Recommendation to direct City Manager, or his designee, to draft an ordinance regarding hotels with 100 rooms or more that includes, but is not limited to the following: · Panic Buttons: Requiring that hotel employers provide panic buttons to each hotel employee assigned to working a guest room without other hotel employees present, at no cost to the hotel employee. · Notice to Hotel Employees: Requiring hotel employers to provide notice to employees, prior to starting their scheduled work, of any guest on the list of alleged harassers or is a sex offender under Long Beach Municipal Code Section 9.66.010 who is staying at the hotel and the number or name of the room assigned to the guest and warn the hotel employees to exercise caution when entering that designated room during the time the guest is staying in the hotel. · Notice in Guest Rooms: Requiring hotel employers to provide a sign on the back of each guest room door, written in a font size of no less than 18 points, that includes the heading "The Law Protects Hotel Housekeepers and Hotel Employees from harassment," no
So I just. Just the point of how we're going to transition here. The next item up is the hotel item. And what I'd like to ask is, obviously, if you were here for C sip, if we could exit that to create more space for those that are here for the other items. And what I'm going to do is just take. A small. Short recess as we let those folks exit and then fill in as many of those empty seats with some of the folks that are in the lobby. They'll sit those seat and then maybe in about 2 minutes will reconvene with the items so we can get our fire department can move those folks into these seats. So we will begin the item in 2 minutes. Two minute recess. Okay. We have we're going to end the recess. Hopefully folks got brought in so they can sit down. So everyone, please take their seat. We're going to go and start. Everyone, please take their seat. I can. I can have everyone. Please take a seat. Okay. And just as a note to our our fire guys out there, there does seem to be open some open seats. So I think we could probably, as we begin, let a lot of you folks come in and grab the empty seats that are here as well as yeah, we do have empty seats. So. Thank you. Okay. We're going to go ahead. Roll call, please. Councilwoman Gonzalez Council Member Pearce. Councilwoman Price. Council Member. Suber. Not here. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilman Andrews. Council member your UNGA presented. Councilman Austin. Vice Mayor Richardson. Mary Garcia. I'm here. Thank you. I want to. Before we take this over, can the clerk please read the item? And then I have an announcement actually about this, the process. So we make sure that everyone that wants to speak can speak. Go ahead. Communication from Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember Pearce, Councilmember Turanga and Vice Mayor Richardson. Recommendation to direct the city manager to draft. An ordinance regarding hotels. With 100 rooms or more. That includes but is not limited to the following panic buttons. Notice to hotel employees notice in guestrooms hotel employees rights, humane workloads, voluntary overtime recordkeeping, anti retaliation. Waiver and. Enforcement. Okay. Thank you. Before I turn it over to the councilwoman. Just want to make sure obviously, we're going to begin to we're going to do what a call public comment. There's obviously a lot of folks here for the item will have public comment, but there's also a lot of folks that are not in here that also want to do public comment. So I just want to make sure that we're getting obviously are I know are our fire team out there. Once we get through public comment or as we're able to get folks in, if you can please let folks that are here to speak on the item on the hotel issue item so that everyone gets a chance to speak. So I want to make sure that people that are outside, I know that can hear the proceedings. If you're here for the item, you'll have an opportunity to speak on the item regardless of where you are outside. And so I know that we'll just try to keep everything as orderly as possible, but I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. So with that, I know there's folks coming in. Please, please take your seats. I want to turn this over to Councilman Gonzalez. Yes. Thanks, everybody, for being so patient tonight. I know it's a very long night. It's a very big night. And in my opinion, it's one of the largest nights we have here in Long Beach. There's a lot on our plate here. And I have actually created a PowerPoint presentation. I wanted to make sure that I got my point and my message across because we've been hearing so much, whether it's in the news or media and from each other, and it has been a bit divisive. And so I want to make sure I'm driving the message home. So we'll start now. Okay. So this is the ordinance, the Long Beach Hospitality Workload and Safety Ordinance. That's our logo here that I'm sure you've seen and all of our social media outlets. So the next item we're going to talk about the various events we have in the city. The city of Long Beach has never looked better. And in fact, we actually have 2017 hospitality by the numbers. We're the third largest. The hospitality industry is the third largest industry in downtown Long Beach. There's over 360 conventions and meetings. 1.4 million visitors in downtown alone through the busiest cruise terminal on the West Coast, 80% occupancy rate in downtown hotels, which is 15% percentage points higher than the national average. That was a quote actually retrieved from the Long Beach Business Journal under hotel occupancy skyrockets. And in addition, there's over $660 million in estimated economic impact from the convention business alone as well. As far as annual attendance, we can see here, 1.6 million convention business, 1.5 for the Aquarium of the Pacific, also 1.5 for the Queen Mary , and over 67 million attendees and tourists annually. And I know given all of this information, we can see clearly that the city of Long Beach, we're doing really well. And ah, we must also be cognizant of the physical effects and demands though of the industry's growth that has that they have on the hotel workers, particularly those who clean and service nearly 5000 hotel rooms across the city daily. The hospitality industry, by all accounts, is strong and growing on an annual basis and serves as one of the most visible industries in our city. However, the working conditions of these employees must be improved, in my opinion. As a city, we have consistently invested in improving our convention facilities, negotiating the total return to the city of Long Beach for new hotel developments, and recruited countless organizations to bring their event business to Long Beach. Now it's time for the City Council to adopt an ordinance that puts workplace protections in place for our hotel housekeepers here in the city of Long Beach. As we go to our next slide. While Long Beach tourism grows rapidly, how can we support our Long Beach working women in our local hotels? A few points to add here. 85% of housekeepers are women in Long Beach. As an industry, hotel housekeepers are increasingly subject to indecent behavior by guests. Per the Chicago and Seattle reports that we've seen, over 50% of housekeepers had experienced some sort of harassment. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 68% of sexual assaults go unreported. Our Long Beach housekeepers endure exhaustion and intense workloads in an eight hour shift, heavy mattresses, exposure to germs, etc.. And in Long Beach, we have seen the annual supply of room rooms increase, while the hotel workforce shrunk by about 7%. Again, this is with almost 70 million visitors each year. Now, the policy at hand, it does about four things here, provides reasonable protections for women in the workplace, creates an achievable standard for humane workloads, empowers housekeepers to voice concerns without fear of retaliation, and for fulfilling Long Beach's promise to create a world class tourism industry. We know that in downtown alone, the Long Beach hotels that we have here at 100 rooms or more represent about 85% of all available hotel rooms. That was from the debate economic development report. And in Long Beach between 2007 and 2013, as I stressed earlier, over 11% were occupied. Hotel rooms increased by 11% and the workforce decreased by 6.9%, thus providing more workloads and more issue to our hotel employees. Now, here's a matrix that's really key to to look at. We see four of one of our major hotel chains, four of our hotel chains here, their rooms average size of their traditional room, daily room quota . So it's about 14 to 15 rooms per day. And the square footage. We have from 3000 upwards of 4200 square feet. That's an average of about 3777 square feet that the city of Long Beach hotel workers are currently working in one day. So as we go on, I want to address what will not work in this policy. There has been a lot of discussion about what may work and some ideas out there, so I'll go over a few. There have been few reported incidents of sexual assault and harassment, so there is no problem. One too many. Once one assault is one too many. In Long Beach, we cannot minimize women's voices in our hotels by demanding more reports. The importance here is that we're providing safeguards for our our hotel workers. To say that there is only one or two reported really is too many. And we should not have a threshold to say that there has to be 50 in order for us to see that there's a problem. We know that that's not true. The second point is let's work on the sexual harassment issue, but set aside the workload discussion for another day. The two items, in my opinion, need to coexist. As our city grows, both protections and workload improvements provide humane working conditions to our Long Beach working women. It's important that these two issues stay together. Thirdly, Seattle has 5000 square feet. Why can't we just keep it the same here in Long Beach? Based on a study of downtown Long Beach hotels, 4000 square feet, as I had showed you, represents less than a 10% change in workloads. We would be compounding the issue to add 1000 more square feet to this ordinance. Lastly, this is putting the safety of hotel guests against the safety of hotel workers. Creating a wedge between the safety of our hotel guests and our workers clearly is just an irresponsible statement. I don't know why a business would market themselves that way and say that has to be one or the other. It's unfortunate. And then I'll finalize with this approx. This is actually a 2014 police report. Approximately 5 minutes later, the suspect and I'm going to read this and it may be a little disconcerting to many of you. It will be, I'm sure, very uncomfortable. But this is what's happening in some of our hotels. Approximately 5 minutes later, the suspect moved the cart from the front of the room and entered the room. The suspect was unclothed and had a bath towel covering his lower torso. The suspect asked about a late checkout and before she could answer, he dropped his towel and walked towards her. She said, I'll find out for you, but you need to leave the room. In the notes provided in the police report, it should be noted. It was stated that it should be noted during my interview with her. She was still very distraught of the incident and was fidgety and appeared to be nervous. At one point she began crying and was unable to continue for a few minutes. So this information I know we have talked about this issue for many years. I've been elected now for three and a half years like many of my council colleagues here. But we've been talking about this issue well beyond three and a half years. And I felt and my colleagues, I want to thank them for being on the item with me. But I really did feel that it was at this point in time that we really need needed to address the concerns and move forward with this policy because it's not the political thing to do. It's the right thing to do. And as many of the hotel workers that I've met with both, you know, when I first got elected, you do a day with a hotel worker, and I did that. And to see the day in, day out, you know, the incredible workloads and to see the unpredictable situations that may occur from going into a hotel. This, I believe, is is a policy that is beyond reasonable. We are not only addressing the fact that we're making a Long Beach connection by addressing the fact that 4000 square feet already works for us because that's currently what our hotel workers are doing. But it also addresses the fact that there needs to be some some protections and safeguards for sexual harassment and assaults. Very reasonable and minor protections, I think. And I will say that personally, I've sat down with our hotel industry for many years. Just recently I sat down with the Hospitality Alliance, the Long Beach Business Chamber. I met with the president. I've met with everyone involved, Steve Goodling from the convention bureau. I've met with many business interests, but I've also met with Unite here. I've met with hotel workers. And more importantly, the hotel workers is is what is really the root of the issue. Those individuals, these women primarily, are the ones that give a good first impression to many of the tourists that come in our city. They're the first line that many tourists and people see in our city. And I want to thank them for their service to this city. They often don't get a lot of thanks. I'd like to thank them. So I don't think it's unreasonable to provide all of these stipulations in this policy. And quite frankly, I also read I told many people, I read investor reports myself, maybe it's the nerdy thing to do, but I've read them. And many of the investor reports for our hotels don't even suggest that labor issues or unionization or any sort of thing like that would be a detriment to business. In fact, I think it reaps more benefits to provide safeguards to your to your local, to your hotel work force than it would provide negatives. Seattle, in fact, for the first quarter of their fiscal year, 17, received a jump in about 12% of their adjusted room revenue. And so I see the benefits for cities, for a city on the waterfront where a city that has so much diversity. And now it's our time to provide the dignity and respect back to those hotel workers that do everything they can to make sure that our city works at its best. So thank you. I suggest I want to just offer as well to the colleagues that signed on with me. I thank them for their work. I want to thank my city staff and my city hall team for for all their research and work. And I also offer this to the other colleagues that are not on here, as I really wish that we can reflect on what has occurred so far. And I hope that we all make the best decisions for our city, not for ourselves personally. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. So. Okay. So you just answered my question. So you made the motion as submitted, correct, councilwoman? Okay. And so the second of the motion is Councilmember Ginny Pierce. All right, everybody, this has been a long time coming. And I want to say how much I appreciate everybody's commitment to partnering and sharing your conversations. And especially I want to thank my colleague, Councilmember Gonzalez, for leading on this item. We've been here before, guys. We've been at this moment before. And so I'm excited and I'm really proud today to be standing with hotel workers and with women, because I've been standing for a long time. And you guys know that we've been at this point before when business said, we can't do that, we can't give workers a living wage because we'll go broke. We can't take another dollar out of the bank because we'll leave. We can't do that or they won't come and build here. Today, Long Beach is thriving. It's strong. Our downtown has multiple new hotels coming in. This is the day for us to continue to say we can do it and we can do it the right way in a measured way. That is the Long Beach way, right? Because in Long Beach we don't just say, hey, you know what, we're going to pass a minimum wage and we're going to do it our way today at the highest rate away immediately. No. During the minimum wage talk, we sat down with everybody. Right. And we actually voted on something that was a middle ground. And I think that we've had this item out there for a long time. We've had this item since that hotel worker went to PD. I got to meet with her back in 2014. And that moment where when she was crying, doing the police report. What? Did it feel like right after? And how much time did she have to sit with the things that have happened to her? This is not about the union. This is not about our political futures, guys. This is about women coming up here. And I'm sure we'll hear today their stories. And that's the one thing before we start public comment, two things I really want to echo is that those are personal stories. And for us to ever tell a woman that her reality was not her reality is not okay. It's not okay. For us ever to say, you know what, it's not as bad as you thought, because what I have in front of me is from the women's shelter. And they have a long list of reasons why women don't speak out against sexual assault. The numbers are stark, guys. 15 to 35% of women actually report their domestic or sexual abuse. And there are lots of reasons. RICHARD Retribution, fear of what might happen at home, immigration status. The list goes on and on. As somebody who has personally been sexually assaulted 14 years ago. It took me three years to tell somebody, anybody I didn't even tell my best friend. And whether or not it's something, someone tapping someone's sign and doing that multiple times and someone saying, shake it off, we've got to get back to work. It wears on you. And I know that we'll hear from people about the emotional impacts of that. And this policy is about a vision that says that Long Beach, we're thriving and we can do better. We've got great managers there. We've got great staff. But we have to recognize that there's a problem in an industry and we can fix it. We can be the leaders with measure. In a year later, we have 7% increase in profits. So this is a city that can do this. They can say, we stand with women that can say we can have an industry that's going to thrive. No dollar is worth too much to make sure that women every day do not get scared or worried or have panic attacks before they knock on a bedroom door by themselves. So I am excited that this policy has a vision. It fits the needs of Long Beach. It's measurable, and it's something that we can all be really proud of. So as we're continuing to thrive, when we're talking about our conventions in downtown and we've got great Steve Goodling, who does a fantastic job. He can say, you know what, we are one of the few cities. There are others. There's Chicago, there's Seattle, there's New York. There are other cities, guys that have done this. But we are one of the few cities that you can come to on the water and have an awesome, awesome time and know that workers in every single hotel feel safe and respected and dignity is treated to them. So I'm thrilled to hear from you guys today. I hope that those two arguments around sexual assault and the idea that this is just a union ploy are taken out of the conversation right away. So before I close, I will address the union conversation. Right. Because I know that we'll hear that. We heard it about a month ago. To be clear, the sexual assault piece, we want to make sure that every hotel is included in that, that that is something that every single hotel has. When people say in the letter that we got from the chamber, it says, just come to us and talk to us. Right. Just come and talk to us. Well, people have people have come in and talked. And there's class as a class action lawsuits that have happened in this city. And I'm not going to name which hotels or anything. Class action lawsuits. There's been unfair labor practices filed time and time again for things like interrogating workers concerning union activities, making statements, equating support for the union disloyalty, prohibiting workers from accessing certain floors, etc., etc., that have been won at at the level that it needs to be won out, that have taken years. And so this policy is not about that because workers have decided to unionize. They've gone through a process. This is about creating an industry across the board that has the highest standards, where women can walk in and walk out and feel proud every single day. And so I'm excited to hear from you guys. It is the day that I stand with workers, that I stand with women, and I really hope that I can count on my colleagues to stand with women as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. So unless there's unless there's any objection. Councilman Gonzalez, the presenter of the motion, is asked that after the motion of the second here from public comment and then to come back to the council to continue the comments. So unless there's any objection. Great. So we will go ahead and do that. So we will now open it up for public comment on the hotel item, please. And so please again, begin lining up here. And again, if you're outside, we will have an opportunity, of course, to let folks come in as well. Okay. We will. We will go ahead and. Okay. All right. Well, I know that the middle is getting a little crowded, so if you take a seat, well, once this line goes down, we will allow everyone else to to come back up. So please, everyone else, just take a seat. The lines for right now. Allow us. Please take a seat. I would appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to start with three and I go down to two. Okay. Well, going to be good public comment, please. We've got to convince you. Okay. I like that. I agree. What we're doing what we're doing is we're just like last time we're starting at three. And then after a while, we go down to two, and then we'll do the same thing for the next time, like we did for the first one. Go ahead. Great. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. City Council Member Staff Jeremy Harris, senior vice president with the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce here tonight on behalf of our over 850 members. These members include hospitality partners, many of whom you will hear with hear from tonight. But more importantly, we're here tonight on behalf of our members in the Long Beach business community and all industries. Because tonight's item is just bad public policy. Long Beach hasn't experienced an unbelievable economic rebirth and has risen out of the recession, which has been noted. Great. Thanks due in large part to your vision, Mayor, and the development community. So the question is why slow the momentum down? Because if this proposed ordinance is allowed to move forward. That is exactly what's going to happen. The chamber, for years, if not decades, has made it a point to ensure the government doesn't hinder the progress of the private sector. In fact, one of these areas we focus on this year, and I quote, mitigate costly business regulations. What does that simply mean? Or just an excerpt from our policy manual for this year. We will protect business sectors that currently drive the local economy and seek ways to support their efforts, oppose any state, county, local or other governmental agencies, mandated business regulations that put Long Beach area businesses at an economic disadvantage. But since we're not just in the business of saying no, it further reads we will secure reasonable solutions in order to balance business interests with the creation of new regulations. So at a minimum, we've asked in the past to compromise when we cannot agree. Tonight's item is example, an example of the exact opposite. There's no compromise here. Our members and partners will speak later tonight on exactly what is at stake to their civic energy industries and mainly the hospitality industry and the negative impacts on our area hotels. I believe the greater issues at stake here are the leadership of the city is on the verge of passing something that will set an example not only in our region but throughout the nation. A bad example. I ask the question, why does Long Beach want to be the forefront of passing bad public policy and baseless facts and statistics that one entity or group has portrayed through a false narrative? That group has not reached out to us. We've done all the educating through our Long Beach Hospitality Alliance. It was only a month ago we hear before you providing data and facts about how the industry works and necessary safety protocols that are already in place. We talked about the hospitality industry as one of already heavy, heavily regulated. The state and federal levels once again, others will dove deeper into this issue. The language that is included in tonight's item is wrought with misinformation and looks too heavily regulated. Private industry where the government has no business and being. And we need to ask ourselves, is this the kind of city we want to be known for? This potential policy penalizes industry that's provided good paying jobs, help put Long Beach on the map through its total dollars and provides a positive local economic impact wherever hotels are located . And with this agenda item tonight, the city wants to say thank you on behalf of our chamber members, the business community. I urge you to oppose this idea. Commissioners. Okay. Thank you. Next Speaker Please. Do. It took a lot for me to stand here and listen to that. Take control, sister. