In summary
Had the California Living Wage Act proposal succeeded, it would have increased base wages to $16 an hour next January and $18 by 2025.
Californians won’t vote this fall on whether the minimum wage should rise again as inflation continues to tear through families’ budgets.
An initiative to bump the minimum wage to $18 over the next three years, though bankrolled by a wealthy investor and backed by a slew of labor organizations, has failed to qualify for the November ballot.
The Secretary of State’s office said not enough signatures had been verified by county election officials by the Thursday deadline to qualify the measure.
Triggered by the record rate of inflation, which in the past year has caused the biggest increase in the consumer price index in four decades, California’s top-of-the-nation minimum wage already is set to increase to $15.50 an hour next January.
Had the California Living Wage Act proposal succeeded, it would have increased it to $16 next January and $18 by 2025, after which the minimum wage would have adjusted annually to account for the cost of living.
Starting in February, the initiative campaign was among the later ballot efforts to begin collecting signatures this year. Joe Sanberg, a Los Angeles startup investor-turned-advocate against poverty, said he would spend what it took to get it on the ballot. He personally poured $10 million into the campaign, and supporters announced in May they had turned in more than a...
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