimum wages might affect businesses.
“It could have some negative influences on other things,” Hanson says. “Overall, it would probably be okay. But how would this affect business owners? If their cost is going to go up, they have to decrease spending in other areas.”
Edith Velazquez, visiting San Diego from Dallas, has reservations about such a big increase at one time.
“It’s a major jump, and there’s a problem to consider if the economy can support that,” she says. “If the employers can pay that, in an ideal world, they should. But money does not appear from nowhere.”
Los Angeles visitors Steven and Heather Whitehall were in agreement that a big minimum wage hike would put a strain on businesses.
“Unless there are subsidies, the business owners will still want to make however much income they were planning to make,” Heather Whitehall says. “So yes, eventually that cost will be passed onto the consumer.” SDSun