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez, for your courage and for your leadership. So members of the city council who have the same courage. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. My name is Marielena Durazo and I am national vice president of Unite Here Hotel and restaurant workers throughout the United States and Canada. Tonight is a momentous night for all of us. It feels consequential for all of you in front of me because you are being asked to take sides, and that can be an uncomfortable place for you to be in. But in all honesty, it is much more significant to all of the Long Beach housekeepers and immigrants who are forced to live in fear, fear of the whims of a pathological president, fear of what is on the other side of a hotel guest door, fear of having an unreasonable workload demanded of you and not having the power to say, Yeah, basta, enough is enough. Tonight, these brave men and women have stood up. They have pushed to make their voices heard. And tonight they look to you, the mayor and the City Council of Long Beach to match their. Courage. In this political climate, we are all faced with hard decisions and we have to choose sides. Tonight, you have the power to tell these immigrant workers and their families that you are with them and that you are watching their back. I urge you to take the lead and stand on the side of women who work so hard every single day and their immigrant families. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. I am Father. William Connor, the pastor emeritus of St Joseph Catholic Church in East Long Beach. I am here asking for your support to help some of the hardest working people in our city. These are the. Women. Tending guests and cleaning rooms. It is because of their work that our city's hotel industry. Has grown. To meet the needs of visitors from across the world. These women are the economic engine driving the hotel industry in Long Beach. The Bible is full of passengers calling for the fair treatment of workers by their employers and showing how exploitation is against our Judeo-Christian faith tradition. Today. You all have a decision to make. Will you stand only on the side. Of the rich and powerful of our city? Or will you listen to the voices of those that are most vulnerable, the voices of these very hard working women? I would like to think that we Long Beach residents will look back on your. Decision as the day that. City leaders. Stood on the side of justice and righteousness by standing with these women. And I would simply add that. The very few unionized hotels we have in Long Beach, where the rights of workers are observed and they are treated with dignity and respect and given a living wage and decent working conditions. Those hotels are thriving. And so will the other hotels continue to do better and thrive more if they give rights to our workers. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. My name is Rusty Hicks. I'm the executive secretary treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor. And I appreciate the opportunity to stand before you and ask you and call upon you to support this important policy. My friend from the Chamber stood before you and said that Long Beach had been rejuvenated, that its economy was thriving in large part due to the policies of this body. And unfortunately, there are some in our community they are being left out of that that prosperity. The workers that are paying the price in abuse, whether it's inhumane workloads or sexual assault, and both bring indignity to their work. And it was Dr. Martin Luther King that said that all work has dignity, and that includes the work of a housekeeper of women here in here in Long Beach. And so you have the chance tonight to really live out the words of of Dr. King, to stand with these workers and support them in their in their struggle. These policies are sweeping the nation, whether it's in Seattle or Chicago or other cities to follow. And I only hope that Long Beach will be the next in line. I know there's been a lot of back and forth about this particular policy, but the choice before you, in my view, is really pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. It's the question of where you will stand. Will you stand on the sides of workers or will you turn your back on them? I know many of you have spent your careers fighting and working with and supporting communities just like this. I hope you will continue that work. Tonight and support this policy and pass it. And implement it as quick as possible. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Her Linda Chico Field, deputy for L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn. And I. Have a letter on behalf. Of the supervisor that I'd like to read into record. Dear Mayor Garcia and Honorable Counsel, thank you for your consideration of an ordinance that puts workplace protections in place for the men and women in the hospitality industry. And I strongly encourage your full support. I have been fighting alongside our brothers and sisters in the hospitality industry for years. They are the individuals who welcome us when we first arrive and provide warm and satisfying experiences while we are away from home. Sadly, we have heard all too many stories about hotel guests who violate the standard code of conduct and sexually victimize our housekeepers. We must do better to protect our workers as one of the most desirable tourist destinations in the United States. The city of Long Beach must be a leader in protecting hotel workers from inappropriate sexual advances and burdensome workloads by requiring safe and humane workspaces. Seattle has already passed an ordinance to protect workers, and Chicago is currently considering a similar ordinance. The leisure and hospitality industry employs over 7 million women in the United States. In 2015, the majority of them been women of color. As Long Beach thrives and grows, so does the hospitality industry in the city. And while we welcome, welcome that growth, it must not be on the backs of our hotel workers. It is up to us to recognize the physical effects and demands on our hotel workers who clean and service the nearly 5000 hotel rooms across Long Beach Daily. I stand with our hotel workers and urge you to pass this ordinance to reinforce the protection of all of our hotel workers. Sincerely, Janice Hahn, supervisor for supervisor, local district. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Thank you, mayor and council members. My name is Reverend Janet Prager. I am a Lutheran. Pastor, a representative of Clu. I teach at Cal State Fullerton, the Religious Studies Department, and I am part. Of Clue Empower. Honestly, sir, you're my first speaker. My heart is pounding because as a former hotel worker, I can tell you that that is not a false narrative. The work that. I did as a hotel worker. The amount of abuse. I really can hardly speak at your denial of my reality and the reality of all of these women and others who have spoken about what it is like to be a service person in this industry. It requires long hours. It requires safety issues. And I ask you tonight, as a person, speaking of my own experience and from the point of view of a pastor, it is the right thing to do. I do not. I find the argument of regulations to be ludicrous. There are regulations in every field to protect your workers rights and their dignity. This is not an add on. This is a requisite for the dignity of these women who service each of our visitors and all those who who are requiring YouTube to have a wonderful place to stay. Who is the first person that you meet? The woman who is in your hotel room, who smiles and then makes it clean? And I, as a person who goes to hotel, the first thing I check on is how clean is my room? So I ask you tonight to remember the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You are sitting. In a council. Chamber with many protections. Police this nice space. Can you not give women who clean room, who work every day of their lives, who make sure that your industry and your city thrive and that you become the Long Beach that you are talking about earlier today? Please do the right thing. These women need and deserve your protection. They need and deserve your dignity by giving it to them. By dignifying their requests. And and above all, we are here to respect and give it to each other. And I speak to you from experience, but I also speak to you as a pastor. Harmony, respect and dignity creates economic benefit. And in that we have a quality of life. So please do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. What's wrong again with the Los Angeles County Business Federation? As stated earlier, Biz Vet is a massive, diverse, grassroots alliance of business organizations, employers and employees. Throughout Los Angeles County that. Advocates for policies and projects. That strengthen our regional economy. And we are here to express our concerns with the motion to draft an ordinance which would further regulate the hotel industry. Language hotels are hotels in general are some of the most regulated. And regulated businesses in the state. So far, Long Beach Hotel has worked extremely hard to ensure a safe working environment and takes sexual harassment very seriously. Over the past. 18 months, these 18 months season hotels have mandated training programs for their employees, such as sexual harassment, human trafficking and self-defense. To date, hundreds of employees. Have participated in these programs. We encourage you to review the protections that are already in place and before you make your decision. We thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor. City Council and staff. I'm Sherry Bastian, the executive director of the Long Beach, Ronald McDonald House. Many of you know and are familiar with what our mission is. We are a home away from home for families with critically ill children. We provide a place to. Stay, a source of comfort and care, and a chance for parents to focus all their energies on what matters their child becoming well. Fulfilling this mission is possible because of the generosity and commitment from our community. More on that in a moment. These gifts of time, talent and financial support the Long. Beach Ronald McDonald House. Provide, receives or receive 365 days the year a year for the families with these children facing critical, often life threatening illnesses. In 2016, our mission served over 2800 guests. Our occupancy was over 80%. Our average length of stay for these families is anywhere between ten and 12 days. We had five over 5000. Volunteers assist us with this mission. Which includes 15000 hours served. Now back to the community component. We have some. Unbelievable individuals, businesses and community groups that have supported us since we opened in 2011. One particular business group and partner that has been with us since the beginning, our hotels and their wonderful staff. When our house is full. These hotels are the first to come through for. Us and help. Put our these families up. When we cannot. These are some nights when we don't know whether or not we'll be able to accommodate these families and our hotel partners help us with reassuring that when they also when we also provide meals for the families who stay with us. Many of these hotels staff volunteer to do so with us, both in cooking at our house and providing food from their respective properties. We've created. Wonderful. Relationships with both the operators of the hotels. And their. Staff. We view the hotels in. Long Beach as a wonderful as a both a wonderful partner. And a very viable, valuable. Resource. To help us. With our mission, our house, and those we assist for all the families that. Walk through our doors. We know that they do this. Because they care about our families and the commitment to the. Community. We hope that. This business model is allowed to continue for our direct. Mission. While it would be difficult. After hearing. What I've heard tonight to say. I ask. You to oppose it. I do hope you. Will strongly consider the. Good that these hotels. Are doing for our. Mission and many others. I hope you'll support in seeing that support. Seeing the value in this agenda item on both sides. I appreciate. My opportunity. To give comment. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Larry Goodyear. During college years, I spent a number of years working for a major hotel and restaurant chain. And then for five, six years after was under the management staff of that chain. And I have a healthy respect, profound respect for hotel workers, restaurant workers. No ifs, no answer, no buts. And the panic button dynamic is something that's a 2/2 conversation. They should have that no ifs, ands or buts, period. It does not. And but equally what I'm troubled about is the way this was advertised to protect immigrants and protect this group or that group goes back to all lives matter. Does it make any difference whether or not the person was an immigrant? Or born here in the United States, that third generation, fourth generation family. There's some people who like working in the hotel industry, in the restaurant industry. They deserve the respect and the protection. If that panic button, if it rises to that level or if that's what is needed, that should be put in place, period. But again, I go back to it is not a case of being an immigrant. It's not a case of being in this race. That race all lives matter. All people matter, particularly when it comes to women. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. So this is our this is our 10th speaker. Our first 30 minutes of public comment. So after listeners objection, after the speaker will then move down to 2 minutes like we did for the first hearing and continue that. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Kent Peterson. I'm the chief operating officer of repeat to US Engineering here in Long Beach. And I have the pleasure of serving as chairman of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors this year. I'm here tonight on behalf of our board and our members. I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the potential overreach. If a proposed ordinance is indeed drafted with the language that's included in the agenda item as written. This will have immediate impacts on our entire business community. Our hotel and hospitality members can speak to you about their business models and the lengths to which they have gone to in order to ensure safe work environments for their employees. Tonight, my goal is for you all to respectfully understand the potential consequence of etc. ordinance with the language as stated, will have not only to the hospitality industry but other sectors of the local economy. The item before you is merely political. This is not even close to being good public policy. The chamber in the Long Beach business community have heard this tune before when a particular group or in this case an organized union cannot force its will upon the private industry. They look to the folks such as yourselves to provide the answer when it should be decided by the market in the private sector. The language on the agenda item is riddled with half truths and. Potential legal ramifications. But the more troubling issue about the item is the blatant potential overreach of local government to enact and regulate an industry that is already heavily regulated through the state and federal levels of government. Unless you start the collective bargaining process, of course, that begs the question what industry is next? As the mayor and council know, Long Beach is currently undergoing a renaissance as it comes to development increase in the local economy and revitalization through many of the neighborhoods and business corridors. Business in Long Beach has faced its fair share of increased regulations and costs just in the past two years through the minimum wage increases and increased sales tax to our retailers. No one is saying tonight that business should not be regulated. We're just saying it should be done with collaboration and much discussion based on the facts and not on the will of one entity not getting their way in the private market. I urge you to oppose this agenda item and protect the industry that provides so much economic value to Long Beach because we know if this passes, other industries are next and that is just setting a bad precedent for the city and the local economy. Thank you. Thank you for being up. Now we're going down to 2 minutes. Thank you, Mayor and council. Members, for this opportunity to comment. My name is Lynn Moore Feldman with the California Hotel and Lodging Association. I'll just be commenting on some of the legal and related concerns we have with the proposed ordinance. As a preliminary matter, the proposed square footage requirement is completely arbitrary, with no foundation and scientific studies or analysis. Which leads me to a second point. Local government is not an appropriate body for these standards. In California, Labor Code Section one for 2.3 expressly provides that Carlos Jazz Standards Board shall be the only agency in the state authorized to adopt occupational safety and health standards. Therefore, this ordinance would be preempted by state law. In fact, Carlos, the Standards Board has been looking at this issue since 2012 when the same labor organization that represents a number of our hotel employees here in Long Beach petitioned the Standards Board to adopt a square footage limitation following numerous advisory committee meetings, soliciting expert testimony of scientists , industrial hygienist, ergonomics, economist and others. The Standards Board released a proposed standard that notably does not contain a square footage. Limitation and identified. Such quotas has not appropriate in the workplace standards and something that is better left to collective bargaining. Equally troubling is maintaining a blacklist of guest against whom mere allegations have been made, sharing that list with employees and prohibiting such a guest for at least three years. These provisions violate the due process rights of the hotel guests under the California Constitution and the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution will embroil both the hotels and the city in years of. Expensive and time consuming. Litigation. These provisions are also unnecessary as the Fair Employment Housing Act already makes hotel employers liable for sexual harassment committed by third parties, including hotel guests. For these reasons, if this proposed ordinance is poorly drafted, not scientifically based, and is preempted by state law and raises significant legal and constitutional issues. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. My name is Mary Ketchikan. I work in Health and Long Beach for about six years. I start like a rona tender at 3 p.m. to 1130. And then I transfer to the morning 8 to 430, then transferred to lovey like areas. And then usually I start 4:00 in the morning to 1230 and I never feel unsafe even if I work runner tending or a public area. Right now I'm doing housekeeping supervisor. I've been trained for how to be safe. Safety training. We always get it. We always get advice from our managers saying how we can protect ourselves. We get tools like whistles, like alarms. If you're in dangerous, you can call somebody. And also we have security like 24 hours a day walking on the floor. I never feel unsafe. Also, one thing that I want to mention, security. It's if you want to protect yourself, you have to put it and practice. It doesn't matter if the company bring you all the tools that you need, but if you didn't practice, that is nothing we can do. And another thing that I want to mention, sometimes the room attendant never put the. Cart in. Front of the doors. Like our manager. Mentioned every single day, you have to put the cart in front of the door. So that way you're not put yourself in dangerous. So if you want to be in danger, you're not going to like you going. You're not going to do that. I mean, that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Get in America and council members. My name is Catherine Conrad and I live in the ninth District. So I thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson, for supporting this ordinance to protect the hard working and brave women present tonight and all hotel employees in the city's city of Long Beach. I am a member of Gabriela, a grassroots organization of Filipino women dedicated to advancing the rights and welfare of women and children and linking these issues to root problems in the Philippines. I care about the health and safety of the hotel workers because we should all care about the safety and dignity of the people working some of the hardest jobs in our city. This issue is also personal to me because my mother worked as a housekeeper when she immigrated to California from the Philippines in 1971, and every day she went to work in fear that she would be sexually harassed by her employer, whom hired advances toward her. She would ask her cousin, who worked with her, to stand guard at the door while my mother cleaned each restroom of the facility, scrubbing floors on her hands and knees. At my job at ABC, I'm grateful that I do not face the same fear and anxiety going into work that my mother did as a housekeeper. But safety in the workplace should not be a privilege. Safety in the workplace should be a basic human right. And the fact that now not all. Of our council members agree is unacceptable. In Long Beach, there are many Filipino and Latino housekeepers who depend on these jobs to support their families, and they should not have to go to work in fear of being verbally, physically or sexually harassed and harmed. The various hotels in Long Beach made huge profits from the hard work of hotel workers, and without housekeepers and other workers, these hotels would not be successful. When housekeepers are overworked, hotels are more concerned about how much more profit they can squeeze from their employees, not about their health and well-being. This is why we admire the courageous hotel workers here who are here tonight standing up for their rights, standing up against abusive employers that see them as a commodity rather than as human beings. As Gabriela, we stand in solidarity with the Long Beach Coalition for good jobs and a healthy community to stand up for hotel workers fighting for safe and humane working conditions. As city council members, you have a responsibility to protect all workers in our city, and we encourage you to take a stand to thank you so much for the hardworking women in our community who dare to organize and struggle for their rights. Thank you so much. Next. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Honorable Mayor Garcia and Council Councilwoman Gonzalez and Pierce, I applaud you. My name is Bishop Bonnie Redden. I am the senior pastor of Refined Aspire Fellowship United Church of Christ in the Eighth District Youth District. I'm also a member of Club Clergy and Lady United for Economic Justice. Let me also. Say. That one of the first jobs I had at a high school was cleaning rooms and it trembled. Causes me to tremble the day to even think about that job. I'm here tonight because I am deeply invested in this community and walked. Alongside. These working. Women, listened to their stories from these Long Beach hotels experiencing injustice in their workplace. These are working women. Who are the foundation. Of our local tourism. Thanks to their. Hard work in cleaning these rooms and serving these guests, our city thrives and we attract thousands of guests. I host conferences here from my organization and bring hundreds of people every year. Unfortunately, many of these women work under inhumane working conditions that subject them to heavy workloads and unfortunately, sexual harassment. For years. We as clergy. And Lady United for Economic Justice have stood time and. Time again. With these hotel workers through their struggle. We come together. Tonight again and we say this is shocking. In this day and age, women must still. Face this type of behavior. Really, as persons of faith, I believe that we all have the responsibility to be the prophetic voice and the prophetic witness to these issues, to take a stance, to make a statement, and to take action so that these workers no longer have to experience this injustice. My father had a saying and he said this do what's right because it's right and then do what's right. Please do that. Thank you. Next speaker, please. When you ask that anger District seven, I'm. You know, when I got elected to the council years. And years ago, I was so excited because finally I could be a voice and make. Decisions for women. And as a woman, I had a lot of. Ideas of. What what needed to be done. And I was so happy to cast that vote. On any policies or any actions that would improve their lives. And as a former executive director of this sexual assault crisis agency, I have to tell you that the majority of assaults go unreported, the majority of assaults go unreported. And this definitely is a woman's issue. And I'm proud that we have four women on the council, and I hope they dig deep in their hearts and know that this is right. This is what has to happen for women who are working for working. Women, not only in the hotels, but everywhere. I'll tell you, it is also an immigrant issue. When you talk about the majority of. Housekeepers being women and being from immigrant backgrounds, then this is an immigrant issue. Don't pussyfoot around. This is what it is. And so you have to take a stand on behalf of women and on behalf of immigrants. And thirdly, I was so happy because I was able to. Make decisions about the working families in our in our city. And when you have a good job, then you have a great city, a good job at Dignity really, really promotes a great city. And so. I'm here to ask you to really consider dig. Deep, think about what this is about. And, you know, I know we have to consider the hotel industry. We have great hotels in the city. I have family that work in the hotels. They it's a good living for some. And I have to tell you that the bottom line is this. They were crying. You know, the sky is falling. When we had measure in. I mean, we had a proposition. And nothing happened except that their their their profits went up. And it is this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. We've had workshops and seminars. And we asked everyone to come to the. Table and to listen and to learn. So I want you to think about this and think about the women in this audience. