County elections officials certified signatures for a measure that would raise Oakland’s minimum wage from $17.34 to $30 an hour by 2037, leaving the council to adopt it, send it to voters or order a 30-day study.
A labor-backed initiative that would raise Oakland’s minimum wage to $30 an hour has qualified for the ballot, making Oakland the second jurisdiction in Alameda County this year where the same coalition has forced local officials to decide on one of the highest wage floors in the country.
Alameda County elections officials certified that the petition for the Oakland Living Wage for All Act of 2026 had enough valid signatures, East Bay Insiders reported on Thursday. The measure would gradually lift the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by July 1, 2037, with larger employers required to reach that level sooner.
Oakland’s minimum wage is now $17.34 an hour, with some exceptions for hotel workers, according to Oakland North. The statewide minimum, which applies in unincorporated communities, is $16.90, and Emeryville’s, the highest in the county, is $20.34.
Three options, and a deadline
Under state election law, a city council that receives a qualified citizen initiative has limited choices. A supplemental agenda for the council’s Rules and Legislation Committee meeting on Oct. 22 lays them out, citing California Elections Code Section 9215.
The council can adopt the ordinance “without alteration,” making the $30 schedule law without a public vote. It can submit the measure to voters at the next general municipal election, on Nov. 7, 2028, or at a special election held 88 to 103 days after the council calls it. Or it can first order a report under Elections Code Section 9212 on the measure’s effects, to be presented within 30 days, a step that delays but does not replace one of the first two choices.
The certification and the three alternatives (city legislative files 27-0173 through 27-0176) are slated for the full council’s Dec. 1 meeting as non-consent items, according to the agenda. That timing means a special election, if the council chose one, would most likely fall in the first quarter of 2027.
A familiar playbook from the county
The Oakland campaign follows the same path its organizers took in the unincorporated parts of the county, including Ashland, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview, Hayward Acres, San Lorenzo and Sunol.
There, the Living Wage for All coalition, a group of more than 100 civil rights, faith and labor organizations that is part of the national One Fair Wage campaign, qualified a nearly identical initiative earlier this year. The Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 in August to commission an economic study rather than act immediately, which kept the measure off the November 2026 ballot, East Bay Insiders reported. On Sept. 15, supervisors placed it on the March 2028 ballot and asked a committee chaired by Supervisor Nate Miley, which includes Supervisor Lena Tam, to explore a competing countermeasure, according to Oakland North.
Under the county version, employers with more than 100 workers would have to pay $30 an hour in 2030, medium-sized employers in 2035 and employers with 25 or fewer workers in 2037.
Paul Peninger of BAE Economics, whose firm analyzed the county measure for the supervisors, estimated that it could cost the county government $33 million to $34.3 million a year. He noted that the cost could be partly offset by tax revenue from higher wages and consumer spending, and that the estimate did not account for savings if fewer residents qualified for programs like CalFresh and Medi-Cal, Oakland North reported.
The arguments
Supporters say wages in the Bay Area have not kept up with housing and child care costs. “Why do the people who have to work have to be squeezed?” John Howard, one of the county petition’s coordinators, asked supervisors in September. “If we’re going to work, we should have affordable or adequate wages that we’re going to work for.”
Opponents in the unincorporated areas argued that small businesses there would be at a disadvantage against neighbors in cities with lower wage floors. “The $30-per-hour wage initiative targeting only unincorporated Alameda County is an attack on our communities,” Edward Escobar, founder of the Unincorporated Strategic Coalition, told the board. “Childcare centers, restaurants, family-run shops and long-standing employers cannot survive a wage spike while competing directly with neighboring cities operating under normal wage laws. We are not a testing ground.”
That competitive concern looks different in Oakland, which has its own wage ordinance and borders cities with a mix of rates, from Emeryville’s $20.34 to the state minimum in parts of the county. According to the county’s study, no city in Alameda County is projected to reach $30 an hour until 2032 under existing law, Oakland North reported.
Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, has said the coalition is in talks with council members in Berkeley and Emeryville about similar measures. Of the possibility of a county countermeasure, she told Oakland North: “If they put a countermeasure on the ballot that’s less than $30, it’s going to fail. If it’s more, fantastic. I want it to pass.”
What it would mean for Oakland
For Oakland’s council, the choice of election date could matter as much as the policy itself. Adopting the measure outright would be unusual for a wage increase of this size. A 2028 vote would coincide with a presidential election and its larger turnout. A special election in 2027 would carry its own cost and, as off-year elections typically do, would likely draw fewer voters.
The Inquirer sought comment from Council President Kevin Jenkins, Councilmember Carroll Fife, One Fair Wage, Barbara Leslie of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the UC Berkeley Labor Center. None responded by publication time.
Desmond Akers covers the cities and counties of the greater Bay Area, from Oakland and San Jose to the Peninsula, the North Bay and the East Bay suburbs, for Around the Region. More from Desmond Akers
