Berkeley City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an emergency ordinance to guarantee an additional $ 5 per hour fare for grocery store workers during the pandemic. The regulation applies to companies with 300 or more employees. The salary increase takes effect immediately and continues until the city enters the yellow level in the COVID-19 risk assessment scale.
The city council first considered the proposal for emergency payment when councilors Terry Taplin, Rigel Robinson and Ben Bartlett proposed it along with Mayor Jesse Arreguín at the January 19 council meeting. At the time, councilors decided to have the city manager and city attorney review the ordinance before introducing the hazard payment into law; board members have since read the review. On Tuesday night, Taplin presented the urgent item at the scene and board members voted it on the agenda for final consideration.
Berkeley will join a few other Bay Area cities that have introduced similar measures for emergency payment. In early February, Oakland City Council voted to provide an extra wage of $ 5 per hour for workers in grocery stores with a minimum of 300 employees or more than 25,000 square feet. Oakland is soon followed by San Jose, which approves an increase of $ 3 per hour, and San Leandro, which approves an increase of $ 5 per hour. And last night, on the same night that Berkeley City Council passed its law, Santa Clara County also approved a hazardous ordinance that would temporarily increase wages for large grocery stores and pharmacy workers in unincorporated areas.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Taplin explained and emphasize it the increase will have a significant impact on hourly workers. (The new legislation will not apply to management staff or stores that already have a hazard payment.) “It’s one thing to go out and clap for essential workers, another to support it with legislation that supports them,” Taplin said.
One of the workers who will see the benefits of the new law is John Gomez, a grocery store worker who spoke at the meeting to advocate the $ 5-hour increase, which he said would provide a cash cushion for workers who put themselves at risk of being exposed to COVID-19 in stores every day. “We come across masking machines, we are coughed, spit on, mocked … we get sick and some of us are dead,” he said.
While councilor Rashi Kesarwani voted to approve emergency payment, she expressed concern about unintended consequences that could affect Berkeley residents. Kesarwani pointed to a $ 2 “Berkeley fee” that third-party delivery companies charge in response to the city’s delivery fee, and I’m a little afraid that grocery stores may pass on some or all of this cost. for consumers, but it’s important to try. ”
‘When companies decide to punish customers [by gouging prices]”because they are being asked to pay their workers fairly to compensate for the risk of being on the front lines of a global pandemic … then it more reflects their ethics,” Taplin said in a follow-up telephone interview with Berkeleyside “I would think grocers want to protect their workers.”
