After a year-long campaign by a coalition of community, civil and religious leaders - which gathered thousands of signatures, created a blue ribbon commission calling for action on behalf of low-wage workers and culminating in a massive march that shut down part of Century Boulevard while 300 protestors were arrested for civil disobedience - the Los Angeles City Council voted overwhelmingly Nov. 15 for an ordinance that will extend the city's limited "living wage" law to 3,500 employees at 13 hotels near Los Angeles International Airport.
The vote was 11 to 3 to require the hotels to pay housekeepers, banquet servers, dishwashers, busboys and other workers $9.39 per hour with health benefits and $10.64 per hour without health benefits. While Los Angeles has had a living wage law since 1997 for companies it conducts business with, this is the first time the city has extended the law to include businesses having no financial relationship with government.
In California, only Berkeley and Emeryville have enacted similar limited living wage ordinances, with San Francisco having a minimum wage law applying to every employer in the city. Across the nation, only Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., have comprehensive living wage statutes.
"'Working poor' should be an oxymoron," declared Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who sponsored the ordinance, during the council's session. "Nobody who works hard should be poor in America, and it's time that we are not just ashamed about this, but we do something about it."
After the vote, Hahn told The Tidings she was gratified that L.A. took this "very bold step," standing up for workers who play a vital part in the Southland's tourism industry. She said the second vote the ordinance must pass as a new measure before the City Council is mainly procedural, since it requires just a simple majority to pass. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former union organizer, has said he will sign the measure into law.
"I didn't really realize how hard they worked day in and day out until I met with hotel workers," Hahn said. "Some of these workers have worked 20 years for one of the airport hotels and are still making a small wage."
Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes part of the Century corridor, said the vote was all about creating a social safety net for low-income workers.
"It's a question of morality; it's a question of integrity; it's a question of fair return for labor work," he pointed out. "We're not looking at a lot of money here. But the workers who do the backbone of what goes on in those hotels should get a living wage."
The City Council also approved two other related measures. A tip protection ordinance will require hotels to pass along most of the 20 percent service charge imposed on banquet guests to servers. And a worker retention ordinance will require hotels to keep employees for at least 90 days after a hotel changes ownership.
An Economic Round Table study found that workers in hotels near LAX are among the lowest paid hotel workers in Los Angeles County, earning 20 percent less than their counterparts in downtown hotels. The average annual wages for Century Boulevard hotels workers is $20,328, which is barely above the $20,000 federal extreme poverty threshold for a family of four.
'A great step'
"I thought the vote was a great step in the right direction," said the Rev. Anna Olson, deputy director of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice). "I worked for a number of years in Inglewood, and I really saw how families in that area were impacted by the lack of living wage jobs. The airport brings tremendous business into the area and it's a public institution. So it seems reasonable that everyone in the community - hotel owners and hotel workers alike - should share in those benefits."
The Episcopal priest believes religious leaders have played an important role in the local living wage struggle because they're connected so closely to the daily lives of members of their congregation; they see firsthand the personal consequences of families' economic struggles.
"As a pastor, part of what you want to do is help people to make that struggle easier," she said. "But when the economic fundamentals are completely against people, it's hard to do that. There's nothing I can say in a counseling session that's going to make it possible to pay $1,500 a month in rent making $7.75 an hour. It's just not going to happen. And no amount of praying is going to make it so."
Another deputy director, Vivian Rothstein of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, agrees that religious leaders have been crucial to the long, hard campaign, which actually started more than two years ago with building relationships and community around the plight of airport hotel workers.
"Members of CLUE, like Father Perry Leiker, have been extremely important by really bringing out the moral dimension," she said. "His involvement has also given workers courage because many of the hotel workers attend St. Joseph's Church in Hawthorne.
"And they can lose heart because the managers of the hotels can get extremely harsh. But when they see a group of clergy standing with the workers, it makes a big difference. So I don't think this would have happened without the leadership of the religious community."
Miguel Vargas, a server at the LAX Hilton's main restaurant for 15 years, makes $6.75 an hour plus tips, which puts him above the new living wage, except when he takes a vacation and only receives his hourly salary. There are also the $100 taxes he pays on his tips every two weeks along with the $150 a month he pays for health insurance for himself, his wife and their two daughters.
"The vote shows that us workers should be listened to," the 34-year-old Inglewood resident said. "Basically a living wage means a decent salary. And while the cost of living - rent, bills, energy, gas, food - has gone up dramatically, our wages don't reflect that. So the vote sends a message to the hotels that they're making huge profits and they've forgotten about the workers doing the work to make those profits.
"But what we're really fighting for is to get unionized," he stressed. "We want a union contract with Unite Here. That's our ultimate goal. The City Council vote was like a stepping stone to that." |