Santa Ana City Council supports ‘hero pay’ for some frontline workers
Santa Ana moved one step closer Tuesday night to approving “hero pay” for grocery store employees in the city.
The council voted 4-3 to approve a resolution directing staff to bring a proposed urgency ordinance back before the council by March 2 requiring grocery store employees in the city to be paid an extra $4 an hour. Council members David Penaloza, Nelida Mendoza and Phil Bacerra cast the dissenting votes.
The resolution does not require that the city must adopt the ordinance. The council will still be able to approve or deny the ordinance.
The item was proposed by Mayor Vicente Sarmiento and Councilwoman Thai Viet Phan.
“Why do we have to be here compelling an industry that has done well under these conditions, for a very finite period of time to say, take care of these employees that you’ve been exposing to harm, many of which live in our community, and many of whom bring it home to their families?” Sarmiento said.
City Manager Kristine Ridge and City Atty. Sonia Carvalho will include in the ordinance a requirement that premium pay will be directed toward retail stores that have at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 10 employees per store site.
The ordinance will expire after 120 days.
“This is a life and death choice for so many people in our community,” Councilwoman Jessie Lopez said of grocery workers’ choice to go to work every day during the pandemic.
The council joins several cities across the state that are looking into requiring hazard pay for grocery workers.
The grocery chain, Kroger, said Monday that it would close two of its Long Beach stores if the city mandates the premium pay. The California Grocers Assn. has sued Long Beach in federal court and has a hearing set for Feb. 19.
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday supported a $5-per-hour boost to grocery and drugstore workers.
While the county refines its COVID-19 vaccination distribution process, some are using social media channels to demystify the Othena.com registration and booking process.
Sarmiento referenced the Long Beach lawsuit during the meeting and said the city will be monitoring the ongoing litigation.
“What Kroger is doing in Long Beach is a capital strike,” Lopez said. “Let’s just be clear about that. They are trying to manipulate other cities that are looking into this into not doing it because of the potential risk or scare of litigation.”
Several members said during the meeting that grocery stores have been logging huge profits during the pandemic, despite the struggles of their employees.
“Probably 80% of industries have failed, or are doing much, much worse than they were pre-pandemic,” Sarmiento said. “This one hasn’t and God bless them, great for them. But they should extend that to their employees that help them make those additional revenues.”
Councilman Johnathan Hernandez echoed a similar sentiment.
“I can assure you that the CEOs are working from home while people that are living below the poverty line are leaving their kids at home and leaving their loved ones and putting themselves at risk every single day,” Hernandez said.
The opposing council members had various concerns about the resolution.
“One of the things that we always have to consider is, as we’re putting laws on the books, are they going to be able to be enforced?” Bacerra said. “Is it something that we can reasonably expect? Because I don’t want to give folks, I think one of my colleagues said, false hopes that this is something that they can expect if we can’t reasonably enforce.”
Bacerra went on to suggest a resolution to “urge” all grocery outlets to provide hero pay.
Bacerra also expressed concern that it could hurt the state of the city’s financial infrastructure to place further regulations on businesses.
“Another thing I’m going to say is that here we are tonight talking about the state of our budget, the state of our financial infrastructure here in Santa Ana, and I was the one saying that we do need to grow revenue,” Bacerra said. “But then we take actions where there are grocery stores that probably will look at us and say, ‘Wow, not only do they have the highest sales tax, but look at these other onerous regulations that their singularly placing on us’...We can’t always put our hearts in front of our brains.”
Penaloza said the resolution should include many other businesses in the city, including fast food restaurants, frontline city employees and other businesses like the 99 Cents Only Store, Dollar Tree and 7-Eleven.
At one point, Penaloza proposed a substitute motion to include all of the businesses he referenced in the ordinance, but his motion failed to garner any support.
“It shouldn’t just be grocery stores, there are many people risking their lives out there,” Penaloza said.
Phan disagreed with Penaloza.
Phan said she’d worked as a fast-food employee and knows that grocery store employees are more at risk of contracting the coronavirus.
“I know what it’s like to work at a fast-food location, you do not have the same type of foot traffic as you do at a grocery store,” Phan said. “Go into Trader Joe’s, even when they limit the number of people who come in you are packed. Folks walk down these little aisles, they cross by each other ... it’s not 6 feet in between the aisles. So there’s no social distance that’s even possible.”
She continued: “To make great the enemy of good ... I think is not a great position.”
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