Second in a series

Re “Has the Time Come for a Culver City Minimum Wage?”

[img]1694|right|Steve Rose||no_popup[/img]Culver City never has had a minimum wage law, and this is not the time to break the precedent, says Steve Rose, chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce.

One reason such a law never has been necessary, he contended, is the dominant presence of the sprawling Los Angeles workforce.

“When you have a metropolis the size of Los Angeles surrounding a small city such as ours, the competitive nature, if you believe in free enterprise, should take care of any perceived advantages of raising the minimum wage,” Mr. Rose said this morning.

“I find it very interesting that many politicians are more concerned about 2 or 3 percent of the workforce than they are about lifting the entire workforce.”

City Councilman Jim Clarke said the time is now for Culver City to explore a minimum wage.

Mr. Rose believes such talk could gather momentum “because it is the politically correct thing to do.”

People who traditionally would fall under the minimum wage umbrella are virtually invisible in Culver City, the Chamber leader says. “Hotels in Culver City pay above the minimum wage,” Mr. Rose said, “because they have to be competitive with the wage regulations applied to the hotels on Century Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“Having a minimum wage law in Culver City appears to me to be one more checkoff on some political people’s bucket list.”

As an illustration of his thesis, Mr. Rose said he doubts that any of the 3,000 employees at Sony Pictures are working for minimum wage.

Lacking hard data, Mr. Rose guessed that a maximum of “2 or 3 percent” of Culver City workers are earning the minimum hourly wage.

(To be continued)