“The defeat of an initiative to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour makes California the first state to reject a statewide minimum-wage increase at the ballot in almost 30 years, an outcome likely to reverberate across organized labor nationally.”
But it might be a mistake to over-read its implications:
“In the past half-decade, California service unions have effectively plotted to raise minimum-wage standards by industry and location, setting a patchwork of wage floors that rendered the $18 initiative obsolete for much of the state’s low-paid workforce.”