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Reverend Melinda Teeter. Dodge and I serve as a pastor in East Long Beach in the fifth District. I also live there. I work and serve the community of the Los Altos United Methodist Church. I'm here today standing with the women working in Long Beach Hotels, and I'm asking you to stand with us today. Similar to many other speakers, I can attest personally to the hardships, having heard the stories and walked alongside them in their journey for years. Not only must they complete heavy workloads, they are also at risk of physical and sexual assault, as you have heard, because there are simply little too few protective measures on the work site for them. And even when these incidents do happen, as again already spoken to women, the majority of women stay silent because of an existing and very powerful culture that says the customer's always right. As city leaders, you have the ability to ensure that there are common sense security measures, such as the panic button and signage that can make a significant impact toward hotel worker safety. And these are included in the ordinance before you. This ordinance is not a radical demand. It is common sense. And it comes from and through the hotel workers there themselves. My faith. My Judeo Christian heritage teaches me that all of God's children are born of inherent worth and have every right to live and. Thrive and prosper. In a work environment that is both safe and conducive to their capacity to succeed. Let us stand with women today and pass this ordinance. Prioritizing the safety and well-being of long beaches. Primary Welcoming Force. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, my name is Ann Burdette. I am a Cradle Long Beach resident. I live in the seventh district, but in 1980 I moved away. I was away for 30 years and then I came back in 2012 to a very changed and much improved Long Beach. I was so happy to see the development in downtown. I was so happy to see zip codes that I had been raised in no longer just white people. And that made me so proud of the city. I share it on Facebook. All the time. Tonight, though, I'm here to urge. You to protect some vital human. Resources. In our city, and that is these hotel workers who make all of these attractive elements of our city possible. It was great to see that you had passed the minimum wage increase in 2012, but that's an earmark of an international city and that's what we call ourselves. The spirit and the right thinking of those wage increases is completely lost if hotels respond by increasing their employees workloads, or worse yet, deny them the simple protection of a way to call for help when their safety is threatened. Our city's hotel. Workforce needs to not only be compensated fairly for their work. But protected from abuse. Otherwise, we lose our credibility. As an enlightened city. These workers, kids go to school here. They pay taxes here. And the dollars they earn are spent here. Please pass this policy to protect women from heavy workloads and sexual harassment. Let's demonstrate that Long Beach is a true international city, honestly committed to respecting and protecting all of its residents. I think Michelle Obama said it best. She said the difference. Between a broken community. And a thriving one is the presence of women who are valued. I want to thank Councilman, Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez and the co-sponsors for this leadership in bringing this forward. I want to commend every person in this audience who has worked for years to press this policy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Council members. My name is Richard Hoyt. I'm a member resident of the seventh district. When I read the background information expecting to learn important facts about this issue, I was surprised that I learned everything I needed to know about average rates and occupancy rates in 2015, 2016, 2017, and how this thriving hotel industry in Long Beach is looking at a glorious future. But nowhere did I find any data or evidence whatsoever concerning the issue that we're talking about. There's no reference to assault. There's no reference to safety issues or workplace injuries in Long Beach. Only anecdotal comments based upon alleged. Conversations and hearsay. The only fact that I found provided is a memo from Police Chief Luna in which he reports that only two incidents were reported to have occurred in an entire one year period. One male, one female. Now, we seem to. Have forgotten the male because we're here supporting Long Beach working women, apparently not the men. And if you do the math, if we're cleaning 5000 rooms a day, that's 1,000,825 rooms a year. And we've had two incidents out of 1,825,000. I agree. One is too many. This isn't the answer. With all due respect, I question not only your motives, but your level of expertize in this matter. How can you provide these solutions without considering expert opinion? How do you define a human workload as. 4000 square feet? Cal OSHA Standards Board Standards Board has come to a completely different conclusion that contradicts your own. You're violating the California Constitution, Article one, Section one. The blacklist is not private or confidential. You're violating the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. You serve due process. Next week, please. Next weekend. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is John Howard and I'm the owner and operator of Chick-Fil-A at Long Beach Town Center. I also serve as the incoming chairman of Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce Board, a board of directors. I'm here tonight to encourage you to oppose this agenda. I know from firsthand experience that the hospitality industry is already heavily regulated and has in place safeguards for their employees as. And since we do as well. It begs the question of my industry. The restaurant industry is next when it comes to overreaching policies such as what we were discussing tonight. We face very similar regulations in our business on a daily basis. As you know, we've already faced such an example when politics forced public policy to be shaped around a few interests and not based on facts and economics. Speaking to my industry specifically, we operate on the thinnest of margins. When government begins to interfere with regular business operations based solely on the responsiveness of one group, it puts jobs and local economic output at stake. Good businesses have a long term strategy based on market conditions in order to meet expectations of owners. Shareholders and ultimately the community. It serves so it can remain in business when government places unnecessary burdens on business, disrupts the business model and may jeopardize its continued success. We need our leaders in Long Beach to recognize when our community is being used as a pawn. This item is an example of this and it's concerning if not recognized. We cannot allow Lambie's to be a test case for political maneuvering of one particular entity. On a personal note, I will say my grandparents grew up on sharecropper's farm and their grandparents were brought here as slaves. My grandfather wound up working as a housekeeper in the DeSoto Hilton in Savannah, Georgia. During the Jim Crow era. And he always ensured and made sure that I believe that hard work and getting my education, keeping my nose in the books would pay off someday. Even as he worked in the Jim Crow era and couldn't even rent a hotel in his the hotel that he cleaned. He encouraged me to continue to work hard and do my best. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please. All right, let's do double the time for interpretation. Bonus when I'm not a member of the concert hall. Good evening. City Council Mi Nombre de Yolanda Zavala, Estonia, kiko Motorhead, Laura la compania. But. But I put the hero logo here. My name is Yolanda Zavala. And I'm here representing the Stand with Women Campaign. Aprovado in La Industria or the hotel area in Long Beach for our news camera. Camera. If we go in El Distrito Nuevo and Long Beach, I have worked in the. Hotel industry in Long Beach for eight years as a housekeeper and I live in the ninth. District in Long Beach. Como como my my a esposa. Your character had a Luna Ambiental Seguro Papi Quero guitar. You got beba e Salvadorian mi casa but are poor there. So the net are mi familia tengo dignidad como muerte embrace respeto. As a. Mother, wife and daughter, I want to work in a safe environment because I. Want to arrive home alive and healthy and be able to. Care for my family. I have dignity as a woman and I deserve respect. M was a leader and was a leader. Alaska Mutual basis. Mujica though i key. But I get my attention. We have marched in the streets many times and we have come here many times. To call your attention to this matter. Jabba the Gate. Amos He can be a star citizen. Enough is. Enough. We want this situation to change. Necesitamos the need only get the inner city the commune. But up to here. No sur la muerte is killing Pyramus Waters. And Long Beach. We need a common sense law that will protect us. Women who clean rooms in Long Beach. Los. Lobos head into the Delos hotels estan biondo north nostro nostro bajo para la para la policia para protected areas a uses 10 billion though in in contra. Nosotros. We are upset because those hotel managers here today that are watching us as we stand for ourselves and women against abuse a law that they are fighting against us. For far more unethical nosotros. But I provide noise properly so please. Unite with us to pass our policy. Nosotros muertes. No, no, no, no, no. Shameless. As women, we will not be silent anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the testimony. That's for the police. Good evening, council members. My name is Elizabeth Garcia and I'm here representing the Democratic Socialists of America Long Beach chapter as an organization that focuses on ending the economic exploitation. I'm here standing with the women that work in Long Beach hotels. Hospitality is the second largest source of wealth for the city of Long Beach. That success is made on the backs of mostly women, a majority of them immigrant and women of color. Without the work done by these women, local hotels would not be able to function, let alone profit. The hotel owners and management know that, even if they're unwilling to admit it. In 2000, 12 Long Beach voters passed a minimum wage increase for hotel workers. But none of that matters of the hotel workers are over. The hotel owners are allowed to respond by increasing workloads to unreasonable and abusive levels. The hotel industry has shown that if left to their own devices, they will protect their bottom line and profit margins over the lives and safety of their employees. We want we all want to live in a city with a vibrant economy, but are we willing to sacrifice the bodies of our working class communities in order to have one? We have an opportunity to stand up and protect the most vulnerable and marginalized residents in our city. We cannot purport to be a diverse, welcoming and progressive city while at the same time turning a blind eye to the economic exploitation and sexual abuse of the women on whose back our economy is built. I hope to see all of you do the right thing today, not the politically expedient thing and stand up for our hotel workers. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Vice Mayor and council members. My name is Greg Keebler. I'm the general manager of the Hilton Long Beach. And I have heard a lot of incredible stories and incredible. Opinions of which I value everything that I've heard tonight. Even while there may be some things that I don't agree with. Or I think there may be factual. Inconsistencies. The one thing that I know to be true is that this is my 37th year. Standing up for immigrants, families, all workers, females, people with disabilities. Any one who needs a job. And I'm not standing here to make this an emotional play, but rather to say that our industry is one that is absolutely about people. It's not about the buildings. It's about our guests. And our employees. My personal concern with this ordinance as written is not in its intent, because we absolutely are diligent in making sure we have a safe workplace for our people. We issue panic buttons. We have all the policies and procedures and trainings that any other industry has to safeguard against these risks that are in our society everywhere we go . The difference is in the wording of this ordinance and the things that are so prescriptive that they have been written to not allow for a resultant outcome which may be worse than what you expect. They were written by people who have not spent 37 years in the industry. To know what was up on the board is not exactly possible. There are many ways to address these concerns. Councilman, we can counsel people. This is not the way. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. Let's take a police. Good evening. My name is Linda Calderon, and I am the president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Long Beach. We are a grassroots organization of volunteers and advocates who turn progressive ideals into action inspired by Jewish values. And KW strives for social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children and families, and by safeguarding individual rights and freedoms. Ideally, we are always striving striving to embody the Jewish imperative to make the world a better place by caring for those who are most vulnerable and most in need of our compassion and our defense . Tonight, I am here to ask you to support the ordinance to protect women from physical and sexual abuse in Long Beach Hotels, workers in Long Beach hotels, the majority of whom live in Long Beach, face working conditions that are simply unacceptable. Speaking from personal experience, when you allow the existence of sexual harassment, even one example in the workplace, you are creating a hostile work environment which violates many labor laws. Moreover, the lack of humane work assignments also contributes to this unhealthy work environment. The workplace environment becomes one where communication is curtailed and replaced by fear of losing one's job. We're asking for your support for the working woman and immigrant families. The success of our society is judged not by how well the rich and powerful are doing, but rather how the most vulnerable in our communities are being treated. Please cast your vote tonight to ensure that Long Beach is on the right side of history. When our children look back at this moment, let them say that on this night, Long Beach said yes to respect and dignity and no to fear and injustice. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. My name is Holly Stewart. I live here in downtown Long Beach. I've been here before the council and the mayor before. And I want to say I'm here to support this idea of protecting women from sexual harassment and from overwork, from heavy loads and things. Maybe none of you have a daughter or a granddaughter. I have those, and I don't want to see them groped by anybody. And one of them works. And, you know, the entertainment, not entertainment in the food and hotel industry. And I'm not going to tolerate that. And and if you have daughters, you shouldn't want to tolerate that. It's interesting that most people have tried to talk against this thing are men, you know, not women. And those men may not have been groped for all I know, but if they would have been, they probably would have been talking different because it's a different thing. And I think it's time that we really look at it. The women have a right to be protected and they shouldn't be allowed or pushed or made to do work that is beyond their physical capability. This is a matter of human rights, not women's rights versus men rights, or the corporation has a right to not boss. People around know these are human rights and the dignity of all of us, both men and women, because, as I said, the men behind you wouldn't do this to women. I don't think the women behind this thing would allow it to be done to them. And so you can't allow it to be done to other women. So thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Nicole Ababa and I'm with the Filipino Migrant Center. And my name is Don. Markings, an organizer with Black. Lives Matter. And we're both here tonight as women who care about our workers here in Long Beach. Because what matters. Most to us is that Lumbee stand up for workers rights and stand up for justice, dignity and respect. And it's no surprise today that we heard from so many hotels and those who represent the industry that hotels don't want to regulate because their bottom line is profit. But what the hundreds of community members here are, bottom line is justice. And it's important. For us to recognize that minimum wage is a regulation. Overtime is a regulation. All of these were fought for by workers themselves. And it's up to us and the community and city council members to really support them and make sure that we do everything we can. Earlier today, another previous speaker said It's not the local government's responsibility. It's absolutely your responsibility. As the hotels here have received heavy subsidies, including the Hilton Long Beach, where I've met hotel workers who've been overworked and forced into retirement because they've been injured on the job. So as Black Lives Matter, we stand and we stand in the name of those who have been harmed by the state. Right. We're looking out for lives that have been impacted by state violence in so many ways. And tonight you have the opportunity to represent as a responsible acting representative of the state, as local government, to look after these women who are being harmed in the workplace. I'm hearing a lot about the protections that they currently have, but if that was working so well, then we wouldn't have to push for. Policies to protect them. We stand in solidarity with these workers. We stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers who are in this struggle to represent for workers rights, for human rights. You have a responsibility to look after that, to represent for that. This is even more important because these are predominantly women of color, and we cannot continue to view women of color as disposable if it are Filipino women, black, Latino, Latina, right. Loading them up with the over burdensome workloads and then turning them out of the out of the profession more quickly. You have a responsibility to act responsibly. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Reverend Carolyn. Wilkins and I'm with Clu. I'm here today. And so much has been said that I won't repeat, but I'd like to leave you with three points. First. I spent time. I'm not just a minister, but I spent over 30 years in corporate America doing operations, product, launch management and quality analysis. So you can make up numbers to say and do whatever you want. So there have been conversations. Tonight that said regulations and rules may be overbearing for the hotel industry, but I encourage you to look at not the quantity of the regulations, but the quality and the effectiveness. And if they're not working, they need to be changed. Secondly. I invite you to look at the two levels of service. The women and the men. Who are the hotel workers provide service to the clients who receive the service, and in between is the infrastructure and the management. And it is the management that is trying to say that these are. An ordinance that does not work. Please honor the women who are doing the work. I've been a recipient of the service and I invite you all if you haven't ever made a bed, lifted a mattress, cleaned a toilet. To go do it yourself and see if you'll change your mind. And lastly, I implore you to be pull by a vision, a vision of dignity, justice and peace, a dignity of a vision of inclusion, rather being push by the management. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and the members of the Council. My name is Cab Off, Managing Director of Ensemble Investments. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. First of all, congratulations to Mayor Garcia and the city of Long Beach for co-hosting the upcoming 2028 Olympics. Our industry will be a major part of that. We want to show off our beautiful city to the whole world. The hospitality industry is a very good industry for Long Beach or for any other city for that matter is clean, brings in substantial tax revenues to the city and provides good jobs to a wide spectrum of people with different skills. Most cities seek and encourage hotel development. Long Beach has excellent brand name hotels such as Hyatt, Marriott Hilton. Most of these hotels continue to reinvest and modernize their properties and continue to be great assets to the city and its residents. The hotels in the city are run by professional managers and reputable owners. The hotel industry is in the hospitality business. We're here to take care of our guests and visitor to the hotels and to the city. Our employees are the ones who are the direct contact with our guests. They are the ones who interact with our customers, not me as the owner of the property. We respect, honor and care for our employees so they can care for our guests, even for selfish, profit oriented reasons. If you want to call it that, it is in our best interest to take care of our employees. I am sure you have been to. Restaurants or hotels where you. May not have been treated well by an employee. Would you go back? You would think twice. The way the preamble to this ordinance reads, if someone not knowing the hotels in Long Beach and just reading it off, you would think that Long Beach hotel owners are bunch of slumlords. Running hotels with. Dirty rooms occupied by substantially large number of sexual predators. It is embarrassing. Is that the message you as a city council want to send to the outside world because your baby works very hard. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Thank you very much. This is Commissioner Nicholson, and I'm proud to be bringing you the letter of unanimous support for agenda item number 22 from the Human Relations Commission. I am going to sum this up a bit, but I brought you the full letter as well. Our perspective on this topic has been informed by the testimony of community leaders, hotel workers and data provided by the hotel workers advocates. Long Beach hotel workers have reported verbal and sexual aggression or assault by hotel customers. To add further concern, Long Beach hotel workers have stated that managers have asked them to return to their work floor , even after reporting inappropriate behavior or harassment from hotel guests. It has been reported that when hotel security has been called, responses are either delayed or designated as inappropriate. Local hotel workers also report inhumane working conditions related to workload shift lengths and the inability to refuse overtime for fear of retaliation. Worker testimony suggests that the current policy in many local hotels is inadequate in addressing issues related to workload safety. Following consideration of our charter and purview, it is our view as the Human Relations Commission. We voted unanimously in support of agenda item number 22 in its entirety, with the hope and vision that Long Beach, where a city continues to embrace the values of justice, equity, respect and dignity for all its residents. