A profoundly dishonest political stunt by Councilmember Tammy Kim means that the City’s part-time employees and contract workers will have to wait indefinitely for a restoration of the City’s “living wage” ordinance that ensures those employees earn at least $20 per hour. (The ordinance was in place for years until a previous Council repealed it.)
Currently, some of the City’s 150 seasonal and part-time workers (such as janitorial and maintenance workers, childcare workers, and grounds-keeping workers) make about $16.50 to $17 per hour. Workers for contractors doing more than $100,000 in projects for the City would also be covered by the proposed living wage ordinance.
The reinstatement of the living wage ordinance had seemingly been sailing through the City’s decision-making process. It was briefly discussed by the Council earlier this year, with the majority of Councilmembers, including Tammy Kim, voicing support for it. It was then referred to Irvine’s Finance Commission as part of a package of spending proposals for review, with the Finance Commission endorsing it, 4-1.
However, when the proposal made it back to the Council for final approval on September 24th, it ran into an ambush. With Mayor Farrah Khan and Councilmember Mike Carroll not in attendance, a bare quorum consisting of Vice Mayor Agran and Councilmembers Tammy Kim and Kathleen Treseder took up the agenda item.
As he introduced the motion to approve the Finance Commission’s recommendation to reinstate the living wage ordinance, Vice Mayor Larry Agran said that Irvine was a city “of great wealth and great capacity to pay people a decent wage, a living wage.” Agran continued: “This is about how we regard our employees. This is about how we regard our obligation to see to it that people are compensated fairly for work, and to get about the business of lifting up hardworking people.”
Neither Kim nor Treseder would second Agran’s motion, so it died.
Tammy Kim, who is running against Larry Agran for Mayor in the upcoming November 5th election, said that paying part-time City employees a living wage would somehow be “an anti-labor, anti-union effort to undermine labor’s collective bargaining power.”
Taken aback by Kim’s accusation, Vice Mayor Agran explained that the workers who would be covered by the living wage ordinance are not in a union, and their wages have never been subject to collective bargaining.
After refusing to second Agran’s motion, Councilmember Treseder asked if the workers had been asked if they even wanted a pay raise.
The matter concluded with Kim and Treseder voting to refer the living wage ordinance to a study session with labor representatives and others, pushing it off until at least next year, when there will be a new, seven-member City Council following the November election.
After the Council meeting, Agran said he had hoped the raise for the City’s lowest wage-earners would be in place by the December holidays. “I was thinking it would be especially meaningful for their families,” he said.
