Anti-Living Wage Measure Is Put on Santa Monica Ballot

The Santa Monica City Council has been forced to put a hotel-backed initiative on the November ballot that requires pay raises for some city workers, but forbids the council from enacting a citywide living wage law.

To put the measure on the ballot, Santa Monicans for a Living Wage, a group organized by the city’s luxury beach hotels, spent more than $400,000 to gather 9,815 signatures to qualify the measure.

Council members Tuesday called the initiative a calculated attempt to block another proposal that it was considering to hike wages for more than 3,000 nonunion hotel workers.

Council members publicly blasted the hotels for intentionally misleading voters.

In truth, council members said, the measure being placed on the ballot increases pay for only 200 city-contracted workers who occupy mostly low-paying security guard and maintenance jobs.

“You have to wonder why the hotels would spend over $400,000 to help 200 city workers,” Councilman Kevin McKeown said Wednesday. “I was shocked by the magnitude of expenditures.”

If passed, the measure would amend the City Charter to add wage and benefit requirements for city-contracted workers, while requiring that citywide wage minimums be set by initiative and not by the City Council.

Of the five hotel companies that funded the petition drive, Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, a nonunion hotel plagued this summer by repeated union-led protests, spent the most of any single hotel at $125,000, according to campaign finance records. The parent company of Shutters and Casa del Mar hotels, which contributed $170,000, was the largest overall contributor.

The battle over a so-called living wage in Santa Monica erupted earlier this year when the City Council voted to study another minimum wage law proposed by a group of union organizers, clergy and residents, known as Santa Monicans Allied for a Responsible Tourism.

This proposal would require Santa Monica businesses in the high-traffic coastal area with more than 50 employees to pay at least $10.69 an hour plus benefits. The proposed wage equals more than twice the state-mandated wage minimum of $5.75 per hour.

Within weeks, a group of hotels formed a campaign named the Santa Monicans for a Living Wage and launched a ballot initiative to keep the city from passing such a law.

Supporters of the union-backed ordinance say it would help underpaid hotel workers who must work multiple jobs and seek public aid to make ends meet.

But businesses say the measure would prompt mass layoffs.

“It would be extremely damaging to the very workers it purports to benefit,” said Dan Ehrler, executive vice president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. “They would lose their jobs.”