Voice of OC – Could Grocery Workers in Irvine Get Hero Pay?
This Tuesday our City Council will consider adopting an ordinance establishing premium pay for grocery workers (Agenda Item 5.4). According to Noah Biesiada from his Voice of OC article Could Grocery Workers in Irvine Get Hero Pay?:
“If approved, all grocery outlets in the city with over 85,000 square feet would be required to give workers a $4 an hour pay increase for the next 120 days. The ordinance also says stores cannot cut down hours or otherwise harm workers to make up the difference.
Mayor Farrah Khan proposed the item in a supplemental agenda released this week. As mayor, Khan is the only council member capable of adding an item to the agenda on her own.”
The full article can be read here.
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3 Comments
deefox
February 7, 2021 at 3:26 amFARRAH KHAN should not mandate what grocery store owners should pay their employees. If this happens, where does she think the grocery stores will makeup the difference, because they will!? And because she also will mandate that employee hours are not to be reduced and no employees are to be terminated, that can present a whole new set of issues. This hasn’t even been studied to know what the repercussions would be. Low income people are struggling right now and she will be placing more of a burden on them. The cost of groceries is already too high! Has she even thought about the impact of how this will effect the community as a whole? Of course not! Because she doesn’t know how to run a city! This is FARRAH grandstanding again to make a statement for herself! If you notice, the items SHE puts on the Agenda (without needing a second, unlike the other council members) is following Biden’s playbook. One city tried this and was sued, costing the taxpayers. Is this what we want during a Pandemic? And why doesn’t she devote her time to getting a place where residents can go and get vaccinated? We have all this “open space” and we can’t even utilize it! Sending our residents to other cities that know what they are doing sends a bad message about our city leaders!
Kyler Chin
February 8, 2021 at 5:45 pmThe businesses that own these grocery stores are not mom and pop stores running on tight budgets. These are multi-billion dollar corporations that exploit workers. And no, the cost of groceries is not tied to wages. That is not how capitalism works. McDonalds paid its CEO more than $18 million in 2019. Don’t tell me companies can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage. If the Minimum wage kept up with productivity, it would be $27 dollars today.
minimum wage in Australia: $19.84 an hour
unemployment rate in Australia: 6.6%
U.S. federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour
U.S. unemployment rate: 6.7%
Please don’t tell me raising the minimum wage to a living wage – at least $15 an hour – costs jobs.
The price of everything always goes up. That’s inflation. it is never dictated by the minimum wage.
Kyler Chin
February 8, 2021 at 12:45 pmPeople deserve higher wages. The minimum wage is far too fucking low. it’s time to put people over the profits of billionaires. Sunrise and Democratic Socialists of America are prepared to organize for higher wages.
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