v 31.31 | Why Local Labor Battle Matter
Welcome to Happening in California, a brief look at political news, insights, and analysis of the world’s fifth-largest economy.
When California's service-employee unions make the news, they often do so in a spectacular fashion. Recent examples include their push to redefine independent contractors as employees (AB 5) and establishing a 10-member state Fast Food Council with the power to set pay and working conditions (AB 257). AB 5 led to a $200 million ballot initiative campaign, while AB 257 will appear on the 2024 statewide ballot after opponents collected a million signatures to referendum the law.
However, what you don’t often hear about are the labor fights at the local level — and they are just as consequential, yet often fly under the radar.
Let’s talk about why these local labor battles matter…
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Tom Ross | President and CEO | Swing Strategies
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The Big Picture: Labor Activities at the Local Level can be Just as Significant as in the State Capitol.
Labor unions such as Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW), United Food & Commerce Workers (UFCW), and UNITE HERE! have been extremely active at the local level in recent years.
These unions have introduced dozens of local ordinances and ballot measures on issues ranging from premium pay and minimum wage to land use and homelessness. And often, labor-friendly city councils adopt these ordinances or they make their way to the ballot for voters to decide.
Although these fights tend to fly under the radar, they have a huge impact on businesses and consumers.
In just the last five years, UNITE HERE! Local 11 has supported 13 local ordinances and ballot initiatives in Southern California. In Los Angeles, Local 11 successfully persuaded the city council to adopt an ordinance that limits the number of square feet a hotel housekeeper can clean per day among other provisions. This ordinance is estimated to triple the cost of housekeeping — increasing prices for visitors staying in L.A. hotels.
Local 11 also qualified a ballot measure in L.A. for the March 2024 election that would require all hotels to accept vouchers allowing homeless individuals to stay in vacant rooms alongside paying guests.
SEIU-UHW is back with another proposal to cap certain industry executives' pay. This measure will cap annual compensation for executives, managers, and administrators of privately owned healthcare facilities in L.A. at $450,000.
SEIU-UHW went on the offensive in 2022, spending nearly $11 million on ballot measures in ten cities across the state that set a $25 minimum wage for certain healthcare workers at private hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
When the issue came up in Los Angeles and Long Beach, both their city councils voted to adopt the measure outright. However, the ordinance has been suspended pending the outcome of a referendum in March 2024.
Now, having tested the issue at the local level, SEIU-UHW is sponsoring a bill in the State Senate that would make California the first state to establish a $25 minimum wage for health care workers
As California prepared to reopen and lift all statewide COVID restrictions, UFCW promoted a Brookings article that linked purported windfall profits and heightened grocery worker risk from COVID during the pandemic as a justification for legislating hazard/premium pay for grocery workers.
UFCW bypassed the bargaining table and succeeded in getting more than 30 local governments — who represented a quarter of the state’s population — to adopt ordinances that mandated up to $5 per hour in premium pay even as California lifted COVID restrictions.
The Bottom Line: The impact of labor’s engagement on local policy issues can have an enormous impact on businesses and consumers in California. And if left unchecked, labor-backed ordinances or ballot measures can quickly spread to other cities and counties.
Let me know if you have any questions or would like to discuss this issue further. We have been at the center of several of these battles and we’re happy to share our insights.