Introduction of an Ordinance Amending the Alameda Municipal Code by Adding Chapter VI, Article XIII, Section 6-56 to Impose Requirements Relating to the Retention of Grocery Workers in Certain Circumstances Involving the Transfer of Ownership of Large Grocery Establishments. (Community Development 7010)
Six C Introduction of Ordinance Amending the Alameda Municipal Code by adding Chapters six, Article 13, Section six, Dash 56 to impose requirements relating to the retention of grocery workers in certain circumstances involving the transfer of ownership of large grocery establishment. Good evening. I'm Debbie Potter. I'm the city's community development director. How about a short staff report on February 3rd of this year based on a referral from Councilmember Jim Odie, the city council directed staff to prepare an ordinance to require a workforce retention period when there was a change of ownership, control or operation of a large grocery store. The proposed Grocery Worker Retention Ordinance is modeled on the City of Los Angeles ordinance. That ordinance has been upheld by the California Supreme Court. In addition to Los Angeles, his ordinance staff identified three other cities with grocery worker retention ordinances in the state. All of these ordinances define grocery establishments as being over 15,000 square feet. Therefore, staff drafted an ordinance that maintains that same definition. There are 12 grocery stores in Alameda and five of which are over 15,000 square feet. So they would be required to comply with the ordinance if it is adopted. We captured all other key provisions in the city of L.A. ordinance in the draft ordinance. So pursuant to City Council's direction, we recommend that the Council introduce on first reading a grocery worker retention ordinance, and that's staff's presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. Q Thank you. We do have four speakers on this. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and call the speakers. It'll be Jeff Dale Bono, Mike Canterbury, Tim James, and then Gary Harris. Mayor, council members, city staff Jeff Bono and resident of Alameda, president of the Firefighters Union. And I'm here to support our grocery store workers tonight and this ordinance. And I think one of the things that I think about is being 15 years old. And my first job, one of my first jobs, was being a bagger at a grocery store. And at that time, the grocery store industry being a checker was kind of a big deal, like you could support a family on it. You had health care, you had a pension. And I think all of you know, over the past decade that's deteriorated. And that's unfortunate because the grocery store is probably where we spend some of what a big part of our life and a lot of our time. And it's important to have good workers in there, but not only good workers. A grocery store is the center of a town. It's a hub, and that is where the community comes together. We buy our food there, we break bread there. You buy your bread to break there. But the workers that live there are part of the community and most of the time are residents. And I think that is something that we really need to consider in Alameda, too. When you look at the housing prices and what the cost of living is here, we want to retain good jobs, good workers. And I'm going to end with this note. We talk about 15,000 square feet. I think Encino Market would be a prime example of a shop that retains good union workers and good jobs for working families and thrives. So I know Safeway. I know Nob Hill. I know our biggest grocery stores can absolutely do that. And we can provide great grocery stores, a great economic return. At the same time, thinking about the workers are checkers, are baggers, are produce, people are butchers, the delivery people that come there that deliver food. So I'm in complete favor of this. I hope you guys can find it tonight to support it. It's important. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. Lou Gehrig. Scottie Pippen. And I hope Babe Ruth becomes the next city manager. That would be awesome. Be a real dream team. My name is Mike Henneberry. I live on Otis Drive between Mountain View Sales. I'm a lifelong Alameda resident. I'm also privileged to be the communications and political director for United Food and Commercial Workers. Local 35 or Local 35. Local five You guys can correct me if you want. Dave. It has been a long day, actually. Let me introduce the members. Local five, they're here. Could you guys stand up? Right. Thank you. We have members from Safeway Food, Max and Lucky's here tonight. We do not have any members from Nob Hill because those members are in the process of taking a strike vote. So I hope this is in 2012 all over again, but that's why the Nob Hill members are not here. But thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks for coming. I want to commence evening, make a few comments about the grocery workers ordinance and urge you to support it. Alameda Grocery workers face the same issues as our sisters and brothers elsewhere, and one of the primary issues that they face during their term of employment is when their employer changes. It's a it's a tough time for any worker. Fortunately, our