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, city council members. My name is Alexandra Wayman and I am a research. Analyst with Unite Here. Local 11 focusing on the city of Long Beach. And it has been my privilege to work on this issue. This policy addresses three key issues in the hotel sector. Heavy workloads, mandatory overtime, and the risk of sexual harassment and assault by guests. We have collected reliable data from four of the downtown hotels with 100 rooms or more, and we found that. These hotels already have standard daily quotas for housekeepers of. Less than or just slightly above 4000 square feet. Our methodology included obtaining. Information. From hotel workers, data collected from hotel management, as well as information from hotel websites and phone calls to these hotels. By multiplying the traditional average room size by the standard daily. Quota, we were able to. Calculate the total square footage cleaned in an eight hour shift. Our research shows that in downtown Long Beach, 60% of the overall number of. Guestrooms in downtown Long Beach. That is, three of every five guest rooms is already cleaned by a worker whose daily workloads are below or just slightly above 4000 square feet. The threshold is modest, in achievable the proposed. Daily maximum workload of 4000 square feet, after which premium. Pay for the shift is. Required, is a reasonable approach in the contact context of the Long Beach hotel sector. Two other cities, Seattle and Emeryville, have already adopted similarly similar legislation. It incentivizes new hotels to provide reasonable workloads for its housekeepers, providing reasonable workloads, while also ensure that housekeepers have. Enough time to properly clean hotel rooms, including doorknobs, remote controls and other places where germs spread in. Order to protect public health. We look forward to working with you on these much needed protections. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. My name's Nadir Tushnet, and I live in the third district. I'm a member of the Long Beach Area Peace Network and LabCorp and join the coalition because we are concerned with granting women equal access to good jobs and safe environments. But I'm going to speak tonight about my per my own life. Before I retired, I traveled 2 to 3 weeks a month. I was in lots of hotels. I want to tell everyone that people behave differently in hotels than they do at home. Inhibitions are gone. There's more drinking. There is more everything. I'm going to one story I will share. I'm not going to talk about the sexual harassment because we all know that that's true. Once we were all a group of us were in a hotel for a conference and my supervisor invited us into the room for cocktails and snacks and they were throwing peanut shells on the floor. Nobody does that at home. And that housekeeper has to clean that room in 30 minutes. Imagine doing that with the peanut shells on the floor. And I'm sure we're not the I was not the only room that had that. I was in my room. I wouldn't. I actually said something not to endear me to my supervisor. Long Beach has been known to be a city where you can find a good job, raise your family in a safe community, and provide them with a good education. We believe that this is still possible, and we ask our city leaders to act on behalf of these women and pass this policy to lift standards in our tourism industry. I want to thank Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez for her bringing this forward and for the other council members who are supporting it. Thank you very. Much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Natalie Schuman and I'm a research analyst for Unite Here Local 11. I'm going to briefly. Reiterate and expand upon some of the information that Councilmember Gonzalez already mentioned during her presentation regarding why this ordinance is so important at this particular moment. Well, the number of hotels in Long Beach has increased in recent years. The workforce has not. Between 2007. And 2013, the supply of hotel rooms in Long Beach. Increased by. 12% and the annual number of occupied rooms increased by 11.2%. During that same period, the hotel workforce shrunk by 6.9%, indicating that workers workload had increased. Across the hotel industry nationwide. There has also. Been a trend towards. Hotels putting. Building their brands with unique amenities, such as high quality bedding, more pillows and heavier mattresses, which make housekeepers jobs harder. The workload and voluntary overtime provisions of this policy are closely related to one another and reinforce. Existing law to support Long Beach hotel workers. First, the minimum wage for Long Beach hotel workers that voters passed in 2012 would be undermined if hotels are allowed to increase workers workloads. Beyond reasonable levels. Second, it is not possible to make voluntary overtime a reality if we do not also ensure that workloads are reasonable. Otherwise, hotels can respond by simply making housekeepers squeeze more. Square feet of. Work into their normal eight hour shifts. Together, the proposed ordinance will incentivize hotels to provide workers with a humane workload and ensure overtime is truly voluntary. We urge you to move forward tonight with this policy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I just want to start off by telling the hotel workers that have testified and shared their stories tonight and over the past several years that you're heard, you're appreciated, and that I believe in you. My name is Miles McNeely. I was born at St Mary Hospital and I've lived in Long Beach almost my entire life. I currently live in the second district. Professionally, I work in the field of social science and health behavior research. So I have a special appreciation for data. And I wanted to highlight highlights some of the data and research related to sexual harassment among hotel workers. But first, I wanted to point out that because hotel workers, particularly housekeepers, often work alone in the intimate setting of visiting guests, hotel rooms without security cameras or witnesses, it seems intuitive that housekeepers may be at risk of being sexually harassed or assaulted by guests. As for data, in a 2016 survey of hospitality workers in Chicago, 58% of hotel workers reported being subjected to unwanted sexually harassing behavior by a guest. A 2016 survey of downtown Seattle housekeepers found that more than half of their survey respondents had experienced sexual harassment on the job. On a local level, the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community has collected their own data, showing Long Beach is not immune from what seems to be a widespread issue in the hotel industry. And I'm not very shocked by these numbers and data. I believe that this sometimes unsafe and unsavory work environment will continue unless legislation is passed to ensure that hotel workers basic human dignity is protected. And I believe that providing workers with panic buttons, creating signage, and allowing workers to cooperate with law enforcement and reassigning workers from the workplace if they feel unsafe work are tremendous steps, yet very reasonable steps. Thank you. Stopping abuses. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. When I'm not just me, I'm with you. Double time, please. Sorry. Good evening. Members of the council. I mean, early that year. Yesterday, again, Representan de la Campagna. But up to here. Let's move, Highness. My name is Elida Aguirre. And I'm here representing. The campaign to stand up with women. Everywhere having a little My Paradis in the I news.com.au recommended. I have worked in the Hotel Maya for 19 years as a housekeeper. Sorry, mother, that addressee was M.I.A. So you're somewhat the then I propionic. Also, I. Am a mother of three children and my husband and I are the owners of our own business. Just keep working. So my data is there. Look, isn't the owner here when those things went wrong one time and now they are causal six? Well, they parted ways, but there isn't one. Don't no one has all the same idea that our home is the only one. Those parts are not animals, see, all of which are finished. Demos. Are you there? I am here because I am a housekeeper and I know what it feels like to be a woman. Faced with the. Threat of sexual harassment from guests. Sometimes we have to work alone in our work areas, and if something happens to us, we don't know if someone will hear us. If we need help. It's a little scary which I business you got lucky on a hunter del consiglio must be escaped bodily contact but I am out of sweat. And so I have marched in the streets and I have come here to city council meeting more times than I can count to call your. Attention to this. A strike on Saturday. Yeah. They believe that boys are seeing onerous boys attacking. I am tired of. Asking for your support here without a clear answer. Estamos aqui. Alright, but I sit in a safe area or that I ask cannot bear on this at Amazon. Silencio, you can sing it anymore. Luciano, for my daughter's condition, this button was thrust, but I'm not certain out of them. Head hit in no less. We are here again today because we will not remain silent and we will continue to fight for better working conditions for ourselves and women in our hotels. For far more unethical nosotros parable of our own Napoli Success When the solution consented Giacomo. Please unite with us to pass a polity policy that has common sense. Thank you. In a sentimental spirit, the hera bearing in mind that audience at Boyan del Norte Boyan the waste automation man, has brought the heat up. Orcas will no protection from me. And I feel. Less protected today because I know our managers are here watching me and I feel less protected that they're not supporting this lot. Tonight. Thank you. Phenix, the police. Translation. Okay, so we'll make sure, obviously, all translation will double the time. Okay. Thank you. Hey, when I notice a member of the concert hall. Good evening. Members of Council. Min Comrades Maria Mercedes to represent Angela company appropriately. Hitler's mockery. My name is Maria Meza and I am here to in standing for the ordinance to protect women. And terrorism in this Rotel era. Puerto Rico Madeira. I have worked in the in this industry for 12 years as a housekeeper. So mother of little seahorse, the tobacco opera musical thing and on patrol you know this bonanzas. I am a mother of two children, and I work hard to make sure that my children are full of hope. I meant asking the mother that the Center for Telethons will be no matter what. The local heroes added me. No. Meanwhile. While the number of hotels and the earnings of hotels have increased, the number of workers have decreased. Significantly with their role as cargo. The Trabaho. This means that they are have REO workloads. At the moment especially the TRABAHO and the socialism virus could travel Hamilton in the throttle era and for the time I mean that's are the course of sexual patrols was but this protection I think protection alone. In addition to heavy workloads we women who work in the hospitality industry confront the throat of sex, the threat of sexual harassment from guests with very little protection. It's a communal monster industry. This is a very common practice in our industry. Which is reflect routine. I mean, that's how they set up personas, experimenting with tobacco for particulars, what's personal and for middle of May, the ones that can avert. A. Hazard. Many woman who who who face the threat of sexual harassment from their guests do not speak do not speak out because they're scared that they might them and they're ashamed that they might be retaliated against. And with a little escapism, which are the basis IMJ are they keeping in line with our neighbors? Must we have marched? We have marches throughout many times and we have come here to ask you to help Estamos aqui. Paracelsus were not there when they said Amazon's insulins here. You can think of them as a trend upon what is continuing as the time. When here again today to let you know that we will not remain silent and we will continue to fight for better working conditions. Necesitamos the national effort to protect the hair. A hint that homophobia, tourism is companeros. Tribal committees among the court is commonly seen as a taboo. We need a strong law to protect people like me and my coworkers who deserve better working conditions. But if I unethical nosotros para providing a police case when the coalition comes into the common place. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker and I just want to make sure I just from a point of view in 1/2, I believe and maybe our fire folks can our fire captain can confirm everyone that wants to speak is here. Correct. Okay. So who's the last person in this line? Okay. So I'm going to close a speakers list. I'm going to. Okay. So I want to make sure that if you want to speak on this item, I have everyone that's has your hand up. So you're okay that we just just want to make sure that we're going to close the speakers list. Okay. Unless I'm going to close the speakers list. Everyone from the outside wants want to speak on this item is inside, so please continue. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Ciaran Paradis. I am a field representative for Congressmember Alan Lowenthal and I. Our office submitted a letter in support of this ordinance. I'm not going to read the entire letter, but I would like to read a couple of extracts from it. The working conditions of the employees of the hospitality industry must be improved. We know of the existence of sexual harassment, excessive workloads and mandatory overtime in our Long Beach hotels. Workers should have the right to an environment free of sexual assault, a right to safe workloads, and a right to rest. The City of Long Beach should be a leader in ensuring safe and humane workplaces in our growing tourism sector. I urge you to stand. With the working woman of our Long Beach hotel workforce by supporting the Long Beach Working Woman Hospitality, Workload and Safety Ordinance. This ordinance will improve the quality of the workplace for hundreds of our hotel workers by providing protections against inappropriate conduct by guests while also addressing increased workloads and mandatory overtime. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Couldn't be. My name is Maribel. And as you know, our country is facing many challenges at this time. We have a president who during his campaign, openly bragged about his sexual harassment of women. Now, as a president, he has called for the increased deportation of immigrants, which tear families in our community apart, regardless of what the federal government does. You, as local leaders, have the authority to pass laws that can protect local residents. This includes hotel workers. These people are some of the most vulnerable and mistreated members of our society. Hotel workers, particularly housekeepers, work in intimate settings of guests, of guests, hotel rooms without security cameras or witnesses. This puts housekeepers at great risk of being sexually assaulted by guests. Unfortunately, the incidents are common and many attacks go unreported because they are scared. I hope tonight you will send a clear message that Olympic stands in the side of justice and is committed to protecting workers who make our city economy thrive. On a personal note, I would like to say that my mom has been working house cleaning houses for the last 20 years as a student of and graduated from Wilson High School. After school I would go and help her clean houses some afternoons and I saw the hard work that that that is. And I can only imagine these hotel workers multiplying that by 50. So I want to go ahead and thank all those workers for their hard work because I think they're not appreciated enough. So thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Lauren Saunders and I'm a Long Beach community member of the Second District. I am also a licensed clinical social worker with a background of providing community education and therapy services to. Survivors of sexual assault and domestic. Violence. I wanted to speak particularly on the issue of low reporting rates of sexual assaults and why having safety measures in hotels for our workers may be important. As a therapist, I can tell you there are many reasons why individuals may not report sexual assault. For example, fear being one of the primary ones. There may be fear from retaliation of an employer or coworkers. Fear of loss of employment. Fear of not being believed. Fear of being blamed. Fear of nothing being done even if they did speak out. There's also an issue of re traumatization. These experiences are very uncomfortable and very upsetting, and just coming forward and telling your story can be very, very traumatic in and of itself. So that's a reason why people may not speak up. Not wanting to confront your abuser, especially if it's in the workplace, can definitely be a hindrance to speaking up shame, guilt and embarrassment. These are really uncomfortable topics that we're talking about, and to come forward with that is a very difficult thing to do. And this is not just me and my professional experience speaking out about this. We heard a statistic of 68% of sexual assaults go unreported in my own research, that's consistent with what I find. So I just wanted to bring some of this information as a community member, as a professional who does work with folks on the receiving end of these traumatic events. And as a Long Beach member, I'm really proud of my community for coming up and speaking out about such a tough subject. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. You have someone cell phone. You left their cell phone on the podium. So, yeah, we're going to put it up. But actually, can you give it to the clerk, if you don't mind? And if you left your cell phone up there, please. We have one over here with the clerk. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Garcia Miembros del Consuelo Mino Press and Jose Trabajo Global Organization, Marriott Ultimate Strength a unanimous settlement as they travel hand-in-hand. Residents seeing the light of Puerto Rican optimism. The president of Brazil, Rita Wilson, they think it's what you need. English. Okay, it's okay. It's just the way they must be able to to an English case. Go yellow alert in English. Anything. You okay? Don't respond whatsoever to the empathetic position USS. Comienzo gave me. No sign of Jose Trouble Gallup Organization. Maria Good until ultimately the unanimous atonement this rebel handing out residency in the little Puerto Eric Erika Carrera Trabajadores de Departamento de PSA. You may foreshadow I travel her I stopped in their own opposition. The heron they may encounter mi trabajo amy empleyado or proporcionar un ambiente trabajo seguro don't the Nootka is in below me so guilty that esta ambiguous call me empleyado to offer assistance. Yes confidential is lobbying to cuatro Sylvia you oversee the mutual scholastic and frenemy Anton you're a conflict are more just there? Yes. They estas classes incluyendo maneira de identificar evidencia a la cosa sexual well mas the train Tania Diferencia Newcastle Free Bill Seguimiento six one or more thi I'm in asada banning una manera mi empleyado a priority saddle la seguridad de nosotros woman aliados moussavi Amazon estoy lucky for real men the of is that ordinance no no. Are you that are less b look at what they know being a store announcer in esta propuesta which was gracious. Thank you. My name is Ana Hosey and I have been working for Myriad Organization for the past 21 years. Currently, I am working at the restaurant scene in the airport. I have spent my career working in the housekeeping department and work and worked my way up to a manager position. I love my job and my employer provide a safe working environment where I have never felt that my safety was at risk. My employer offer 24 hours a day confidential assistance in-house, offer many training classes. I have completed many of these classes, including ways to identify and report sexual harassment in my over 30 years of experience. I have never experienced harassment or have felt threaten it in any way. We have not asked for a la for housekeepers, the loves. We have work. My employer has brought really safe safety and we has employees not. I am here today because I truly believe that this ordinance will not help us. I am asking you to vote no on the proposed ordinance. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Well, thank you. Next week. Good evening. My name is Jeremy Blasi. I'm a staff attorney with the Unite Here Local 11. I'm not sure I've ever sat through a hearing on a measure to improve labor standards for low wage workers in the hotel sector or anywhere else, whether it's minimum wage or wage theft, where lobbyists or managers from the industry did not claim that if it went forward, it would cripple the industry. The sky would fall or it would be illegal for one reason or another. And those claims rarely stand up to scrutiny. Tonight is no different. Briefly, I'd like to respond to a few things I've heard tonight. First, the Hotel Alliance has claimed that repeatedly in an op ed in a memo to counsel at least three times tonight, that that the measure would create a blacklist that would bar guests from staying in hotels. That's simply not true. There's nothing like that in the measure. It simply would require that hotels advise workers that if they're being asked to clean a room where a guest is staying and that guest has previously been reported to sexually harass or assault a worker or is a registered sex offender that the worker be notified so that they can enter that guest room with some caution? It would not require that any guest never prohibit any guest from staying in any hotel anywhere. That's simply not true. Not true. And it's just a red herring. There's also been representations made that there's a preemption issue that's also simply not true. Cities absolutely have the right to regulate wages and hours and basic labor standards as they are here with the voluntary overtime provision and the premium for workers who are made to work more than a reasonable workload. Emeryville has had a measure just like this on the books since 2008. If it was truly illegal, it would have been challenged and overturned. The measure is hardly arbitrary. As other speakers have mentioned, three of five hotel rooms in downtown Long Beach are already cleaned by workers whose workloads meet the standard or just above it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Next speaker, please. Good evening. City Council Members and Mayor Garcia. My name is Gary Hetrick. I live in the fourth district and I'm a member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and Health, a community. I'm also a member of the California Faculty Association at Cal State Long Beach, where I teach. Thank you for this opportunity to clear up a misconception of the opt out clause for hotels that have collective bargaining agreements. As you may know, collective bargaining agreements are mutually negotiated by the hotel employer and the workers at that hotel. That was language included measure, and that was overwhelmingly approved by voters in Long Beach in thousand and 12, an ordinance which seems to have a very positive impact on the industry. We know that workers at some unionized hotels have successfully negotiated collective bargaining agreements with complex clauses to ensure workers have reasonable workloads and humane working conditions. Laws and policies should not appear with that process or these agreements. What is important to keep in mind is voice and choice. The collective bargaining process allows workers to negotiate on an agreement that is consistent with their needs and priorities. This includes workload, health and safety, wages, wages, ways to balance work and family personnel, our personnel and sick days mechanism to solve problems, among many other issues. We know that workers have a guaranteed right to form and join a union if they choose to do so. They have the right to sit at the table with their employer as an equal to discuss all aspects of the workplace. The collective bargaining super session clause preserves that right. I urge you to vote yes on this ordinance. