Companies contracting with county forced to hike pay: increase approved by board to take effect as early as next month.

Hundreds of vendors and contractors that do business with Los Angeles County will have to pay more in wages as early as next month after the Board of Supervisors approved a hike in the county's living wage last week.

The wage, as of Jan. 1, will rise to $9.64 per hour from $8.32 per hour for employees given health benefits. The wage increases to $11.84 per hour from $9.46 per hour for those without them. It will apply to all new contracts and existing contracts when they are renewed.

However, unlike the recent furious battle over the decision by the City of Los Angeles, to expand its living wage to LAX-area hotels not doing direct business with the city, the county move has been greeted with relative acceptance by businesses.

"We were expecting the living wage to go up, since all the other mandated wages also are going up," said Hilda Perez, office manager for Los Angeles-based Alltech Protective Services, which provides armed and unarmed security guard services to the county.

Other mandated wages include the state's minimum wage, which will increase in two steps to $8 an hour from the current $6.75 an hour. and the city of L.A.'s living wage ordinance, which is indexed to inflation. The living wage in the city is $9.39 an hour for employees with benefits, $10.64 an hour for employees without benefits.

There's good reason area businesses are not up in arms over the county board's move: many contractors usually can factor the higher wages into their bid price, unlike the 12 LAX hotels targeted by the city that will have to figure out whether to raise room rates and banquet fees to absorb the higher wage costs. (Those hotels are now gathering signatures to put a referendum on the ballot challenging the extension of the ordinance.)

Also, the county's living wage law only covers some firms doing business with the county and employing a total of 6,500 contract employees.

L.A. County Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina pushed for the county living wage increase, because the county wage is not indexed to inflation and has not been increased since it was instituted in 1999.