‘Hero’ Pay Ordinance Will be Hot Topic at Monday’s Council Meeting

The City Council today will discuss a hazard or “hero” pay ordinance which would temporarily raise hourly wages for local grocery store and pharmacy workers. 

Long Beach, Pomona, Montebello, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, and Irvine have passed ordinances that pay these workers an additional $4 an hour. 

Los Angeles, Santa Monica and West Hollywood offer an additional $5 an hour.

Pasadena has 15 grocery stores that are owned by large chains, including three Ralphs supermarkets and two Vons stores. 

Smaller supermarkets would not fall under the ordinance. The subject was raised by Councilmember Steve Madison during a recent City Council meeting.

In an email to Pasadena Now on Sunday, John Votava of the Kroger Family of Companies, which includes Ralphs and Food 4 Less, has invested $2.5 billion to both reward associates and implement dozens of safety measures, including $1 billion for better secure pensions. 

“The company also continues to provide rewards for associates, including recently issuing $50 million in rewards to frontline associates. Since the start of the pandemic, Ralphs, Food 4 Less and all Kroger frontline associates have received SEVEN rewards in the form of one-time cash payments, temporary hourly wage increases and store credits,” Votava said. 

Public comment was split on the matter.

“At a time when infection rates are dropping substantially, hospitalizations are declining and fatalities are sharply diminished in Pasadena, requiring additional pay for workers in specified industries because of perceived health risks is not justified,” said Chamber of Commerce President Paul Little.

According to Little, grocery stores have taken steps to safeguard their employees by increasing compensation to reward them for working in difficult circumstances and providing support for healthcare needs. 

“We should have had hero pay from the start!” said Jessica Laing. “We put our lives on the line every day the same as hospitals because we are a testing/vaccination site and a regular CVS pharmacy and store. Please consider pulling through for us to get what we deserve.”

According to Laing, employees were forced to perform drive-thru testing with no training and potentially exposed to COVID-19 several times as angry customers came into the store without masks asking about their tests.

“Never did CVS say, ‘Oh here you go, here is more PPE or hazard pay for your hard work,’ Laing said.

The item went before the council’s Economic Development and Technology (EDTech) Committee last week. Members of that committee split 2-2 on the matter.

According to Peter Dreier, long-time Pasadena resident and professor of urban and environmental policy at Occidental College, the Pasadena City Council should follow the example of more than a dozen Southern California cities and  require large supermarket and drug store chains to provide $5-an-hour hazard/hero pay to their low-wage essential workers. 

“As essential employees, they have worked on the front-lines through the entire COVID pandemic at great cost to their lives and families,” Drier said. “They have endured some of the highest rates of infection due to closure of restaurants, high volumes of customers, and lack of ventilation inside stores.  Pasadenans want to know: Which side is the City Council on?  “Will they side with Amazon (owner of Whole Foods), which generated total net sales of over $125 billion during the last quarter of 2020,  surpassing the $87 billion  in the same quarter of 2019, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s richest person, now worth $189 billion? Will they side with Kroger, which owns Ralphs and Food 4 Less and which earned an additional $2 billion in profits in the first three quarters of 2020 compared with 2021? Or will they side with the hard-working essential workers who have sacrificed for the rest of us?”  

In the committee agenda, staff listed the average pay for grocery workers in California at about $17.50 – $18 per hour,” according to Monday’s agenda. “A $5 increase represents approximately a 28 percent increase.

Kroger Inc., which owns Ralphs and Food 4 Less supermarkets, said it will shutter at least five stores in Los Angeles and Long Beach after those cities enacted hazard, or “hero” pay ordinances for grocery store and pharmacy workers.

The five stores include three Ralphs stores — one at 9616 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles, another at 3300 W. Slauson Ave., also in Los Angeles, and another at 3380 N. Los Coyotes Diagonal, in Long Beach. 

Two Food 4 Less stores, one at 5420 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, and the other at 2185 E. South St., also in Long Beach, are also being targeted for closure. 

The company, which said the stores were “long-struggling” locations, said they will be closed on May 15.

“We are told we will not receive it,” said Keith Van Dusen,a worker at Sprouts supermarket. “All other Sprouts in the Los Angeles area are already receiving it. We risk our necks every day for the last year and this is our thanks?”

The meeting begins at 4:30 p.m. and can be viewed at pasadenamedia.org