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. What are you doing? What do you want? My name is Cesar Galing. I'm proud. A union member and leader as a servant for the restoring academia. I have been an employee. Maya, for almost 17 years. I'm everything. I have a beautiful daughter. I work hard every day to improve working conditions in the Long Beach Hotels so that I can provide a bright future for my daughter. I recently learned that our general manager, Chris Island, use an incomplete clip of a video of me explaining how much I enjoy working at the hotel in my hotel. I was very confusing upset when I learned what happened. I do love my job. I love welcoming visitors to language. I love serving people in our restaurant. However, the part that crazy, not including the clip she showed you is, is the part where I explained that where we have a good job, so we course we. Have a union. Contract. I did not give. Her permission to show any part of the video to City Council as propaganda against a policy to protect women working in the hotel industry. Which. Which I, in fact. Support. I'm here to set the record straight. We have good jobs and they all tell me I have because we have a union I will hire so that all your hot sales and lobbyist can enjoy the same join in benefits that I do in the end to constantly improve working conditions at my own hotel. I'm here to tell you myself that I stand with women against abuse in our hotels in Long Beach. We do need to pass policies that protect my workers because they face the risks of sexual harassment and assault from guests. And this is not tolerable. I will continue to speak out against abuse and the hotel industry. I will not be silent and I stand with my coworkers and women are under siege. And thanks very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Next week, at least. Good evening. Honorable Mayor Garcia and our esteemed council members. First of all, I want to thank all of our hotel workers who have been here all night. And I want to thank them for coming out here because each and every one of them has to go to work tomorrow, early in the morning. I'm not here to give you data, sir. I'm not here to tell you it's not good for the city. I'm not here to tell you that. Most of what we have heard does not have any basis. I'm not here to. To ask you even why hundred rooms or less or more? 100 rooms. Just. I'm not here to ask you that all. All I'm here to tell you that we work really hard to make sure that our associates are taken care of. And most of them are here in support of that. And I do appreciate when you make your choice, all these things that you've heard on our side. I consider and I thank you a lot. Thank you very much. Next week a least. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, and council members, for allowing me, Harriet Ellis, to speak to you tonight. I represent Clews Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice to support those people working in the prosperous hotel industry in Long Beach. I particularly want to focus on the women who must work so hard, even endangering their health, to keep up with the many hours demanded of them, often asked to work far more than the normal workday and often uncompensated for this. In my book, that brings us back to the days of slavery. I was born in the South 93 years ago. And I can remember how our second class citizens were treated. And I never expected to see a city as progressive and enlightened as Long Beach in 2017 to drag its heels over a policy that would bring a measure of hope and health to its citizens. These immigrant hotel workers have a right to work in a safe environment to be free of harassment and sexual assault by hotel guests, and not to be criminalized if they should ask for support. When these things happen to them. The guest is not always right. They came here to work because they heard that in America they could be given a fair chance if they worked hard. But they did not imagine that they would be struggling under intolerable workloads. Our hotel industry needs to face up to the fact that it is their workers who keep their industry successful and thriving and humming. They could not exist without the energy and work that these women and men put out every day. No person should clean more than 12 or 13 hotel rooms a day and still function at the day's end. And remember, this is not just changing sheets and washing a sink and a toilet and vacuuming a room. Think about how you sometimes leave a hotel room when your vacation or your business trip is over. Thank you so much, because you've lived a much longer life than the rest of us. I'm going to let you continue, but we're almost out of time, so please continue. Okay. Especially if you brought your children with you. Just a couple of more words. Citizens like me are urging you to enact Claudia's law to help some of the most vulnerable in our community. People who pay their taxes, who came to America to better themselves and give their children a good education. Just as you and I do. My parents were immigrants, and I know how hard they worked to give me and my two sisters an education. These workers need Claudia's law. They have a right to humane workloads and to be compensated for overtime work. In my Bible, the last requires that we help and protect our workers, even to paying them before we pay ourselves. Our faith traditions demand that we confront injustice no matter where it happens and to whom it happens. This is a moral issue, not a politics. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Tough act to follow. My name is Catherine Benhamou. I'm a resident of District two. I've been a resident of Long Beach for five years. Over that time, I've come to know the work of the Long Beach Coalition, and I've been following the struggle of these hotel workers for about three years, and I've heard of many of their experiences. I've also seen that when they brought up their concerns with their managers, they were not addressed properly. And when that happens, I think you have to step in and help them out. I'm also a and so as a citizen, I'm concerned with maintaining a climate of civility, of equity, of respect for workers in the city, all workers, including women workers, including immigrant workers. And as a college professor, sorry, I'm an ant eater. I teach at UC Irvine. But we have worked hard to revise our protocols and policies to ensure that those who feel vulnerable to sexual harassment will feel safe reporting this. Our protocols were not working, and a. Couple of years ago. Some new measures were put into place. So if I feel strongly about protecting women from sexual harassment on my campus, I also feel the same way in my city. I as a college professor, I want to address the question of scale. You know, 100 rooms or more. That's not all hotels at certain hotels. As a college professor, I travel I travel to many conference hotels. I was surprised that only one person works a floor in many conference hotels. Two people are working the floor and working in twos does provide a measure of safety. So workload is linked to safety in very interesting ways. Finally, I want to call attention to investigative reporting at UC Berkeley that has revealed the risks of women working alone at night and how they have suffered assault. Thank you for your time. Press testimony. The next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Elizabeth Castillo and I am a sexual assault. Nurse examiner. And a member of the California Nurses Association. And I stand with Women Against Abuse. As a nurse, I have dedicated my entire career to protecting the public health, whether it's providing care for my individual patients. Or advocating for policies to make our community healthy. And gravely concerned about the lack of safety that exists in the city's hotels, especially the treatment of the hard working women. These women face the risk of being sexually assaulted by a guest on the job and have very few avenues through which to address these assaults with their employers. Nobody should ever have to endure or live through the trauma that comes with sexual assault. The question you. The question you as city leaders should reflect on is how many more rapes or assaults will it take to put policy into place to protect workers? Those opposed will claim that there are minimum reports of sexual assault on the job. The truth is, these incidents are often underreported and no charges are levied because of fear. If fearing for their own safety isn't bad enough, these women are extremely overworked. While the number of hotel rooms in the city have increased, the workforce has decreased, resulting in larger and larger workloads for these women. Such working conditions are exploitive and abusive. The hotel's reckless policies in regard to their employees has meant that in many cases, women are forced to clean without proper tools and supplies, often on their hands and knees. Providing reasonable workloads will also help to ensure that housekeepers have enough time to properly work clean hotel rooms, including doorknobs, remote controls and other places where germs can spread. In order to protect public health and make Long Beach, the city that respects the safety and. Dignity of working women. I asked Long Beach City Council to stand with these women and lift the. Standards in the city's hospitality industry to ensure that these hardworking women come home safe to their families every day. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next week, Apple's. Good evening, Callisto. My name. Is Graciela Beatriz and I. Am a featured organizer with Clergy and later United for Economic Justice. I stand tonight in support of Long Beach hotel workers in the ordinance to protect workers from sexual harassment and excessive workloads. This is a long time coming. This is what I call a kairos moment. Let me explain. When we think of chronological time, the abuse of housekeeper has gone on for far too long in the hotel industry. For years, workers have been coming together, speaking out in organizing for basic, basic rate and respect in the workplace. Tonight, as elected leaders in Long Beach, you can honor the commitment of the workers who for years sacrificed their bodies by cleaning beds, mopping floors, scrubbing bathrooms and dusting rooms so that this industry thrives. I am asking you to be a light of justice by valuing and protecting the workers who make your city profitable by the labor of their hands. And like I said here today, tonight this moment is a kairos moment. Kairos is a theological concept of time. Kairos refers to the time of God working in the world. Kairos refers to the moment when change is only able to occur because the Spirit of God is at work in a special way. Though we have been in this struggle for a long time, the spirit of God in the spirit of justice is here today. Let this let justice roll down. Let it ring from the mountaintops. And I ask you to please stand with women tonight. Thank you for your testimony. Next speaker, please. Good evening, council members. My name is Bibiana Lagunas. I am a mental health social worker as W employed in Long Beach, according to the National Research Council. Every 98 seconds a woman is sexually assaulted in the workforce. Unfortunately, sexual assault is vastly underreported. About 70 to 80% is under reported to law enforcement. In my daily practice, I hear stories about women feeling shame, guilt, distrust, loss of control, shock. And lastly, they feel fear, fear of retaliation against themselves. They report the assault. As a professional, I witnessed many victims living with depression, anxiety, addictions, PTSD. We cannot ignore the mental health impacts on these women who have experienced sexual assault. So I urge you, please council members. To vote yes. On this ordinance to protect women against physical and sexual abuse. Thank you for your testimony. Next speaker, please. Good evening, counsel. My name is Ebony Pearson. I serve as president of the Long Beach Democratic Club, the same club that unanimously, unanimously voted in support of Claudia's law. But I also stand before you as the daughter of an immigrant mother whose word countless hours for a low wage job that saw her as disposable. And because of that, she was afraid to advocate for herself because she was scared of being fired, just like hotel workers, in fear of retaliation. And when you're supporting a family, you can't afford to lose your job. And what's worse is the number of workers not reporting sexual assault. As a as a survivor of sexual assault, I can say there are countless people who. Go on not reporting for many. Reasons, many times silenced. By a traumatic event. We need an ordinance to protect our hotel workers, and we need a vote that chooses to protect people and not just profits. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony next week, please. My name is Reverend Darnell Wilson, organizer and director for the City Program. We Unite Here, and I also serve as. The chaplain for our union. I worked in this. Industry for 45 years as a chef and has been very good to me. Now, as I look at the council tonight, I don't see you guys really. Sweating. Because in fact, you don't have any panic buttons up there. Right. And the reason why you don't have a panic button up there, because you've got the Long Beach police officer sitting behind you yelling, saying, let them, but that's protection. And all we ask them for is protection for our. Women, for our Roma tenants. They deserve that protection. You cannot afford to put a Long Beach police officer on every. Floor at a hotel and you know that get a button form protection button. Work overload. Then we come to your home or one. Inch to tear. Up your room. Put it in the mess and make that bed up and fix that room for 8 hours a day. Think about it. Work overload issue. Repetitive motion. They get injured. The hotel is wealthy enough. They make a lot of money to. Hire other people. And talking about hiring, if there are any hotel operators still in the house, you need to change your hiring practices. Practices, because nobody has said nothing about the lack of hiring African-Americans in the hotel industry. And that needs to change as well, because we once had these jobs and we're not here to push the current workforce out , but to be included in it. So when you have to hire more people and you should because you're in a healthy industry. Long Beach, come on now. So when you start hiring hotel operators, make sure I can bring a busload of African-Americans. We're training them right now in the Hospitality Training Academy. All right. And you say African-Americans do not come in this industry, apply for a job, but I can bring you busloads and they are good workers. So take that in consideration and don't panic making this decision and do the right thing. Amen. Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please. Thank you for having me. Good evening. My name is Tracey McGee. I am a project supervisor at the Hospitality Training Academy. We are the Taft-Hartley Fund, Labor Management Partnership and training arm of Unite Here Local 11. For the past four years, we have operated a program funded by the city of Santa monica for $150,000 to target and ensure local hire and diversity in the city of Santa monica. This program has been hugely successful and we for the past four years, we have exceeded our placement goals. Additionally, I run a program called the Accelerator Initiative, which has $425,000 in government funding, and that is to train and place African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and trans transgender individuals into union hospitality jobs with good wages, health and welfare benefits. The HCA is very interested in bringing our targeted local hire, particularly focused on the African-American population, to the city of Long Beach. As we all know and we have heard before, only a job to stop a bullet. And this is something that I truly believe. And we are here to let you know that the MTA is interested in working with the city of Long Beach and the Union Hotels to ensure that if there is any initial, initial hiring that needs to be done to fulfill the demand of any current initiatives, we are here to track and assist with targeted African-American local hiring. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. Hi, Council. My name is Wayne Murchison, second district and I too have had a lot of chapters in life. One of my chapters, I was working in the hotel industry, actually in a four tulip hotel. Wow. You all know what I mean? I started out as a bellman. Night porter security. After two weeks, I went to my supervisor, who hired me and said, you know, there's been some incidents and you got to get some walkie talkies because people shouldn't be going into behind into a room where they don't know what's going on without the safety of being able to contact someone, whether you're a male or a female, actually. Wow. They got walkie talkies and y'all write. It off on taxes anyway, so it's not. Costing you anything. Sorry. And that's safety for people. That's a no brainer as far as the the work load. If you're overworking your people, the rooms aren't getting as clean. How many people are going to come back if they don't got a clean room? You know, not taking care of your employees and putting them in danger like that. I'm going to call it crimes against humanity. That's what it is. And all your. Blue shirts that are supporting your owners and whatnot. You're all culpable. Crimes against humanity. The next picture, please. Because every day Mayor Robert Garcia and member of the Council. My name is Chad Hobson. I'm a resident of the second district and. Also the executive director or the power, in my opinion, association located in the. District, my organization. So a diverse student, woman and. A family. I'm here today in front of you to ask you if the hotel industry located in. The diversity allowing they should employ the diverse. People work. So we would like to see a diverse employee and any hotel industry in Long Beach. I'm here to support. And protect the hotel worker. I'm here this evening to ask you, the mayor and the city council, who, as the parent. The mother and the father think about the woman worker. In the hotel. All those women. Regardless of their status. Is a person who deserves respect. The same as. Everybody. An immigrant, a citizen. I woman, love and care. For their. Children. They work hard to raise them to be healthy, strong and productive men and woman. For the future. They are overworked and undervalued. It is. Not only the. Mother that suffer, but the. Children who. Also pay the price. The future. Of the children. And their hope. To become productive citizen. Civil society, subjugated. Woman and mother. Of color. Therefore, I would like to offer your full support to protect and provide safety to all this woman work by passing the policy tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next week. Hello. I'm Ron Herrera. I am actually not prepared to speak tonight, but I was standing up back there and, you know, listening to all the testimony here, all the opinions compelled me to come up here and speak to you tonight. Quick introduction. I am the principal officer of Teamsters Local 1386, about 10,000 members, which 6500 of them are your UPS drivers. And we service the city of Long Beach. The other amount of members that we have are part of the commercial waste drivers here that pick up most of the trash here in Long Beach. I heard an argument made that this was about collective bargaining. It's not about collective bargaining. I'm an interesting person, not because I'm a union official, but because I'm also a resident of the city of Long Beach. This is a no brainer. I follow all of your careers, every single one of you. And I live in a progressive city. And I'm not going to be disappointed tonight because some of you may not support this this this measure. But interestingly enough, this is a worker's rights issue, specifically a women's issue. I'm here to support all you council women on this board and tell all the men on this board that you better support them. What's wrong with sticking up for women's rights? But here's the most important reason that I stand in front of you. And I came down here. How do I look for granddaughters in the eye and say that I didn't come up here and speak on their behalf? Because that's what this is about. It's about women's rights. All of us have stayed in hotels when we're the last room in the hallway, and we would be remiss to say that we didn't look back to to secure our safety, whether a card is in the front of the door or on the side of the door. There is no way that anyone is going to tell me that a housekeeper is so my attack. And another thing. One last thing, but. We've got to wrap it up. Okay. Mr. Mayor, I hear you. One last thing I hear about I hear about a blacklist. You touch one of my granddaughters. You've been on Ron's list. Thank you so much. Next picture, please. When? Not just. Me. Nobody's Maria Lopez. Good evening. My name is Maria Lopez. I am a resident. Of the First District and I'm also a community organizer for housing Long Beach. In 2008, during my college career at LBC, I worked at the Hilton Hotel to be able to. Pay for my college. Because I'm undocumented. And financial aid was. Not accessible at that time. So I worked. I worked like everybody else. My shift started at 11 p.m. and I had to clean everything by two. Am I clean the floors of the restaurant, several bathrooms and the basement? I carried a vacuum bigger than me, literally, to vacuum all conference and party halls while having to put up with a boss who consistently tried to make me apply for a housekeeper. I got paid $500 a month minus the first week of what was considered deposit. I quit a month later every day. I hated going to work. But I loved going to college. I decided to quit because I could not handle the workload, and I felt that there was not an answer I could give my. Boss to get him off my back. As a rape survivor, I know all too well that feeling. I didn't come out to my mom until I was 22 of my rape. And so when I hear someone say that every place is safe for me, I have to make it safe. Oh, is. It my fault I got rape? Hmm. Because that's all I'm hearing as a rape survivor. That deep feeling of fear that you may not be able to protect yourself and that no one will help. And it's not an emotional show when you have been raped, when your own words. And fight was not enough of a know for your perpetrator to stop. This policy is common sense. But if it's not. And if you need more encouragement, here they are. 850 to 851 individuals. Pledges were gathered so few 43 community organizations supported. Jonathon Lowenthal. Barbara. Laura. Laura. Megan Kerr. I got to keep this. I can keep going, but I urge you to vote yes. Thank you so much for. Our providers of life and for our leaders. Morrow Thank you. Next speaker, please. And I'm just trying my best to just be respectful of the time, obviously, to give everyone equal time. So please. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. City Council. My name's Christine Pettit. I'm a resident of the sixth District and I wasn't planning on speaking tonight. I'm not even feeling well, which is why I was sitting down instead of standing in line. Many of you know me as executive director of Building Healthy Communities, Long Beach, and we did early on vote to support this policy. But I'm and I'm not going to even tell you all the reasons because you heard them tonight, right? There was a lot of compelling testimony. So that's not why I'm here. I'm here really as a resident of the sixth District, I called my councilmember today. I called Councilmember Andrews office today. And I heard that you were undecided on this very important issue. And I want to urge you tonight to vote yes on Claudia's law for all the reasons that you have that have been articulated, as well as the fact that as a district with some of the city's highest poverty levels, we know that the workers that we're talking about, many of them live in the sixth District. And so this is an important item for our district because of that. And so I just really want to encourage you to, you know, stand up for the workers of our neighbors and also just say that standing with women is an investment in our hotel industry. It's an investment in our workers and in our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. What about? Shows me. No worries. Alicia Carlos. You'll be on the street those days. Will you let me, though? Because they have the Andrew Gay whatever personally. But I the hairdresser. How old is your tailors? They also confront them in the street in Colorado. Is your telescope more concerned about the industry's capital gain? Gay uses water. You saw people come back and say, help paraprofessionals. Yes. My name is Alisha Carlos. I live in the sixth district. I asked them why City Councilmember Dee Andrews votes to pass this law to protect. Workers in our. Hotels from the abuse that we face as city councilperson in our district. I ask that you use your vote and. Your role to protect us. Thank you. Okay. Whether or not just a todos. Graphic protester Kiko nosotros. