From the Napa Valley Register
As the Napa City Council settles on its top priorities for the year, the coronavirus pandemic may bring one such issue to the fore.
During a lengthy meeting Tuesday night to discuss Napa’s primary goals for 2021, council members expressed their support for a city “hero pay” ordinance boosting wages for workers whose jobs in essential businesses, such as groceries and pharmacies, put them at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19.
Such an ordinance could become one of the first tangible fruits of Napa’s annual goal-setting process, which began with a two-day workshop in February and is slated to end with a commitment to main priorities at a special council meeting Tuesday.
While council members’ to-do lists ranged far and wide from removing barriers to housing creation to improving homeless support services and working toward racial equity in government access and services, a possible hazard-pay requirement stood out as potentially the most urgent issue.
“Employees in chain stores should be fairly compensated for working during the pandemic, and I want to move quickly on this,” said Councilmember Mary Luros of her hopes to assist essential workers before the pandemic abates. “I think it’s important that we make sure our workforce in the national chain grocery stores and retail drugstores are being compensated for the risks they are taking on while providing essential services. Because of the timing, it’s something we have to do really quickly; it’s not something we can delay.”
The discussion in Napa follows the passage of emergency hero-pay ordinances in other California cities, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Jose and Berkeley. For example, a measure passed March 3 by the Los Angeles City Council requires raises of $5 an hour for employees of grocery and drugstore companies with at least 300 total workers and 10 or more within city limits, and keeps those raises in effect for 120 days.
Despite the roll-out of three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. over the past three months, front-line grocery work remains enough of an infection risk to merit requirements for extra pay, an organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers wrote the Napa council.
“It will be months before the vaccine becomes widely available to the extent of each grocery worker having an opportunity to receive it (with the shortages and inaccessibility we currently experience),” wrote Mario Fernandez in an email, “and while it would not alleviate the risk, it would reflect the essential quality of the work they have performed sometimes with inadequate access to personal protective equipment during this pandemic.”
A longtime Napa grocery worker declared that only a city ordinance can assure that such essential workers will be fairly compensated for their efforts during a year-long pandemic.
“It is not too late to ensure the well-being of all essential workers in Napa just like other cities in the Bay Area have done such as San Leandro, Oakland, San Jose and Santa Clara County as well as Berkeley and San Francisco along with Seattle and Long Beach,” Monty Schacht, a 31-year employee at Nob Hill Foods on Trancas Street, wrote council members. “Thanks for considering this subject. We literally have put our lives on the line.”
Despite the need to help essential workers before the COVID-19 threat recedes, Councilmember Bernie Narvaez urged Napa to carefully study the consequences of a hazard pay requirement – including whether it would burden independent grocers lacking the deep funding of national chains, and if a pay boost could leave workers ineligible for other kinds of assistance.
“My biggest concern is, will (businesses) lay anybody off?” he said. “I don’t want people losing their jobs. We need to do some research on the implications of that. People have been putting themselves at risk, so it’s important to talk about this.
“We know the cost of living in Napa is very high, so if people get a few dollars more an hour, will there be implications for some of the help that they receive, based on income level?”
An ordinance unanimously passed by the American Canyon council Tuesday will apply to grocery workers at businesses with at least 300 employees nationwide, but not to managers and supervisors. It would increase workers’ base pay by $5 an hour for 120 days, although employers already providing smaller amounts of hazard pay can increase that amount to the required $5 level. The raises will take effect March 26.
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Grocery workers at American Canyon’s two major stores will receive $5-an-hour hazard pay as they work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The City Council this week required the hazard pay on top of base compensation for 120 days at grocery stores of a certain size. City officials said Safeway and Walmart Supercenter will be affected.
Council members heard from union officials saying the grocery workers are essential workers who, because of their jobs, face COVID-19 health risks. They also received letters from the California Grocers Association urging them not to take action.
“People get paid more to take higher risks,” City Councilmember Mariam Aboudamous said in expressing her support for hazard pay.
The council passed the grocery store worker hazard pay law by unanimous vote on Tuesday. Various other cities in the state have taken similar actions, among them Los Angeles, Long Beach, Berkeley, San Jose, and San Mateo. The city of Napa is considering the idea.
Among those addressing the American Canyon City Council by phone during the Zoom meeting was Leila Elabed, who works at Safeway. She said she’s loaded groceries into hundreds of people’s cars. Some customers wear masks and stay in the car.
“But many others exit their cars with no masks and speak to me from maybe a foot distance,” she said.
The looming threat of the virus is constant. Several Safeway employees have gotten the virus, including a close friend, she said.
“I’m worried about my 85-year-old grandma who lives with me,” she said.
John Riley, executive director of the Napa and Solano Counties Central Labor Council, spoke in favor of the hazard pay.
“Those essential workers who are working in that environment can’t control that environment,” he said. “They are out there working with the public and they are putting themselves and their families at risk every time they go to work.”
Riley said grocery stores have made record profits as restaurants have faced periodic shutdowns amid the pandemic.
Timothy James of the California Grocers Association wrote that American Canyon was improperly inserting itself into employee-employer contractual relationships. The hazard pay law ignores other essential workers, such as city employees.
Grocery workers have demonstrated exemplary efforts to keep American Canyon grocery stores open, he wrote.
“This is why the grocery industry has provided significant safety measures and historic levels of benefits that include additional pay and bonuses,” he wrote. “It is also why vaccinating grocery workers has been our first priority.”
Attorney William Tarantino on behalf of California Grocers Association wrote that the council was rushing to pass “an unlawful, interest-group driven ordinance.”
City Councilmembers disagreed with the California Grocers Association’s reasoning. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph said the grocery workers can’t do much social distancing or work outdoors, options in some other professions.
“They are clearly in harm’s way,” Joseph said.
Several council members expressed disappointment the grocery stores hadn’t stepped forward to institute hazard pay themselves. They noted the stores did it during the initial phase of the pandemic but stopped nine months ago.
Aboudamous said one risk employees face is disinfecting grocery carts. These carts might have been handled by customers who have COVID-19.
The council decided the law would take effect 10 days from last Tuesday, to give the stores time to make payroll changes.
