Extending a hand to thousands of impoverished workers while tossing the mayor a sharp political challenge, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday adopted an ordinance requiring some private firms with city ties to boost the pay and benefits of their bottom-rung service employees.
With the council's 12-0 vote--two more than needed to override a promised mayoral veto--Los Angeles seems destined to join a small but growing number of American cities that have put so-called living wage ordinances on the books. New York, Baltimore and San Jose are already among those cities that have raised the minimum pay for the employees of municipal contract holders, thanks in large part to the efforts of well-organized union leaders, community activists and clergy.
In Los Angeles, Tuesday's lopsided vote belied the months-long battle over the bitterly contested measure, which pitted business leaders and Mayor Richard Riordan against council liberals, led by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, and the Living Wage Coalition of activists.
The ordinance will apply to holders of city contracts of more than $25,000 and goes farther than its counterparts around the nation by also including companies that receive substantial amounts of city financial aid--at least $100,000 a year or $1 million or more in one-time assistance. Employers must pay their janitors, security guards, gardeners, food service workers and the like at least $7.25 an hour with benefits--including health insurance and 12 paid days off--or $8.50 an hour without benefits.
Although the reach of the ordinance is modest--only about 5,000 workers, less than 0.5% of the work force, will be affected--it is widely viewed by advocates as an important signal that the city is committed to watching out for those who perform public services on its behalf. But opponents say it sends another message--that Los Angeles is hostile to business and unable to compete with neighboring cities to lure job-creating, taxpaying companies in a region only now recovering from a long recession.
"This has been a nine-month-long issue" with at least half a dozen public hearings, three studies and considerable compromises, Goldberg told her colleagues before the vote Tuesday.
"This is really a very simple matter . . . that people who work hard" and whose employers benefit from their city ties "should be able to live on what they earn," Goldberg said. She was cheered on by a vocal, overflow crowd of activists wearing makeshift badges reading "Do the Right Thing."
Tinged with election-year maneuvering, the ordinance's timing will force the mayor to take action on the measure before the April 8 municipal primary, in which he faces a challenge from state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), an ardent advocate of the living wage legislation.
Once the ordinance reaches his desk, Riordan has 10 days in which to veto, sign or let it become law without his signature. In a news conference later Tuesday, the mayor firmly voiced his resolve to veto the ordinance.
"I share the goal of a living wage for every Angeleno. However, the ordinance passed by the City Council today is a long way to get there. In fact, it undermines the goal," Riordan said, as Goldberg and some of her aides sat in on the news conference.
"I will veto this ordinance. . . . I disagree with it, and I believe it will hurt those it intends to help," Riordan said.
The city's business leaders--who lost last-ditch efforts to modify a measure they believe undermines their efforts to improve the city's economic climate--were the first to press their case in the brief public hearing before the council vote.
"We are fundamentally and philosophically opposed to what is being considered here," Carol E. Schatz, president of the Central City Assn. and a leading business lobbyist, told the council.
Toy importer Charlie Woo, representing the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said the city still suffers from an image of being unfriendly to business and "this proposal really adds to that perception." Woo suggested the council take steps to create more entry-level jobs instead.
For emotional punch, however, their testimony was overshadowed by the words of some of the workers who will be helped by the ordinance.
Parking services worker Ricky Lawson read a letter signed by himself and nearly 200 other contract service employees at Los Angeles International Airport, asking the council not to leave them out of the ordinance.
"There are between 1,000 and 2,000 of us at the L.A. Airport that earn low wages and hardly any benefits," the letter said. "We put our lives on the line on a daily basis to serve you, to protect you from violence, to clean up after you and to take care of your cars. . . . We must work when we are sick and hungry, and we must live in cramped living quarters because we can't afford decent housing. We must go to churches to ask for food or accept public assistance because we can't make it on our own."