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here with us today. Estella keep out of retirement when they'll kill us and us outside without us, a.k.a remove from us. I am here to yell to the whole world that abused women will be silent no more. I mean this one. Aladdin. My name is one Omolara Josiah. Huh? Esposa, Willa or Goliath? Are they both ninos or. No, they are all. You go through the cuatro and yes. I am a daughter, a wife and a proud. Grandmother of. Two grandsons of eight and four year old. Daughter back home in Long Beach. Joe Throughout our home in Long Beach, Jutras, Commodore, Paramount and Mi Familia. I work in Long Beach and I work very hard to maintain my family. Secondly, you are going through a media business event. And I know that my job contributes. To the economy of the city. Better. Monsanto Invisible. But I feel invisible. My polka persona and theme. The lucky person must be the last mile head of travel harmless airline industry with the. Very few people know what we go through every single day. Those of us. Who are housekeepers in the hotels. And thank the listeners felt that our handle must empower them. If this was business man 5046, swell, young. If both of those parties intimate for me. In the 22 years that I have been working more than a few times, guests have asked me for sexual favors and expose their private parts to me. If calls make that of the borrower one. The only thought that though they offer to travel a better look at get their last 15 feet period if cuando Libya fifth I'll head into sovereign locust sobre el paso colonia the assassin berekum sephora to culpa. This alone is very disturbing to deal with when you are trying to do your job. But what makes it worse is when you tell your manager about it and he or she makes you feel like it's your fault. Lost her enticing a lapel. Nathaniel Bear. Theodore I.M. Yes. Companeros de Trabajo. Guilherme Marathon. Erika Moreira. Fabiola La Yellowtail Durante, La Scala, del Grand Prix. The managers at the hotel have told me and my coworkers that once a housekeeper was raped during the Grand Prix races at our hotel. They think our last bit of order and meditation Gwendolyn Membrane throws a rock on Jamila Puerto. They say that she was vacuuming the room when he came in and locked the door with his key. A little Kyle Kahlil daughter Ella, they hope and diva mientras la law. But I came up there for the rescue. Charla. He tied her up with a vacuum cord and he left the vacuum running while he raped her so that nobody could hear her. You're not observing, require evidence, and you gotta look past the Alamo here for your ladder. The managers often remind us. Remember, ladies, what happened to that woman. Who was raped in the room? So, Santiago McKeithen. The Scandal. Canada Hand mouth case total Serrano's water. They make us. Feel like we have to make sure that to us. But honest enough, in the manner known about us, they would rather give them a real meaning if they would have loved it. But they are. Actually doing nothing to make sure that we are safe in our workplaces. Golden Lozano's durante el Grand Prix I mouth three thoroughbred or the Latin or the will beloved one. Every year during Grand Prix, there are more and more. Tourists around our hotel. Thank you. I'm going to let you continue. But we got to we've got to wrap it up. So thank you. Yeah. Win the day. You'll need to get us on with belief. And some of them. Are not even guests at the hotel. I'm walking. Your thing, Olympia, but I'm your key. Then on third is the problem. I have the courage to. To talk up here to you all and announce what's going on at our. Hotels where I'm which I'm working a lot. And then at the end, they merely think I unlosable so six wireless major Garcia Gonzalez of telephone no sonic go get the poor there they come yet after he put as a statement like that. Yes Mayor Garcia and all of the city council people, you are the. Only ones who have the power to change this. So we're asking for your help. Thank you. Thank you so much. And of. Our final speaker. Good evening. For those who don't know me, my name is. Mary Ada Soto. I live in the ninth district and I was born and raised in Lumbini. I have worked in the hospitality for four years now and working at a hotel is a very different from most jobs. Very different. We interact with our guests in a very personal level. We must serve their meals. We must be the first person they see in the morning, like I do, that we have to clean their rooms, scrub their toilets, clean their restrooms, serve them, serve all of their friends. But often times, hotel. Hotel guests try to take advantage of our situation. Particularly at their drunk. Or under the influence of substance. I know because it has happened to me. After that happened, I felt scared. I was humiliated. I was mad. And I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't say anything. How was when I was part of the 68%? That was me. I take pride in being a strong woman now and a strong woman that I have become. I take pride in that. But that pride should not come with having to be sexually harassed and assaulted. I should not be strong. On that aspect. That should not happen, but it does. And we need protection. And I'm here and I'm asking for it. I no longer want to be part of that 68%. When my coworkers come to me and they ask me that either I'm like, I don't what are we going to do? What's going to happen? My coworkers that have been assaulted, I don't know what to tell them because council and the mayor have been silent for two years. What do I tell them when they look at me for help? I look at you and I get silence. I urge you to vote yes today. And to stand with the woman that make our whole hospitality industry run every single day. It is us that make your profits. It is us that keep your rooms clean. Thank you. It is us that keeps the convention center full of business. It is us. Thank you very much. We will no longer stay silent. And even though we leave today, we will come back. Until we get what we need. Thank you very much. We need protection. Just as. Shit. Thank you very much. Panic buying. We won't panic buying. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you to all the all the speakers. We're going to go ahead. We've closed the speakers list. So now we will go back to the city council for discussion and deliberation. So you sort of take take the names as they come up here on the order. So we did council member Gonzales and price for the motion and Pierce for the motion. So we go now to Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to start with just thanking everyone who attended tonight or communicated with our offices in weeks past. I also want to acknowledge I have a number of letters that were submitted to the clerk. So I do want to acknowledge the Human Relations Commission for expressing their support tonight. I think acknowledge Supervisor Hahn, Senator Laura and both Congress members that represent Long Beach, Alan Lowenthal and Annette Berrigan for expressing support. So I thought it was important that we acknowledge that this has been a conversation that's taken place for quite some time. I do remember, you know, the initial conversations of this prior to when I took counsel, I spent some time as a chief of staff to former councilman Steve Neal. And I remember this was a conversation in the downtown and and I do remember sort of the last council beginning these conversations. So I haven't had an opportunity to sort of watch and follow. And I do want to just acknowledge and take a moment just to acknowledge the two council members that represent downtown. So Janine Pearce and Lena Gonzalez. And you know, Lina, just want to say thank you for taking the courage of stepping up. This conversation is not an easy one. And and sometimes it's more convenient to let the conversation come to you. But I do acknowledge, you know, sometimes a political risk on the threats, the pressure when you step out and raise and elevate. An issue. To a local body to engage on that issue. Now, I think the fact that this came tonight is a good thing. I think it's an opportunity for us to cut the politics for a minute and get to the policy and actually take a look and talk with our city attorney and talk with our council members and get to the meat and the crux of this issue. So I'm going to start my comments just talking about the issue that's come up the most aside from me. And I do want acknowledge the, you know, the issues related to women and buttons and all of that. But I want to start with the square footage now. The presentation I saw tonight. You know, I've seen some of these numbers before, the numbers that shows an average among some of the bigger hotels, larger hotels about how many square feet people clean. I also, you know, I am here every year when we receive the presentation from the Convention and Visitors Bureau on how tourism is is growing and thriving. And we do pay attention and that is something we're proud of and we pay attention to. I think the square footage conversation, if the average what I saw tonight and what I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, councilmember, but it said something like 3800 square feet was that was the average. And I saw, you know, one hotel was maybe just over 4000. Some were just below 4000. But you know, the conversation about economic impact, I want to sort of dig into that a little bit. If the square footage cap is 4000 square feet, that means you lock it in what it is today. And it guarantees that as tourist, tourism and industry grows, that that additional economic benefit is not squarely placed on the backs of workers, but rather it sets a cap on work load and says we should hire additional staff in order to accommodate this economic growth. So if the if if the 4000 square feet is average today, there shouldn't be an economic impact today. The economic impact should be realized as economic benefits are realized. So what it says is, as we grow, we're not going to place that burden. We are going to share in the benefit in higher additional workers. Now that I can support. Ensuring that as we grow, we hire additional people. And that is an opportunity for me to say, Brother, I never met you before, but what you said about doing the hospitality, training and all of that, that makes sense to me. That says let's create the economic opportunities in the future. As the Olympics come to Long Beach and these other things happen. What message do we send to the world? What message do we send to the women of the world? I think it's a strong message to say, as we grow, we keep our local folks in mind and we hire additional people. That's the way I'm breaking this down. I know there will be, you know, contrary opinions. But that's the one issue that I haven't. Heard a specific response to. You know, economic impact to me means they're hiring additional people. So where is that threshold? Where is that threshold? You know, where the square footage is of 4000? The data shows me 4000 is above average. That means there shouldn't be an impact here. So I spent the moment talking about that. They don't want to just acknowledge, just in general, I know how difficult it is to have conversations. And and I want to acknowledge the people who did come down to the dais and share their stories. And and I acknowledge those stories. As a son of a domestic worker, my mother was a home care worker. She cleaned. She took care of people. All right. I heard someone mention sharecropper. That's something I'm really proud of. I can trace my lineage back to sharecropping and to slavery. I acknowledge. That. You know, I you know, I'm a father, two daughters, two Afro-Latino daughters that are beautiful. And that's my pride. And nobody better than, you know, Rick's List. But the reality is to say that and to also somehow diminish the evidence that exploitation of workers in this country or the history of that says that we are not acknowledging our past. Now, whether this happens in your hotel or not. That does not prevent me from saying What can we do to prevent it from happening in the future? That is our responsibility. We should create policies for the future, the next generation of workers as they come in. I mean, we can debate all night about what happens to the middle class, which is getting richer, poorer, getting poorer. But the reality is the service industry needs to be supported. These are the most vulnerable workers. And it is our job as as, you know, as as a regulatory agency, as a government to take that into consideration . This is not and, you know, city attorney, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is not something that's absolutely unheard of. Truck drivers regulate work load. Nurses regulate workload. Public safety officials regulate workload. This isn't something that is inappropriate in front of city council. I'd rather get down to the actual nuts and bolts of the policy and and get the feedback from the city attorney. I'd rather get to that point and cut through the politics. So I'll conclude. My. My, I'm gonna sleep well tonight. I would like the opportunity to actually vote on this item if there's other things going to happen. Substitutes now that I actually want to vote on this item tonight. So I want to hope I hope that we do get to that point. I do want I don't what I want to be able to do that. And I know I want to close and just say I hope, you know, I want to sleep well tonight with my daughters, with my wife and and sort of this is one of those moments where you just have to have a gut check on where you are. I acknowledge the I acknowledge the impacts, potential perceived impacts of the community to communicate it to us. Let's actually go forward. Tear off the Band-Aid. Start this conversation that will evaluate what that is and see if we can mitigate or talk about the economic impact in the city, because that's a conversation I want to have. But thank you again to all of you who who spoke up in this motion has my support. Thank you. And just before we got to count some of your anger, I just to clarify also, Mr. City Attorney, so the motion would be, I believe, councilwoman to the city attorney to craft an ordinance, is that correct? Yes, I mistakenly added city manager. So if I can just amend that to say city, to direct the city attorney to create this ordinance. And just for Mr. Parking, just for the public so that we they understand the process. So essentially the motion would be for you to craft an ordinance. And then the ordinance, of course, would then come back to the city council. Is that correct? That's correct. Through the discussion this evening, we would clarify the motion and any amendments, and then we would craft an ordinance and bring it back for a first reading and then a second reading, and then it would go into effect subsequent 31 days after it's signed by the mayor after second reading. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember. Your income. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank all of you for sticking around, staying here. I know it's late into the evening, and I know it's bedtime for Rex, so I hope Richard has a good night tonight. Little known fact is that I have a son and a daughter in law who work in the hotel hospitality industry . So this issue was a no brainer for me to get into because I do very much care about their safety and where they work and how they work. There was a person earlier who spoke and threw out two statistics that out of 5000 rooms that were cleaned over the last year, there were only two reported instances. One of those two were my son or my daughter. That's too much. That's enough. There was also some commentary made about this is bad public policy. Well, when that public policy deals with employee safety. Is it bad policy when that public policy deals with the public interest, when that public policy deals with civil rights and employee health ? Is that public bad public policy? I don't think so. There were arguments made. When we were dealing with Measure N and raising the minimum wage for hotel workers. There was this big discussion about Chicken Little. This guy is going to fall. Tourism is going to drop. Hotel rooms are going stay empty. The economic impact will be tremendous to see Long Beach. We've actually heard quite the contrary, read after measure and pass. We've had a burst of growth and a burst of economic interest in Long Beach, but yet employee workloads increased and employee hiring went down. But yet we still benefit from measure in because because salaries went up and has been steady. We're looking at a future where we're building more hotels, which means more rooms, which means more conventions, which will affect our ability to house people when 2028 comes to town. And there is going to be a huge, huge economic interest and economic benefit to the city of Long Beach. Are we going to be prepared for that? That's what we're talking about. So what kind of future do we want for our employees, for for our hotel workers, for our housekeepers? We want to secure a future for them that is going to be violence free, that is going to be making them happy to go to work, to want to come to work. And finally, there was a discussion earlier made about the possible loss of hope to our philanthropy, to smaller nonprofits, because this would affect the economic bottom line of our hotels. I hope that does not happen. I hope that is not true, and I don't think it will be. But it had to be stated because there's a genuine concern out there that if hotels don't thrive and don't make money, their ability to support nonprofits is going to go down. I hope not, and I don't think it will, because this measure that we're dealing with today, the ordinance that we're working with today, is going to actually strengthen us. It's going to strengthen our hotel. It is going to provide them with greater opportunity to hire more people, to do more beds, to do more work, and to. Not only that, the best part of our tourism industry is when you go anywhere in this city and you're greeted by a hotel worker, a service worker, a police officer, a firefighter, and they give you a greeting with a smile that's going to want you to come back. Not stay away. So I'm very supportive of this measure as it is, and I hope it stays that way. And I hope my colleagues my colleagues can support that as well. Thank you. Very much. We have Councilwoman Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to my colleagues for speaking and thank you to my colleagues who brought this item forward. And, Councilwoman Gonzalez, for bringing this item forward and for giving us the presentation. I know that this is something that she feels genuinely passionate about, and I respect that. And I think that there are a lot of issues that were raised tonight that are incredibly worthy of consideration and talking about and I want I want to talk about those a little bit. I also want to thank the folks from Unite here because they have taken the time to meet with me and they've educated me on the topic and they've asked me a lot of questions. And from day one, I've been very honest with them about my concerns. And I have to be honest, I still have those concerns today about aspects of the proposed ordinance. So I do have a few questions and I think I'll direct them to city staff to the extent that city staff can answer them. But then if city staff can't answer them, I think I want to raise the questions and hear from my colleagues. So in reading the the item that was filed tonight, it looks to me I know that Councilman Gonzales in her presentation talked about the issue of safety and the issue of controlling or limiting or regulating workloads. Go hand in hand. I personally am having difficulty with that nexus and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues of what that nexuses. And what I mean by that is. If we were to put all the safety measures into place, the panic buttons, the notices, the every type of support, the training, everything that we can do, which I think is absolutely important. The public safety aspects of it, I think are of zero issues with them. I'm completely 1,000% in support of the panic buttons, doing everything that we can to make sure that women and men are safe in their work environment. I think that's really important. But reducing the workloads, so limiting the number of square feet that a person cleans, will that make them less likely to be the victim of sexual assault? And that's what I don't understand. And so I would like to hear how how is that? Is that is it because if if they're cleaning more, then they don't have I don't understand if they're cleaning less than how are they more able to prevent a sexual assault from happening? So I can't see the Nexus. And so I just so that's just something I'm putting out there is a concern because I think to me, in my opinion, they are I understand they're being brought as a as a package of issues. But it's you know, we have a test that we do and legal analysis that we say. But for this, that wouldn't happen. So can we say but for them working. More square. Footage than they should, a sexual assault wouldn't happen. We can't say that. So to me, whether you're cleaning 2000 square feet or 7000 square feet, you still have the same risk of coming into a room with a man who or a woman or anybody else who is drunk, has bad intentions, is disrespectful of you, as Anita pointed out, is is on a vacation or something. And that has no inhibitions. Whether you're cleaning 2000 square feet or 7000 square feet, that client doesn't know the difference of that. So if they're going to attack you, it doesn't matter how many square feet you're cleaning, they're still going to attack you. So I think we really need to be thinking and maybe I'm missing it. I'm more than happy to listen, but I just don't know what that nexus is. I'm sure I am. So that's why I said I'm looking forward to listening and having a civilized debate about it. So I really would love to hear more about that. The question that. I would have for our. Police department, I guess, and I don't know if the chief is here, Chief, I know there was a staff report produced with some data based on questions that council was asking. And I think one of the questions that was asked was what are the number of sexual assaults that have been reported? And look, I'm a prosecutor. I know that. Most. Sexual assaults go unreported. That is that is absolutely true. I know issues whatsoever with that. Having said that, we did have two incidents of reported activities that were violations or alleged violations of the law, one against a male and one against a female in the period of time that we studied. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Do we have any data that says that people are more likely to be assaulted if they're working in a hotel with 100 rooms versus working at a hotel with less than 100 rooms? I don't know of any information like that. At least I haven't been exposed to that. Another. I mean, one of the things that concerns me, too, is if generally people who stay at hotels are more likely to commit sexual assaults, I would think that would be true for motels or even hotels under 100 rooms. I could be wrong. And again, I'm open to hearing if that's that data. But my curiosity is why aren't we trying to protect workers at hotels for under 100 rooms? So I guess that's not that's not really a question. Well, it's not. Really I guess that's not really a question for the chief. But maybe I more I think we should adopt a policy tonight to put into place safety measures for all of our housekeepers. But I think we should do it for all hotels. I really do. Does it matter if you have ten rooms or if you have 300 rooms? If we want to protect housekeepers, we should protect them regardless of whether they work for a national chain or not. So the other question I would have for the city attorney and I don't know if you know this, but one of the comments was that there was no litigation that resulted out of similar statutes passed in Emeryville and other cities. Do you know if that's true? Because that's not the research I did and I could be wrong. But I'm just curious if you know anything about that. I'm not the expert on it. But we did look at Emeryville, and I don't believe that they had the panic button issue. They passed an ordinance that had a square footage. Oh, cleaning requirement. Seattle had an initiative that had the both the notice requirements and a cleaning limitation. Mm hmm. Okay. And so with. With either of them, was there any litigation, if you know? Yes, I do know. And yes, there was litigation in both situations. In Seattle, there was a challenge under preemption issues as to the square footage and cleaning Seattle. And that was under the I believe it's called the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act. And there the court found that there was not preemption, that the city of Seattle, the language in that statute was did not preempt the city of Seattle from issuing that regulation and limiting the square footage. And then there was also challenges on constitutional basis as to the list. And in that case, the court found that the challenge was a facial challenge. And the the court found that there was no facial challenge, that it was constitutional. But they left open the question of as and as applied challenge, that there was no list and there were no people on the list as of the time of the oral argument. Okay. I understand. And do you have any idea how much those those suits cost the cities or how how significant they were, if at all? I mean, lawsuits are common, so that's certainly not a deterrent from us engaging in good policy. But I'm just asking the question. That's certainly not. But the my information from the city of Emeryville is they spent approximately 750 $800,000 in defending their suit. I do not have that similar information for the city of Seattle. Okay. The I. I want to stay on the topic of the safety concerns, because then I have a few questions on the workload concerns. On the safety concerns in on page two of the item. It talks about providing notice to hotel employees, requiring hotel employees to provide notice to the employees prior to starting their scheduled work of any guests on the list of alleged harassers or a sex offender. So I have a couple of questions about this. And really, it comes down to privacy. So if someone is a convicted sexual offender and required to register as a sex offender pursuant to Penal Code Section 290, the law gives them the right to stay at a hotel. The largest allows them to stay at a hotel. What I'm concerned about is alleging violations of sexual misconduct and that person ending up on some sort of a list. And the reason I worry about that, I'm sorry that. It's not an item. It says of any guest on the list of alleged harassers. So, okay, so maybe I guess my question would be it says here that there's going to be a list of alleged harassers. So if that is actually in the item on page two, I could be wrong. I'm just reading the item. If that actually is on the item, then my question would be, who is making the allegation? Where is the list going to be maintained? Does the allegation have to be corroborated like it would in, you know, a criminal justice setting and what privacy information of that guest would be made available pursuant to that list? So I could be wrong. Maybe it's not on there. Regarding workloads. So there's a lot of the comments we heard tonight and in my meetings with Unite Here. One of the things that they said was that it's important to regulate. Square footage of hotel rooms, because hotel rooms of today have a very different realities than hotel rooms in the past. Heavier mattresses are used. The pillows need to be treated with different care because of the quality of the pillows. More glass is used in the room requiring more wiping down. And so that makes sense to me that the work load time you're spending in the room might be longer. But in looking at the item on page three, what it says is that. The square. Footage limitation, it says this limitation should apply to any combination of spaces, including guests, rooms and suites. Meeting rooms are hospitality rooms and apply regardless of the furniture, equipment or amenities in any room. So I guess my question would be, does this mean that if a person is cleaning a banquet room, does that go into the 4000 square feet calculation? And the reason I ask that is because I'm certainly not an expert in this industry, which is probably why I have concerns about us regulating workloads in this industry. But the arguments that were made to me by Unite here had to do specifically with hotel rooms, and that's not how the item is written. So I'd like some clarity on whether that applies to all rooms and all spaces. And I know these are kind of nuanced details that that aren't very exciting to talk about, but nevertheless, there are questions that I have. In regards. To. I did have a question regarding the protections about workload that we provide to our own city employees. Other than what. We go through with OSHA. Do we have any limitations on the workloads of our own employees that our city and that's for the city manager, that our city regulations not having to do with OSHA, like do we limit the number of police reports a police officer can write or do we you know, do we have anything like that that has nothing to do with OSHA? Most of our regulations come to us through our muse, and our meeting confers whether it's whichever of our 11 organizations that we work with. Certainly, as you mentioned, we do have OSHA regulations in our fleet and public works departments. There's D.O.T. regulations for our refuse department on how many hours a driver can work or how many how many hours per day. We certainly have other regulations for use and our fire department, we have four man crews instead of three man crews, and we limit how many hours in a row a fire department fireman, a firefighter can work. Same thing with a PD officer. But most of the limitations that we have would be through our memorandum of understanding when we go through our labor contracts with our organizations. Okay. And and do you know, Mr. West again and I know this is kind of an unfair question to ask you, because this isn't a staff item. But do you know if. There are. Overtime requirements and things that. Are regulated through. The state that we have to follow for our own employees? Yes, FLSA we have to require we have to provide. Overtime when people work certain hours and things and that's regulated by the state. Yes. Okay. And again, since this isn't a staff initiated item, I'm not sure who to ask the question of, but I don't how many hotels have mandatory overtime because I've not heard of too many that have mandatory overtime. So I'd like to know the answer to that question if anyone has it. And of course, anti retaliation, I'm 1,000% supportive of that. People should not be getting retaliated for advocating for their own rights or for engaging in a collective bargaining association, which I've been a member of for 18 years. I'm fully supportive of that. And they shouldn't be retaliated for for involved getting involved in that activity. In regards to the workload regulations, I will say one thing. I mean, I know this was presented and has been presented a lot as a woman's bill, but I will I will tell you guys one thing, and I can already anticipate what the reaction is going to be. But I'm going to speak genuinely and I'm going to speak from the heart. I am a woman and I am a working woman. And it is very, very important to me that I be given equal pay for equal work that I do in my work environment. And what that means to me is I don't need any accommodation in terms of the number of hours I work or the type of assignments that my employer gives me in my job, which is a male dominated job, I can do every single thing my male counterparts can do, and I expect to be paid exactly the same as my male counterparts because I will work exactly the same hours. That they require. And so perhaps I'm missing. Something here. But if. We're going to regulate. Workloads, we should be regulating workloads for men and women, not just for women. We are equal in every way. Whatever a man can do, whether it's in the battlefield, in a in a mechanic shop, in an operating room, a woman can do two and she can do it at the same level. And I would argue in some cases better. So, so for me, I, I, I, I think there are aspects of this proposed ordinance that are fantastic. And I would be and I want to hear comments from my colleagues. I mean, no disrespect in expressing my genuine opinions on this. I am engaging in this debate in the spirit of civility and respect, respecting my colleagues and understanding that we may not agree on everything. I will tell you, if there was a will, I'd be ready to vote on the safety issues right now and make that an ordinance. I have concerns about the workload conditions. I shared a story with a couple of the folks from Unite here who came to see me today. And again, I'm sure there's going to be internal and external eye rolling as I share the story, but I think it's an important story to share. I flew back from Montreal on Sunday night with my husband. We were seated at the back of the plane. There were 33 rows. We were in row 32, and so we got to spend a lot of time with the flight attendants. I'm kind of chatty and I talk to anybody who will talk to me. My husband won't. So I was talking to the flight attendant and I she doesn't know I'm a council member. She certainly doesn't know about Claudia's law. But I asked her, I said, Well, how do you like these international trips? And she said, We actually really don't like international trips because when we fly international, the flight's a little bit longer and people eat more on the plane, so they put more things in the seat back. There's always crumbs and things on the floor. And so when we deplane the effort and the work that's required by the flight attendants to get the ready, the plane ready in a short period of time for the next group of passengers is very cumbersome. It's a really hard process. It's it's hard cleaning. They don't like it. They prefer the one hour flights because people don't eat full meals in the one hour flight. And so I was thinking to myself, obviously, this woman doesn't know what I do, but I was thinking to myself what would happen next if the airline industry union came to us and said, we want you to regulate the number of international airplanes that our flight attendants have to clean per day, or if any other industry came to us and said, we want you to regulate, and maybe they're not an industry that's represented by a union. Maybe it's just a group of employees at a at a carwash or at a nursery or whatever the case may be who say, you know what, we feel overworked. What are we going to say to them that, I'm sorry, your industry is not as thriving as the hotel industry, so we're not going to get involved. Or. Your interests, whoever is representing you is not as significant to us. So we're not going to worry about you right now. Or. There's less than 100 of you. So sorry you're on your own. I just think that's not fair. So it's so in my opinion, if we're going to do this, then let's be prepared to really do this. We can't say yes to one class, one class of employees. I mean, I was just thinking, what about the janitors and the chefs and the people who work the front desk? Like what aren't they going to be sitting there saying, Well, what about my workload? You know, when we have a. Big convention and nobody's I'm having to, you know, be standing on my feet the whole time at the front door dealing with entitled people who, you know, are upset that I'm not getting their bags. I mean, what. About those people? So so for me, I don't know why we're picking this one classification and not everybody. These are just concerns I have. I remain completely open minded. These are genuine questions. That I have. So we all work hard. You're right. So I think it's really important that we allow one another. This is a democracy. And one of the beautiful things about our country is that as long as we're engaging in civilized and respectful debate, we are in a in a room that respects democracy and differences of opinions. And just because we don't all agree on everything all of the time doesn't mean what someone has to say is funny or rude and not worthy of consideration. Everything everyone said in this room tonight is worthy of consideration, including what I had to say. And I thank you for listening. Thank you. We're going to we have definitely a lot of folks lined up. I'm going to go through them here in a minute. But just want as a reminder, obviously, make sure that everyone on the council, regardless of their opinions respected and that we're obviously listening to what folks just saying. So. Councilmember Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to, first of all, just just to say thank you to everybody who came out and spoke this evening. Appreciated all of the letters, all of the social media attention and all of the comments here this evening. I want to first explain something as well when we bring forth an agenda item. There can be no more than four people on an agenda item. Right. And also, our brownout prevents us from being able to converse. And so that is somewhat limiting for for for the city council in terms of our ability to to really coordinate and talk about our concerns and to to to to reach public policy, sound public policy. And so we this is our forum. And our forum is as public. And and, you know, usually the lobby city council is is well attended. And so I'm glad to see so many people here this evening. The the issue of domestic workers, I'll just give you a little history. My grandmother was a domestic worker. My mother was a certified nursing assistant. She cleaned beds and made beds. My grandmother scrubbed floors on her hands and knees in a hospital for many years and retired with very bad knees. I have spent a career in all of my my my adult life here in City of Long Beach, working for better working conditions for not only hotel workers, but all workers. Right. I was on an organizing committee over 20 years ago when there was this vision to make more hotels, union and unionize more hotels in Long Beach. We saw a need. I supported measure in I've walked picket lines with hotel workers over the years and those struggles will continue, I'm sure. But I want to just let you know that I've been there over the last five years. We three large hotels in the city of Long Beach have were unionized and entered into collective bargaining agreements. We all we have agreements in place for new hotels that are in development for those to be union hotels as well. That's progress. Am I right? And it's also those hotels and the workers and unite here for for reaching into entering into those agreements. And I believe those moves have significantly impacted the growth of convention and banquet activity in our city. When this this policy idea was first brought to my attention almost four years ago now, Suji Lowenthal was on the city council, and I thought she was going to bring it forward. For some reason, it just never came forward. Janine Peirce was an organizer with with the hotel workers at the time. And I think she was the first person to bring this to my attention. I did express reservations then and concerns, as did many council members, I think, over the years about moving forward with such a policy. But I have kept an open mind and I did keep an open mind and hope that I would get sufficient data and evidence to be gathered and shared with the Council in support of a need for such a policy. What I heard here tonight was a lot of people talk about sexual assault. And, you know, that's that's not acceptable for any workplace, for any worker to experience that at any time. Right. And and and I'm not going to argue whether or not it happened or not, because I don't know the hotel guest. And they're not here to tell me whether or not it happened or not, but I'm not going to second guess someone's experience. Mike, my question is whether or not this policy as proposed will do much to change. And I'm not sure the policy as proposed will do much to change. The, the, the, the, the work, the nature of the work of a hospitality worker and the risk and that that's that's the difficult part I'm having here. No matter how big the size of the rooms or what we regulate or if we regulate anything or whether or not there are even panic buttons, I think panic buttons or and or other technologies should be employed and looked at and we should in. Courage that strongly. From the hospitality, the hotels and for our workers, I represent and work with people who work in our state correctional institutions. Right. In some of our most volatile state hospitals, they have panic buttons, they have security systems, and they also have correctional officers close by. But guess what? They get their victims of violent attacks all the time. And as a union rep. And that's my profession. I and I've committed my, my, my, my, my, my life to this to this work. I am always in contact with Cal OSHA. When something like that happens, I make sure to put it on record because it's so, so important for future reference. When I go back and to see what happened and not, not have have a record of it happening. Makes it very, very difficult to talk, to inspire or to make change or to change a policy even in the workplace. I've got to say that I'm a little bit disappointed. I'm a lot disappointed in the tone of this issue because I want to dig in and fix it and fix the issue. To use a vice mayor's term. I want to do a deeper dove. Right. I think this this this policy, as has presented, is very, very complex. And there were a lot of pieces here that we can we can really, really work on. I'm not sure that it is something that we can do in one fell swoop tonight, though. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions here. And I like to get get information from both, you know, the hotels and and and the advocates for the workers who have done a, I think, very good job of bringing data. But I asked for a lot of this data like two years ago, and I got it today. You know, unfortunately, I didn't get it. If I'd had it last week, it would have helped me shape. My, my, my, my thoughts a little bit differently on this issue. And so, like I said, I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to get that. And I'll be the debrief. And while I appreciate the Iraqi's advocacy on this issue, I really didn't appreciate some of the like I said, the tone, the subtle threats, the direct threats. I found that to be very disparate, despicable, but also duly noted. And clearly from many of the comments that we received here this evening, I think some of the folks in the public are confused about the real intent and the complexity of this proposed policy. I'm sensitive I'm very sensitive to the issues of workplace safety and for hotel workers and all the workers in our city. And I hope we can walk away tonight with a commitment to support a safer, more dignified work environment and hopefully get something done. I'm enthusiastically in support of the right for union workers or workers to organize a democratic workplace and to choose a union to be their exclusive representative. Unionized workplaces result in better wages, benefits, and safer, fairer working conditions for all workers. Collective bargaining agreements work. And if you don't have one, you know, when I look around here tonight, if every one of these advocates and strong supporters of this policy were to go and talk to a union employee or nonunion employee and get them to sign a card, I think would be 100% unionized in Long Beach in no time, because it doesn't seem like we're impacting thousands and thousands of workers. We're talking about a few hundred workers. Recent Gallup polls released showed that over 60% of Americans understand the need for unions to support unions. And so to the hotel industry, it's not a matter of if, but when these hotels go union. And so I think when you and I when you sat down with me a few weeks ago, I said, I think you should get ahead of this as much as you possibly can and be prepared to work with with the the employees groups. That said, the item before us doesn't feel like super public policy, in my opinion, and it's not supported by my facts or the record of report it or there's no record of reported incidents. I'm still troubled with that. And I think, you know, we can do better. And I think tonight it would would would serve us well to do a reset hit a reset button. To to to to commit as a council to continue to work on this issue. I mean, this is there's not. I'm trying to figure out what what is the rush? This is we'll go back to the airport issue. What was what was the rush to get a policy? Why does this why can't we. Take our time. And deal with this issue by issue? Because truly, I mean, the clock there is a favor by giving us an abbreviated reading of this. This is this needs to be very, very, very complicated. And and it does a lot as it seeks to do a lot. I like to take our time and and break this down issue by issue and work on this to get a sound policy. And I want to have a question for the city attorney in terms of the enforceability of this. If we were to look at every element of this this this proposed policy, what role will the city of Long Beach have in terms of enforcing it as drafted? The motion seeks to have the enforcement be a self enforcement by the worker or a representative of the worker under the. The last bullet under enforcement. All of the provisions would be via a private right of action in superior court. So there would be no responsibility for the City of Long Beach to enforce this. As I currently read the motion. That is correct. I want to hear from some other council members on this. I in my opinion, this this this would be more of a vague. I think we'd be better served as a city council by offering a very strong resolution. I heard some things here tonight that I heard from the very first time that I'm interested in in pursuing. I know our hospitality industry will grow and is projected to grow over the next several years significantly. We will be hosting the Olympics and in several years we will be ramping up for that. And we will have new hotels on on on board. I'm interested in in diversifying this workforce, I think and I'll just be very honest with you, the the mental image that we have of of a hospitality worker is, is, is and so much has been made and made about Marion, the the the issues of immigrants and workers . And I get that that's important. But African-Americans should be represented in the workforce. Cambodians, the diversity of the city should be represented in that workforce. I'm not sure that the way this issue has been put before us that that is that is really reflected here. And I'm I'd like to know more about what that workforce looks like. So I'm going to just just take a take a shot at a substitute motion to request the city attorney to draft a resolution by the states, the city council, strong support for safe work, environment for all employees and Long Beach's hospitality industry that protects women . And encourage encourages the best technology with in terms of panic buttons and surveillance. You know, in the hospitality industry, in all hotels. Second, I'd like to encourage the hospitality industry to work with the London's police department to develop and review their safety plans and predict that and protect our guests and employees to come up with the best safety plan possible. Three I like the city of Long Beach to support the rights of employees to organize and democratically select a union of their choice and support collective bargaining process in the hospitality industry. Four I'd like to encourage the employees or I'm sorry to encourage the hotels and motels in Long Beach to place a priority on hiring local residents and diverse residents and the diversity of the city to fill jobs. In fact, I'd like to resolve that we support these protections for all workers and guests at Long Beach hotels and motels, regardless of their size. And that is my substitute motion. There's a substitute motion. Is there a second for that second councilmember, I think got some more stupider. Hey, guys. Hey, guys. We have that. We have to conduct a meeting. Please. Please. There's a second by Councilmember Supernanny, and I brought. Them to Friendly's from colleagues. There's a there's a motion. And the second customer I should probably want to speak to the second. I don't have to at this point. I want to make a couple of points. We can wait to hear from our colleagues. Next up is Councilwoman Mongo. I want to take the time to thank everyone who came tonight and. Brought their voice to this council. I think that discussing working conditions is always an important matter. Many of you know that I worked in a factory in Santa. Ana as one of my jobs out of college, and I have stood behind. Workers, stood beside workers and been a worker. When workloads get difficult. Times change and seasonal employment changes and the components of a workload are stressful and challenging. I echo the comments of Councilwoman Pryce that in any of those conditions, though, I want to be treated as an equal, and I want men and women to be treated the same. And I want to earn the same wages. I also want to thank the members of Unite here who. Met with me about two weeks ago or three weeks ago. And we discussed point by point throughout the policy that they had proposed and some of the concerns. That I had about the policy at that time. It was disappointing that in those dialogs and conversations there was no openness to modifications. I have some personal experiences. Almost two years ago, a member of my family who does work in downtown Long Beach, who does not work in the hotel industry, who does have a panic button in her workspace, pressed the panic button more than 12 times and nobody came for more than 40 minutes. She was held hostage and nobody came in her building. Our L.A. County Sheriff's. And nobody came. And so I have consistently stated that relying on technology is never enough. I am open to supporting ideas. Related to real change and real protections. Pairs of people working. Together, not just women, but women and men. And to other ideas that could be seen throughout this policy. And we sat through an hour and a half of public comment on this. And often the individuals speaking at the dais talked to how they had come to meeting after meeting and provided their feedback. And we accepted that feedback and made modifications. 100 meetings, 50 community meetings that came about with a policy that I know all of us feel very confident in and strongly behind. And I want to get to a place like that for each and every. One of you, because abuse in the workplace shall never be tolerated in Long Beach. So. I look forward to a continued dialog and I appreciate any opportunity to move in a direction of strong policy. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Councilmember Pearce. Okay. Thank you, colleagues, for your comments and your questions. So I'm going to address some of the questions. Councilmember Price, you had asked the question, why together these items together are an item about inhumane working conditions, whether it's sexual assault or whether it's having to work overtime or missing your 15 minute breaks. You've heard I was in your office several years ago when we heard from women talking about increased duties because they were skipping the bathroom, because they weren't allowed to use the bathroom on the floor that they were cleaning. And there's been a lot of tension and there's a lot of fear in some women to come forward still. But this item is not an item that is here today and hasn't been here for three years. We've had the only request that we've really had has been, can you give us more data? Can you give us more data about the sexual assaults? Well, the data we have on sexual assaults is 91% of our victims are women. That's why this is a women's issue. 80 plus percent of the women in our hotel and the people in our hotel industry are women. That's why it's a women's issue. And I think we had men come out and speak to that as well. And there are men in that industry as well. But we cannot ignore that. While we've been fighting for equal pay, while we've been fighting for equal treatment of women, it still doesn't happen. Even when we have people that are fighting for that, it still doesn't happen. And so we have to, at a local level, be able to create as much opportunity to talk about structural oppression. It's not necessarily that the manager at that hotel is the one that says, we're going to do this to our women. It's because that's the way structures are created. It's because some of these women are immigrants. And whether they're documented or not documented, they come over here and they're fighting to get the best job they can or a job that they have family already in. And that's why these industries are that way. And so I just you know, why women that's that's why women live together, because it's about inhumane working conditions. And it's not about OSHA. It's about I tell you, my first year in council, I mean, I was tired, I was exhausted. And I went through some some trauma in my first year in council, some a lot of other things. And not sleeping well at night and going through the things that I'm going through at home meant that it made it worse. And that's what we're talking about when women are overworked and they have sexual assault on top of it and they have that on top of it, and then they have to go home and feed their families. They have to go home and try to do their homework with their kids. The days that I'm exhausted or the days that my kid is the most hyper or the days that she wants my attention the most. And so that's why this is packaged together and that's why workers have asked us to keep it that way. And I agree. Councilmember Price Let's go to zero. Let's do all hotels in the city. Let's say we need to have sexual assault protections for all hotels. All of them. And I do want to again embark on the conversation that we have been here for three years. Yes, Sergio was in the seat and this conversation was here and we've sat down. And when I first got to office, I really did make an effort. And whether you guys, some people out there want to short discount that effort. I sat down with every manager I had to beg for a meeting with the with the last manager of the Westin and another hotel still refused to meet with me. And I came to them with the message and I met with with you, Jeremy. I met with a lot of folks. And I came and I said, You know what, guys? I've worked with you right here for ten years, not on their payroll as a as a partner for ten years. And I understand this policy more than anybody. If anybody can sit down and say, where's a middle ground here? Where are the areas that we I can learn about your industry in a better way that might help me craft the very best policy. But what happened instead of that? Whenever me and the vice mayor and several other on this council said, you know what, let's create a long process. It could be a year where we do roundtables and we talk about the research and we do all of this instead of that. We got some complaints about my role at a nonprofit that doesn't make any money off of this policy one. And so basically we said we're going to wait a year. In that year, you guys could have been doing some research and bringing back to us some actual reasons to not pass this policy instead of don't Governor. You could have done that work and been able to come back and say, here's what's reasonable. Here's what works for us. We never heard what works for you. Besides, don't do it. And that's my frustration, because I saw people in this audience and I'll put you on the spot here a little bit because we partner every policy I've done the up, the entertainment stuff, everything I've done, I've put forward a full process. A roundtable sometimes includes people throughout the city to say, I'm not going to dictate. We're going to do this together. On this one, I didn't have a partner on the other side that was willing to sit down and do that. And that's my frustration today, was saying this is not a well-made policy. This is a policy that was done by people that are experts in this field. Right. These guys are there in hotels every day throughout the world. And they've seen best practices. And we know that in New York, these practices are there. We know that in Seattle, things are happening. And so I just really want to discount that. I know the process has been difficult. And as you mentioned, the Brown Act, you know, ties us from being able to have the really get in the nitty gritty with it. But the time is now. These women have been waiting, the time is now. And so what I want to do is I would like to make a substitute substitute motion. That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, my first substitute substitute motion to pass the original motion, but to phase it in the 4000 square foot requirements over two years. In the following way, year one would be hotels over 300 rooms. Year two would be hotels 299 rooms down to 100. And I would like to see, you know, 0 to 99 in that group as well. I think that the city attorney has met several times with probably both sides. And they're this is a well-crafted policy. We've had the city attorney say that policies like this have been had litigation and they've fallen short. So I feel like we could do the right thing with our city, protecting our city and protecting our workers. And I really hope that I can count on you all to support something that people have worked really hard on. There's been a lot of research. We know that this square footage and one last time when you look at the square footage, that's something that took a long time to get to a number to understand what people are doing right now. And that's not a number that's too high. So when we know people are already cleaning that, it's about the extreme days. It's about the extreme days when we have conferences in town and conventions in town and a worker is asked to work ten or 12 hours. That's what this is about. So it's saying that we need to be able to protect that, and that's why that number is there. It's not arbitrary. Again, my substitute substitute motion is on the floor. I hope I can count on my colleagues support. They can just. Thank you. Let me let me just clarify also, just so where you just clarify, there's a there's a substitute substitute motion, which is the final motion. There's a second, but is there a second for the motion? Councilwoman Gonzalez. Okay. And the district attorney I think I think the reps have a different seconder because it's the same as the as the first motion or doesn't matter. Fine. It could be seconded by the councilmember from the first District. I just need clarification on the phase in period, if you could. Yes, repeat that. Thank you. It says that the phase in with the 4000 square foot requirement would go over two years in the following way, year one would be hotels over 300 rooms. In year two would be hotels 219. Well, yeah, 299 rooms down to zero. So that motion then eliminates the 100 rooms or more for the purposes of all of the issues the panic button, the meeting and everything, or just for the square footage. For the sexual assault piece. Well, that that's different than the square footage. We want it for everything. For everything? Yes. Thank. Okay. So we have a subset. There's a lot of speakers, so we're going to go through each speaker and continue the conversation. Councilmember Supernova. Thank you. And I'd like to thank everyone who's here tonight. Many of you have been here for 7 hours, so we really appreciate your diligence. I also want to thank Councilmember Austin for his substitute motion, which I think he said, let's hit the reset button. I like that language, but I really think what we need to do is fine tune this going forward. And I don't think the substitute substitute motion really addresses that. A couple of things that I want to follow up on that Councilmember Price had mentioned. First of all, was the Emeryville case and the cost of that. And Mr. City attorney Emeryville is a much smaller community. So if if the cost of litigation there was $800,000, I think we could anticipate it would be a greater sum here. Councilmember I think that's difficult to to make the analogy that based on the size of the city, the cost of the litigation would vary greatly, but the litigation would be expensive regardless. Yes, sir. Right. So if you look at the responsibility we have as council members, one of them is to protect the taxpayer. And it's one thing to say that this might trigger litigation, but we don't have consensus here right now that the. System would work. So we might be litigating an item that that didn't wasn't successful in terms of of initiating change. The other issue that Councilwoman Price brought up was mandatory overtime. That piece I don't know if we've discussed it enough, but I think the issue I have here and again with our responsibilities, that is. This is something that we don't have for. Our own employees in the city. So I have a hard time philosophically with that, that. How can we not how can we have mandatory overtime for our city employees? But now we're going to tell the private sector, you cannot have mandatory overtime. It's a classic do as I say, not as they do. And that's a real tough hurdle for me to get over. So back to the original point, I'll support the substitute motion by Councilmember Austin. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, we have Councilwoman Gonzalez. I. I want to thank Councilwoman Councilmember Pearce for bringing this forward. I know all of us. It's been a very long night, but I really do believe in this substitute substitute motion. I believe that we need to stick with the original plan. This is something that we cannot waiver on a resolution over. An ordinance basically tells. I think many of us that this is not something that should be taken seriously. To bifurcate the item to talk about again, the data, the non reports I think is just really a slap in the face to many of the victims that have have dealt with this. So. It is. And I will say council member, super or not taxpayers, sexual victims are taxpayers, too. And so I think it's they are. And quite frankly, to sit there and say that we owe it to taxpayers only. Well, we are all of us are taxpayers as well. And I think it's really important that we look at, you know, the overall investments that we're making here in the city and what we're doing with our taxpayer dollars to invest into the hospitality industry. We need to get that money back to be able to and reinvest in our hotel workforce. So I hope that we we do that. And as far as facts, you know, we absolutely need additional facts as much as possible to make a more formulated decision. But I think your facts are the people that are sitting right here talking to you and telling you how it is that they are dealing with this every single day. So I will say this, that I believe we should stick with the substitute motion. I'm certainly I think we're both open to friendly amendments because we want to make sure that this is right and we get it right. But they need to be reasonable and they need to make sure that they address a lot of the issues we've addressed here today. So with that said, I hope we can stick with the substitute motion, substitute substitute motion. And again, I hope we also are able to offer some ideas that would be that would work for all of us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next up, I have Councilmember Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor and I. So I also would like to thank everyone who stuck around here tonight to listen to this very important, you know, item here on the diocese. But what I'm really seriously I do understand the efforts of all the workers in the hospitality industry and this. And I sympathize with the struggles that they face. You know, I think in both the hotels and the workers, the wonderful access to our city. Without another, we would not be able to be called or be known as the tourist city of Long Beach. You know, in my opinion, a resolution is a way, I think, to express hotels that we can be a city recognized, need to address issues in the workplace, but we also want to provide them. To an opportunity to resolve these matters. In a collaborative way in which we're going through, you know, not result. Your work is to understand each other and work together to identify problems that are needed in a feasible option and benefit each other equally. So as a city, I do think. We can do what we're working for them. But what we can do is support we can support their conversations and their resolutions. So my my support would definitely be like we do the pause button because the fact that this is a very, very, very complicated situation, I think we need to really understand all of this before we start making these decisions, because this is going to be a very important decision for all of us out here tonight. And if anyone out there do not believe that we do not believe in safety or a safe place for workers, not only for FEMA's, but for me, and also because we are struggling in that. And I want to thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. Next up is Councilman Austin. Thank you. And appreciate the support for the the reset, the pause. And I want to encourage strongly encourage all the hotel workers as well as the hospitality industry to work together. And I think Councilmember Gonzalez and peers, we can all work together to continue to have these conversations and work on these issues because we are a world class city and we are a tourist destination. I want to know why are our city hotels and how our city hotels are different from Santa monica and how they're different from Los Angeles and in Anaheim? You all know that. I don't know it. I want to I want to learn more about this this industry that is that is very important for the future of the city. I came to this city as a as an aerospace worker or as an aircraft worker from over 25 years ago. And that industry is gone. Right. The hospitality industry is more and more important today than ever before. And so I don't want to be rushed into any sort of decision on emotion. Right. I want to make sure that we're making measured decisions, that we're making decisions that are going to be in the best interest of of of all residents. And I want our residents and hospitality workers to to to enjoy the benefits and the the profits that that that will come. From this industry in the future. And so I think we need to be very careful and measured in how we do that. And so I'm going to stand on my motion, my substitute motion to start a resolution, but also ask that that labor, that community, that the city council continue to work together. And we can come back next week with other propositions to to to continue to study this. But I think this is going to be a longer term study then. Then. Then I felt a fell swoop. And let me just say something about the council and everybody behind this dais. Everybody has a story. Everybody comes from a struggle from one way or another. I think this this this council reflects great diversity, but also from and from at every level. We've got baby boomers, we've got Generation X's, we've got millennials. And none of us were raised in the same household. So, you know, we come with different ideas, and that is what the process of making policy is all about. And I really appreciate working with all of you all. I have nothing but respect for my colleagues, even though in disagreement. So I'll be standing on my subject to most thinking. Next up, we have Councilwoman Gonzalez. Hi, I'm back back on on the mic again. So what I would say to that, Councilmember Austin, is if you would entertain this is, you know, I really am adamant that we need to move forward with an ordinance. I really am adamant on that. I think the substitute substitute motion provides that. Look, you've been on council a lot longer than many of us have. So you've had and been privy to this information a lot longer than we have. We actually have a lot to learn from you. What I would say to you is that if we move forward with this ordinance, this can still you know, we have to. Is it two readings that we have to do still? That is correct. After it would come back. We have two readings we still have to do in the interim as we've done before and former ordinances. We can get you that data and information. I think you bring up a really good point about Santa monica and other cities. So what I would suggest is it wouldn't be unreasonable for us to provide that information in the interim while this ordinance is being crafted. But tonight, we have to make this decision. I think it's really important for us to stay on the side of workers to make sure that we're that we're moving forward with this. So that's my suggestion. I'm hoping that that will be looked at in a way that will be positive and make us all happy in some in some way. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. City attorney, can you clarify for me the timeline that we have on this? Because I don't have it right in front of me right now. Did was there a timeline in the original motion made to come back? There is not. It's a request. The as amended, the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would include these ten bullet points. But there is not a timeline to come back. Okay. I was going to echo the same points that my colleague said. I would love to to ask my colleague, Councilmember Austin, if there's a timeline that you think would be suitable for us to say we'll keep going forward as an ordinance. But how long would it take for us to. Is it 30 days? Is it 60 days to come back with some numbers to where we can continue to have this conversation? I think the after all the work and a policy being out there written for three years, it's really hard to go to, you know, to to just to support in general for me. So I just wanted to ask, is there a timeline that you think that you would want to see some of these questions come back and what specific questions to? Well, I really wish. I had the specific questions right now in front of. Me, but usually they say no. Actually, no, actually, I can't. I can't. I'm so sorry. We did public comment already. Was the council deliberating for 5 hours? I can't wait. We have to. We have to. We've done public comment. I'm so sorry, Councilman Austin. Yes. I appreciate the offer. I'm going to have to respectfully decline. I really believe that moving forward with the resolution is the right way to go here and and coming back and like I said, breaking these down. Issue by issue. I'm willing to work with you to study these issues moving forward. And, you know, I don't want to put a put a timeline on on anything. Right. Well, look, I don't see it as a as a as a what's going to happen to what's what's going to be the difference between what's happening today and 30 days from now? Now, now, look, look, look. Okay. All right, guys, guys, we have to we have to go back to my we had to deliberate. So, Councilman Austin. That's the story in the first place. Sorry, guys, guys, guys, we have to. We we I understand. We have to. I have multiple speakers, so I got to keep going through the speakers less. Councilman Austin. Under. Councilmember Blanca. I think we paid enough discussion to call the question. Okay. Questions being called. Mr. City Attorney, you wanted to cue in? Yeah. Just to. I need to ask for a couple clarifying on the motion, if I could. The the the waiver provision, I think, Councilmember Pierce, you mentioned that the waiver provision would apply to the workloads, I assume, and the voluntary overtime and the record keeping if there was a collective bargaining and all of the provisions would apply to all hotels. Is that the motion? So the motion would be that the. The what is it called the union union opt out? I guess it would apply only on the square footage. It's entitled waiver. Allowing for a waiver of this ordinance of a bona fide collective bargaining agreement is established with equivalent protections. And what I'm asking for is a definition of what is equivalent protections. So everything outside of the sexual assault piece, just as you lined out, as you outlined it, I took mine apart on my binder. So I have it and multiple pages. So apologize. I mean, 1/2. So the things that would be excluded from that let me go that way. Okay. That would be panic buttons would be employees to be informed of guests info who is listed as a already as a sex offender. On and if I may in that issue there it does state that of any guest on a list of alleged harassers or is a sex registered sex offender. Okay. So I'm assuming then that there would be a list of alleged harassers. And if someone could further do that for me. Please exclude that from there. That's no longer included in this. Thank you. Thank you. Notice of law protecting hotel employees from harassment on the back of each door. Okay. Unwanted sexual advances towards hotel employees and guests be able to contact the police or counselor on paid time and hotel employer to cooperate with investigation me 1/2. Let me read through the rest of these. Those are the ones that would be excluded from the union. Opt out. So. Hey, guys, we. I'm sorry. Let me make sure that. I may repeat a. Long day. If I may repeat it back to you as I was looking at it a little bit differently. But I apologize. Everything would be included with the exception. Yes. And under the opt out or what would be waived under the waiver provision would be the workload requirement, the voluntary overtime and the record keeping of the workload requirement. Those three items, everything else would be included in the ordinance applicable to all hotels phased in over two years. Yes. Thank you. Okay. There's this is that this is the substitute substitute motion on the floor by Councilmember Pearce and Council member Gonzalez. So please cast your votes on the substitute substitute motion. Motion fails. Motion fails. Now, now we're going to the substitute motion, which was by Councilmember Austin and seconded by Councilmember Supernanny. Please cast your votes on the substitute motion. Motion passes. That motion passes. Okay. So that that negates the the main motion. That's the motion that actually ends up passing, which was the Austin Superman motion. Okay. We're going to go ahead and take a one minute recess and go right into the Long Beach Values Act item, which is which is coming up next. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shame on you. Shame! Shame! Shame! No. I. Know we had. Oh. Oh. Have. I believe. Get. Okay. We are going to go we're going to go ahead and hear item number 23, which is the Long Beach Values Act. So if I can please get the council, we're going to go ahead and do a a roll call here. I don't know, cause I don't really know what to do. We can't do it at her. So I got to wait for Councilman Gonzales. It's okay. We are. We're just going to wait just a minute. We got to we've got to have the author to be here. They turn up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes or no? Yeah. Because I think out and. Okay. We're going to go ahead. And while I can't do this, I'm not sure we're okay. We know we have to wait for the author. The item that's up. Why do we move on to it? We're going to do maybe one of the consent item real quick and then we'll wait for Councilman Gonzalez. So we're going to we'll call, please. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilmember Pearce. Councilwoman Price. Councilmember. Super now. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilman Andrews. Councilmember Barangay. Percentage. Councilman Austin. Vice Mayor Richardson.