Los Angeles may be the next city to try to compel grocery stores to provide “hero pay” to their workers. The city wants to add an additional $5 an hour to.
A version of this story first appeared on Berkeleyside’s sister site, the Oaklandside.
Oakland grocery workers are getting a substantial hazard pay raise starting immediately.
The City Council voted Tuesday to require large grocery stores to pay their employees an additional $5 per hour. The law will cover workers at popular stores like Cardenas Markets, Safeway/Albertsons, Save Mart, Target, Trader Joe’, and Whole Foods. Small independent stores are exempt.
The pay raise is meant to compensate grocery store workers, among the state’s essential workforce, for the increased risks they have faced during the pandemic. According to a study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, grocery workers are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 because they work in enclosed settings around numerous strangers where it’s difficult to socially distance themselves.
By City News Service
Feb 3, 2021
LONG BEACH (CNS) - A group of workers at a Long Beach Food 4 Less store scheduled to be closed in response to the city s mandate that employees be paid an extra $4-an-hour in “hero pay rallied outside the market today, decrying the decision to shutter the store.
“They want to shut the store down after all the hard work I ve done to feed the needy families, and everything, and risk my life and my families lives at home, worker Robert Gonzales said at a news conference attended by store employees, union leaders and Mayor Robert Garcia.
Grocers sue Oakland over new $5-an-hour hazard pay mandate for supermarkets
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A Safeway store on College Ave. in Oakland. Safeway offered hazard pay at the beginning of the pandemic and then withdrew it. Oakland is now requiring large grocers to pay workers $5 an hour more as hazard pay.Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
The California Grocers Association on Wednesday sued Oakland, just one day after the City Council voted to require larger food sellers to give workers a $5-an-hour pay increase as compensation for the added risks and stress of operating on the front lines during the coronavirus pandemic.
The trade group, which represents most grocery stores in California, is seeking to have the new law declared invalid and unconstitutional.
By Sasha Margulies, iHeart Media
Feb 4, 2021
The California Grocers Association is suing the city of Oakland over its $5/hr hazard pay mandate for grocery workers during the pandemic.
The trade group claims the requirement violates the constitution s equal protection clause by singling out large grocery chains and ignoring other classes of essential workers. It also contends it illegally preempts collective bargaining laws. The Oakland City Council passed the hazard pay ordinance unanimously on Tuesday night and several other jurisdictions are considering it. The Association is also suing Long Beach and Montebello, which have passed similar ordinances.