Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.53, relating to COVID-19 worker retention, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to COVID 19 worker retention. Declaring the urgency thereof to make the ordinance effective immediately or at the first time in late April to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Okay. Thank you. I have a motion by Councilman Richardson. Councilman present. Is that a motion or is that cued up for comment? I have another person that's trying to second it here. Also in a second. It was stuck. Okay, great. So there's a motion and a second. Councilman Richardson, did you want to also do a staff report to start? Just a quick one, please. Okay. Go ahead. Again. Gary Anderson, city attorney's office. Good morning again, Mayor and council members. The proposed retention ordinance before you tonight mandates that in the event of a change in control or ownership of a hotel, business or commercial property, employing 25 or more employees, employees employed on or after March four, 2020 by the incumbent business must be placed on a preferential hiring list. The incoming successor business must hire employees from the preferential hiring list for the first six months they are in business. Once hired, these employees must be retained for no less than 90 days. The successor business is then required to conduct employee performance evaluations to assess whether to offer continued employment beyond 90 days. Employers deemed to be employees, deemed to be managers, supervisors or confidential employees are excluded from this ordinance at this time. I'm happy to answer any questions. You may have. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Richardson, the motion. Thank you. So our move to adopt the recommended ordinance. I have three clarifications. First, we're going to also on this limit include the regular ordinance, not the declaration of urgency, which is consistent with the original motion made by council. Secondly, we want to insert clarifying language that the definition of a commercial property business means an owner, operator, manager, lessee, including a contractor, subcontractor or sub lessee or non residential property in the city that provides janitorial services and employs 25 or more employees. Again, this is consistent with the 25 or more threshold that received unanimous support in the third piece is clarify that during the transition transition employment period, the written offer statement provided to the employee be during five business days and with business days that means any day except for Saturday or Sunday or official state holidays. These are just clarification and that is my motion. The motion in a second, Councilman Price. Councilwoman Price. Okay about that. Sorry, I was talking to myself. Okay. I have some changes on page three, seven and 11. On page three, I'd like to substitute the word online. 25. I'd like to substitute the word hospitality for hotel to maintain consistency and avoid confusion from the broader hospitality industry. So that would be a recommendation for customer Richardson That's accepted. I'm sorry. For I'm sorry. Councilman Price. I'm sorry I lost it. Where you at on page? We weren't following the page in line number that you're referring to. Councilmember Price. Yeah. Let's go back. Councilman Price, can you give the page and line number again on that? Sure. If it's actually looked at page two, line 25. You have that big you. Okay. Go on, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Price, you have a. Don't drop the call. Councilwoman Pryce. We're checking. Madam Court, can you check with Councilman Price? I think she may have her call may have dropped. Councilwoman Price dropped off the call. Okay. Well, can you just. Can the client please just check in with her that she knows that she's. Why don't we come back to Councilwoman Price on her on her items on that? And let's go to the other folks. Councilman Sun has had comments. Oh, God. Mr. Mayor. She backed. Yes. I apologize. I don't know what. No problem. Let's go ahead and go back to you know. It's going to I mean, I'm sorry, page two, line 25. Okay. Brooklyn hospitality with hotel. And you had other. I do. I do. Mr. King, can you explain a little bit more on page six around lines 11 through 19, you have the words in here, quote shall consider. Is that meant to say that they can consider but they're not obligated to offer that person a longer term offer? Because I think the way the language reads, it could be cleaned up a little bit and it wouldn't be a substantial change to make it either discretionary or obligatory. But in reading it, I felt that the language, the words used were contrary to one another. The intent was to require the employer to make the assessment of the employee, but there's no requirement that they actually hire the employee. That's the intent to actually consider the employee for rehire. Okay. So can we we make you clarify that I guess this would be a friendly to Councilman Richardson to include some language in there that, you know, it's not obligatory, but it's the consideration of. It is mandatory. And I think that's on line 16. It says the successor business employer shall consider offering the worker continued employment under the terms and conditions. Yeah, but I think it needs a further tender that says they're not obligated. I disagree. It says shall consider. Okay. If you think that's clear enough. I have several people reach out to me today, but wasn't that clear? But they said the incentives and we all agree that they shall consider, but there's no obligation to make any offer based on that. That's correct. Okay. And then on page ten, same note over line one through three. It talks about whether the provisions of this chapter are still necessary based on the city's recovery. Again, the city's recovery might be relevant, but it may not be directly on point to the recovery of this industry. So I want to make sure that that's clear. I don't know that we need to necessarily state that in here, but the city could be doing great or the city could be doing terribly. That may or may not impact this particular industry progress. So I just want to make sure that that's clear in the record, that it's not the city's recovery we're interested in. When the recommendation comes back, it's the recovery of the industry. That's fine. I guess the only concern I would have would be how do you measure whether these industries, hotel and janitorial have recovered? I mean, because it's going to cover several different businesses. So I'm not sure how we would measure recovery. Well, we would measure recovery, I imagine, the same way we would imagine the recovery of the city. So really, you know, how we're doing with employment rates, whether they're hiring, whether they have to limit operations, whether they're increasing operation. I mean, I imagine the city manager, when they come back with a recommendation, would have some data sets that they could utilize, you know, room occupancy, for example, you know, the employment need. But I think the point is that, let's say, you know, the fact of the matter is it's not a simple right. You have data points that she would make that determination. For example, let's say the city itself is doing very well in 90 days. Let's just say our sales tax revenue is bought up, oil prices have changed and the city is doing great in 90 days. That may not translate into the hotel industry or the janitorial industry doing well. So the point in the recommendation is that we really want to make sure that we're focused on the particular industry. And I just I think the city manager understands that since this is covid's effect on the city manager that will be presenting the first report will be Tom Modica. So as well as the intent of the body is known, I don't think we need to change the language, but the city could be doing really well or the city could be doing terrible economically. That may have some correlation to how the hotel industry and the general industry is doing, but it may not be completely parallel. That's the point. This is Tom. I think that's very clear. We got it. So we there's definitely different sectors and they can behave differently. So we'll make sure we report on that. Thank you. Okay. And then I have my my audience here. Thank you for finding the page number. And the line number makes it easy to follow on the first one. I think that makes sense. I think we'll accept that on the third one. I think that's consistent with what we did in the first one. It really doesn't change the word ordinance. It what it does is clarify that we're being industry specific, which I'm okay with it on the second one. I think the language here that's that's here is if the concern is that it's not clear this is consistent with the language in other ordinances on the second one. So I don't have the I don't share the same concern about it being not clear. And so I'm not going to accept that one. And if there are if we I'm sure if we run into additional issues in the future, the city attorney has a process to sort of bring forward clarifying ordinances, but I think two out of three and that we won't accept those two. And I actually did clarify the only amendment I was making was to the first one, which was to change hospitality to hotel with the other two. I think that I think was clarified. So I wasn't making a request for a like. Okay. Let me keep it. Thank you. Right. Thank you. Let me keep. You dropped out, Mr. Mayor. Now always in darkness. Your next. I'm supportive of that. I am very supportive. I think it's very important at this time. Okay. Thank you. And Councilwoman Jeanine. Councilwoman Jeanine. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Councilmember Pearce. Thanks. Fully support this item. I also want to say how much I really appreciate all the industry's working with city staff and council members. I'm proud of this moment. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Let's go ahead and do a roll call vote. District one. I district to. I District three. I just for my district five. By District six. By district seven. District eight. Hi. District nine. Motion carries. Thank you. And then the last is Mr. Mayor. The Mayor. Before we continue. My voice was muted for item 18 and I just want to record that I voted on that item, please. Okay. Thank you. Next item 20. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending.