SAN FRANCISCO ― The minimum wage for University of California employees and contract workers will increase to $15 an hour by fall 2017, UC President Janet Napolitano said Wednesday in announcing a move that follows similar
actions by local governments but likely represents a first for a public university.
As California’s third-largest employer, the university should be taking the lead in ensuring its lowest-paid workers make decent wages, Napolitano said at a meeting of the 10-campus system’s governing board.
“Our community does not exist in a vacuum. How we support our workers and their families impacts Californians who might never set foot on one of our campuses,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
The move comes after leaders in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, voted Tuesday to raise base pay to $15 over the next five years and as Vice President Joe Biden planned to promote a higher federal
minimum wage during a stop Wednesday at a washroom equipment manufacturer in Los Angeles.
The University of California’s hourly earners, a group that includes students and full-time employees working in dining halls, dorms and bookstores or as gardeners, housekeepers and custodians at university campuses and hospitals, currently make the state minimum of $9 an hour.
Napolitano says that she plans to boost that to $13 an hour in October for employees who work at least 20 hours a week and by $1 an hour in each of the next two years.
About 4,200 UC employees and a much larger but unknown number of workers hired by university contractors will be getting the higher wages, system spokesman Dianne Klein said.