members have been pretty fortunate with the Nob Hill takeover by Reilly's, the Albertsons takeover by Cerberus, Andronicus take over by Renault Evo and Safeway by Cerberus just this year. In each of these interest instances, the new entity purchasing the chains kept the staff on the payroll and for the most part, continued by keeping all the stores open. This worked out well for the employees in terms of being able to get on life without the threat of termination hanging over their heads. And it worked out well for the shopping public also in terms of having skilled clerks and meat cutters continue on the job and produce the quality products and services that the shopping public has become justifiably accustomed to, particularly here in Alameda. Despite the positive results of the above takeovers, the fact remains that when a new owner takes over, they have the unilateral right to keep or terminate any employee for any reason or no reason. And as a matter of fact, that's exactly what happened here in Alameda when the Snow family sold chestnuts and now the new owner let the staff go. And many of those people had been with that store for many years. So the dynamic of a small chain or a single store sale is addressed by this ordinance, and it's been implemented in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa monica and Gardena. The ordinance that is enacted by those cities also addresses another phenomenon that is just starting to take place in the grocery industry. Since Wal-Mart has reached capacity in rural areas and suburban areas with their supercenters, they're now entering the urban marketplace with their neighborhood stores. Those stores are 20 to 40000 square feet. And what they're doing is they're coming into urban areas and they're buying businesses that have gone out of business like Circuit City and putting stores in. And with Wal-Mart, it's only a matter of time before they start buying existing stores with existing employees. In this case, this ordinance is really going to be needed because under this ordinance, the new employer is obligated to keep the staff on for at least 90 days. This legislation does not restrict new owners from buying stores. It just requires them to retain the workers who are skilled in delivering safe, high quality goods and services to the public. And it will alleviate the stress also associated with a takeover for the employees. The staff has done an excellent job researching and put putting together an excellent staff report and ordinance. However, one item I would mention, there's a 15,000 square foot trigger for this ordinance. If it passes with a 15,000 square foot trigger, then Trader Joe's and it's now market who both have great staffs are going to be left out of this. I would suggest that you reduce that to 10,000 square feet so they are covered. I know there's some discomfort in apprehension about being sued because the L.A. ordinance had 15,000 square feet. I would recommend to reduce it to ten. And then if some someone threatens a lawsuit, I would say we could come back and discuss it at that time. So thank you very much. Thank you for your support of grocery workers and to the city manager and assistant city manager. Good luck. And have you been to Riverside? I was just wondering because you might want to check that out a little more carefully. Now. Now I. Jim James. Then Gray. Mayor Council members Tim James with the California Grocers Association representing several grocery companies. Operating here in Alameda. I think we haven't. Had the full conversation. Yet about this ordinance. When you really look at what this ordinance does, it's basically a real estate encumbrance. It's an economic development issue for a lot of ways. One of the issues that we've. Seen with the very few jurisdictions that have passed this type of ordinance, and I'd like to point out that no ordinance in the last over eight years has passed this type of ordinance. I think because they've learned. This lesson is it actually can be a issue between grocery stores selling it to another grocery store. As previous speaker speakers have recognized. Grocery stores are very important to the community as well as the workers that work there. But by placing an additional mandate, this additional regulation on grocery stores, they might grocery stores are looking to move to Alameda might not look at stores that are current stores are selling or look for open space that's it's already there. What we've seen in L.A. in a couple. Of other jurisdictions is that this has actually. Reduced the amount of grocery. Stores. In some areas and neighborhoods. Because of the retention issue and the challenge that that may present. There's a lot of open space in cities where grocery stores can choose to operate. So if you make it easier for them to not replace the current store, then that's a direction they may go. We've also seen these communities as non retailers purchasing grocery stores, since grocery stores may not want to encumber this additional regulation. We've seen grocery stores turn into karate studios. Other types of non retailers and whatnot that you then lose that value. As the city of Alameda for having the grocery store available there. So