'Living Wage' Law Okd by County Supervisors
Labor Leaders Praise Decision But Express Disappointment at Exclusion of Part-Time Workers
Los Angeles Times - June 16, 1999
By Nicholas Riccardi

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday became the largest governmental entity in the nation to adopt a so-called living wage law, but refused to extend its coverage to part-time employees, including about 3,000 who work directly for the county.

Though organized labor, the strongest advocate for living wage ordinances nationwide, was unable to get supervisors to broaden the law beyond full-time employees, union leaders praised the board's decision to adopt the wage, generally calculated as the amount required to keep a family of four off welfare. The county now sets its living wage at $ 8.32 an hour with health insurance and $ 9.46 without.

Still, union leaders said the county is the only government agency in California to pass a living wage ordinance that does not apply to part-time workers who either work for the government or for a company with which it contracts. If the county had extended its living wage to such employees, it would have had to spend as much as $ 5.9 million more annually to give its own part-time employees a raise and health insurance. "There is a need for part-time workers and there are people who seek part-time jobs," said Supervisor Gloria Molina, part of the board's three-vote liberal majority that approved the ordinance. "It's an oxymoron to have, in some instances, a living wage for part-time workers."

The issue created some unusual political alliances Tuesday, as conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich tried to force his more liberal colleagues to extend the living wage to part-timers.

"If you're talking about fairness, then all county employees should be included in this," said Antonovich, who opposes a living wage. "If you're talking about fairness, then part-time employees should be included."

Union activists agreed: "Part-time workers need a living wage," said Bart Diener, assistant general manager of Service Employees International Union Local 660, which represents 40,000 county workers, including more than 1,000 part-time library aides who lack health benefits.

Diener and other advocates warned that if the county did not require that the wage be extended to part-time employees, companies that contract with the county would stack their payroll with part-timers to avoid paying the newly required wages.

Anticipating the concern, supervisors ordered a bevy of county departments, including the auditor-controller, to monitor contractors' staffing to ensure that part-time workers were not being inappropriately used. In the past month, union leaders have brought in janitors who work 39 hours each week and are classified part time.

"Employers should be on notice that continuing abuses of this kind will lead us to revisiting" the part-time issue, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Yaroslavsky said he had hoped the board would extend the living wage to part-time workers. "It would have been the right thing to do," he said.

County officials estimate that as many as 10,000 full-time workers under contract with the county may see a pay raise, as well as about 800 low-paid, full-time county workers who, under an amendment by Yaroslavsky, would be included.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who formally proposed the living wage law, said that she also wanted to extend it to part-time employees, but said that they may require a different wage level than full-time workers.

"This is not a county dichotomy," Burke said, referring to the different treatment of part-time and full-time workers. "This is something that is accepted within the law."

Burke asked the county staff to report in six months on how the living wage might be extended to part-time workers.

Part of the supervisors' motivation Tuesday was an urge to get some sort of living wage law on the books.

Labor leaders approached supervisors nearly two years ago about the issue. They argued that the county was losing money by paying low wages to its workers, who then turned around and used county dollars by being forced onto welfare and into public hospitals.

In the last six months, the living wage seemed to pick up steam, with the three-vote liberal majority agreeing that some law was needed.

But the proposal was delayed three weeks while those three supervisors wrangled over the part-time issue. Supervisors also deleted a requirement that workers be retained when a new company takes over a contract.

That decision drew the concern of some labor leaders. Celia Arroyo, 36, has spent three years working for a janitorial agency under contract with the county to clean Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Now another company may take over the contract and Arroyo, the mother of five, and her fellow janitors are afraid they will lose work.

"Take into consideration what would happen to us if another company came in," she told supervisors. "What would happen if me and my co-workers end up on the street."

Supervisors said they will mandate worker retention in certain cases, but to require it unilaterally would be unfair to businesses that wanted to bring in a new team.

Labor leaders and the supervisors said that even with all the concerns, the county's action was momentous.

"As the largest employer in the region , we are setting the standard for what should be responsible employment," Molina said.

Burke said: "It is important that we send a message . . . that the people who work for the county directly and indirectly are paid the money they deserve."

Fabian Nunez, political director of the County Federation of Labor, told supervisors: "You will be acting to improve the lives of thousands of employees in Los Angeles County."