I think the challenge that we're looking at and the issue that I. Think Alameda should look at for yourselves is does this. Disincentivize? Grocery stores buying other grocery. Stores that are for sale. In Alameda? Or are you creating potentially creating a barrier where grocery stores may not want to move into Alameda or you are attracting or attracting non grocery. Retailers to take their space? So with that, that's our major concern. In all those scenarios, there's the very much potential to either. Lose a grocery store and if you do lose a grocery store, then the retention of employees, not an issue. Those employees would be also out of a job as well. So thank you very much for your time and consideration. Thank you. Gray Harris and then William Smith. Good evening. I'm Gray Harris resident. I also work for the California Teachers Association. I am here tonight in support of the grocery workers. With all due respect, I'm not really sure what else is missing from the conversation other than I see no reason why you wouldn't want to give someone 90 days to prove that they're still doing a good job. Basically, what I do all day, every day is advocate for people to have the right to some kind of process before they get laid off, fired or otherwise terminated. I don't know why grocery workers should be any different. I heard Mike say that without an ordinance like this, people can be fired for any reason or no reason. And I firmly believe that that is the wrong thing to do. If we want to build a sense of community and if people are doing a good job and they prove that they're going to continue to do a good job for a new employer, I see no reason why that would be a bad thing. So thank you. Thank you. Joe Smith. Good evening, Mayor Spencer, members of the council. I'm William Smith, the resident of Alameda and also president of the Society of Professionals and Scientists, engineers at the local level and of the university, professional and technical employees. And I am speaking as a resident of Alameda on this one. And just like I said, I definitely support the the ordinance as written and wanted to point out that the national laboratories frequently change hands in terms of management. And one of the things that is very, very important to do is retain the workforce at all levels. And it's very important, especially at the lower levels where a lot of the institutional knowledge resides. And we certainly have a lot of institutional knowledge. When I go to the grocery stores in town here and see the clerks and the people and it's just a friendly place and and I'd like to keep it that way, and I hope this ordinance will help us do that. So thank you. Thank you. As far as I know, we don't have anymore speaker setups on this issue. All right, we have a motion. Did we want to have comments first? Council member Ashcroft Thank you. Thank you to all the speakers and thank you to the staff and city attorney's office and Miss Potter for your research. And I actually went back and read the California Supreme Court decision on this. And and I thought it made a lot of sense that this is there is a public health and safety issue at play here , because these grocery workers also are trained in handling food safely. And we want to make sure that the groceries we buy are safe. But I think even more importantly than that, we we do want to make sure that people have their jobs. They've worked hard to get their jobs to advance through the ranks. And still market was mentioned. I grew up in Alameda and I can remember going every Saturday to the grocery store to internal market with my dad and the same checker lady was there. I think, you know, even by the time I grew up and had my family and then she retired. But there was a reason that, you know, people held this jobs. For all these years. I support this measure the way it was drafted by our city attorney's office. I, I have great respect for Mike Hanna, Barry, but this was the measure that we asked our city attorney to look into. And in Ms.. Potter office, and this is what the State Supreme Court has vetted and this is what I feel comfortable supporting. So I am certainly in favor of the the ordinance amending the municipal code as currently drafted. Thank you, Mayor Brody. Sure. I feel I can go after everyone else. All right. Vice mayor. Yes, I think the risk of. The Wal-Mart scenario outweighs the risk of the of the empty store becoming a karate studio in Alameda. I don't think that's that is our particular issue. I think the 90 day. A period is a good backstop for people in this in these unsettled times, economic times, where there's current turnover at corporate levels. And the litany was given to us from the podium, and I don't see that slowing down. So I think this protection is necessary. I live next to a lucky in Marina village, and I worry about that store. And I think for our own economic development, we need to have this kind of protection as well as for the people who service those stores. Member De SA. Thank you very much. For many years now, within the grocery store industry, there has been basically a race to the bottom as a result of the introduction of the Wal-Mart Supercenter and breaking even further into food. And I think this is just one way to help the working family in this era of change within the grocery industry . It's a small way, and I think comedians can play a part in it. When I look at the reason why we should play a part, certainly there is a public safety issue, a public health issue. But also, you know what? For many of us, grocery stores are places of community gathering. You know, you say Lucky's, I say Dana own tag. You know who works at the fish counter at Lucky's marina village? You say Safeway. I say Todd, my friend, who who? Greenwell, who and his and other friends who had worked at Hilo Steel, who had worked at Lucky's when there was one at the base of What's the Street, if we all remember. So there is certainly a community role that grocery stores have is a part of our fabric and. We should do what we can. We're not. We're not promising so much. We we should do what we can in the face of the changes that this industry has been going through. And to the extent that, you know, we're remaining aligned with. The Los Angeles model. I think this is a small, prudent step forward. On a final note, I can't speculate what would happen if a grocery store closed and it was difficult to re tenant. That is a possibility. Let's not romanticize this. But by the same token, think, you know, in Alameda, this is just one small part that we can do to help the working families in a much impacted industry. Other places like Oakland or Berkeley can can pass $15 minimum wage things. I'm not sure we can do that here in Alameda, but this is one small thing that we can do to protect working families. You want me to go ahead? You want to go last? I can go last. All right. All right. So I appreciate the comments raised by the speakers as well as my fellow council members. I agree with member Ashcraft in regards to the I would prefer staying with the 15,000 square feet as written that was tested by the Supreme Court as opposed to making a change at this point. I think that this brings balance in regards to maintaining the food supply or the safety of the food supply for 90 days. And then it allows the current workers to continue having a job and working and providing that service for the 90 days. So it's to me, it's not an undue hardship because it's a 90 day period. And I think it is a great benefit to our community to protect the safety of our food supply. And it also gives an opportunity then for the new buyer to meet the current employees and and make an informed decision as to who they think is would be a good match for their store. So I will be supporting this. So I want to thank the public for their eloquent comments, especially Mr. Barry, and thank Ms.. Potter for putting together this ordinance and also thank my colleagues for their thoughtful and eloquent comments. Just to address a couple a couple of points. I also had a chance to look at the case and the point that, you know, this could be disruptive to some employers. I mean, we have this at the 15,000 square foot level. I'd like to see it go down to ten, but it doesn't sound like there's consensus on the council to do that. But the comment from the the case was that the city rationally could conclude that disruptions at larger stores involving larger workforces would have a larger impact on the community and that larger stores would be more readily positioned to absorb any short term burdens the ordinance requirements might impose on employers. So, I mean, what that tells me is our large stores, our Lucky's, our ah, Nob Hill foods are Safeway's know this, they're, they're anchors to our neighborhoods. They're they're anchors to our city. And that these workers, as the staff report says, play a vital public health and economic role in our communities. So what we can do to to preserve, you know, some sense of security, even if it's just for the 90 day period, I think is worthwhile for these workers. And I think that if you look at the size of the employers we're looking at and even Trader Joe's, if we went low, I mean, they are a large enough corporation. I don't envision them moving out and I don't envision a Safeway moving in next door. But, you know, they would be able to absorb the impact of of keeping workers on and evaluating them for 90 days. And I, I do want to thank my colleagues for, you know, their their words of support and their support of of all of our working families, especially our working grocers. We have emotion. Oh, I would say this is a first reading of the ordinance. Is it? Okay. So I will move. Introduction of an ordinance amending the Alameda Municipal Code by adding Chapter six, Article nine, Sections six, Dash five six to impose requirements relating to the retention of grocery workers in certain circumstances involving the transfer of ownership of large grocery establishments. I'll second that. All those in favor. I. Oppose motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Now moving on to 60. Complete actions to expand municipal services and territory for financing district at Alameda Landing and Levy of corresponding special tax community facility to District 13 Dash to Alameda Landing Municipal Services District. You'll do so by conducting public hearings and adopting for resolutions.