Santa Monica Living Wage Proposal Stirs Costly Fight

When a local ballot measure in Santa Monica draws $1 million in corporate backing and sets off an explosion of grass-roots opposition, you know there’s something bigger going on. In fact, Proposition KK, the so-called living wage initiative, is viewed by partisans across the country as a battle between free market forces and a wave of labor-backed social activism.

The squabble has divided this seaside bastion of strong-minded liberal thinkers in ways that haven’t been seen since the fight over rent control 20 years ago.

At stake, both sides say, is the future of the burgeoning living wage movement, which in a few years has convinced 53 cities and counties, from Baltimore to Santa Cruz, to require government contractors to pay workers a premium wage. The city and county of Los Angeles have passed living wage ordinances, and similar laws are in the works in at least 80 other locations.

In Santa Monica, labor and community activists are trying to push that concept into new territory. They argue that hotels and restaurants along a thriving two-mile stretch of coastline have benefited from public works, such as the improved pier and the Third Street Promenade, and should share the resulting wealth with workers.

Last year, they asked the City Council to set a minimum wage of $10.69 an hour for all workers in the coastal zone--marking the first time in the country that a proposed living wage has targeted private businesses with no direct ties to government funding.

National restaurant and hotel associations saw the coastal zone proposal, which remains under study, as a dangerous precedent. “What’s next?” asked Sig Ortloff, general manager of Santa Monica’s Le Merigot hotel. “San Antonio River Walk? The Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego? If Santa Monica could single out a geographic area, then what would stop other city councils from doing the same thing?”

Le Merigot joined a few other hotel chains with properties in Santa Monica in an expensive--and many argue, deceptive--counter campaign. Calling their coalition “Santa Monicans for a Living Wage,” the hotels launched Proposition KK, which would raise the wages of about 62 employees of city contractors to $8.32 an hour, but also block the City Council from ever enacting the broader coastal zone wage, which would affect about 2,500 hotel maids, food servers and other service workers.

Confused? Well, pity Santa Monica’s 55,000 registered voters, who have been besieged with campaign mailers, phone calls and personal visits over the last month, urging them to vote for or against Proposition KK.

Jen Kern, a living wage advocate who tracks national trends for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Washington, criticized the ballot initiative as a new and troubling tactic by business. “The level of spending here is unheard of,” she said. “I think the hotels see this for exactly what it is--an attempt to raise wages wherever we can.”

According to campaign finance statements, the hotel coalition has poured nearly $1 million into Proposition KK, paying for signature gatherers, phone banks, campaign literature and postage. Two companies have dominated the fund-raising, contributing more than $300,000 each: Beverly Hills-based Edward Thomas Cos., which operates Shutters on the Beach and Casa del Mar, and New York-based Loews Hotel Corp., which operates Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

Pro-KK mailers included one that condemned the City Council for “trying to interfere with our right to decide Santa Monica’s living wage policy.” Another pro-KK four-page brochure criticized Santa Monica for not having passed a living wage ordinance yet--and particularly galled advocates of the original coastal living wage proposal.

“They misrepresented their position to go after our political base,” said Vivian Rothstein, a longtime Santa Monica activist and now community liaison for the hotel workers union. “The arrogance is just incredible. I mean, what town did they think they were coming to? This has always been an activist community. People are very engaged here.”

Outspent 5 to 1, the anti-KK activists are funded by labor unions and community groups such as the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy and the Voter Improvement Program. They have mounted an aggressive grass-roots response. For weeks now, dozens of volunteers have gathered at the anti-KK campaign’s makeshift headquarters, a montage of old-time progressive Santa Monicans, idealistic graduate students and immigrant hotel workers.

Active Campaign by Volunteers

One recent evening, handmade protest signs covered the walls and counters were layered with fliers and phone lists. At every table was a fast-talking volunteer cradling a phone.

The group’s once implausible goal--to personally contact 16,000 confirmed anti-KK voters--now seems within reach, as illustrated by a champagne bottle chart on the wall showing 12,500 “no” votes so far.

“What we’re aiming for is a resounding ‘no,’ ” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio of Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism. “Something so definite that no other big business in the country will use this tactic.”

Every few minutes, a new group of volunteers, dressed for an evening of door-to-door campaigning, filed past the phone banks into a drafty briefing room. Some had traveled from San Diego and San Francisco to help; others worked low-wage jobs at union hotels in Los Angeles.

Anti-KK campaign organizer Michael Tarbet, a veteran of the successful rent control campaign in Santa Monica 20 years ago, explained the living wage movement and the hotels’ opposition to it. Then he braced the volunteers for a tough night: “These people are sneaky and they’re tough,” he said of the hotels’ paid precinct walkers. “And they’ve got more walkers than we have.”

The volunteers signaled they were ready with the signature union sign-off: “Si se puede!” Isidro Trujillo, a 26-year-old hotel worker, said he was sure of victory. “We don’t have the money that the big high rollers have, but we got the power,” he said. “We got the people and we have the desire.”

Less than a week before the election, even some KK supporters were ready to concede defeat. “I think KK will lose, but the business community has made its point,” said Herb Katz, an architect and City Council candidate who opposes the living wage concept. “If [living wage advocates] come back to the council with the same plan in the future, they will raise the ire of the business community to the point where there will be lasting repercussions.”

In other words, the living wage battle is not over yet.

Last week, the hotel coalition quietly announced it would “suspend activities” in support of Proposition KK. In a letter to Santa Monica Mayor Ken Genser, Timothy Dubois, president of the Edward Thomas Cos., said the campaign had “succeeded in making a large portion of the Santa Monica electorate aware of the complexities and the gravity of the issues involved.” But Dubois warned that the hotels would “employ every legal and legislative means at our disposal” to oppose a living wage law as originally proposed.

At the same time, Dubois’ company and Loews Hotels Corp. began funneling money into the campaigns of Katz and Rob Ross, a fellow anti-living wage council candidate--as much as $140,000 as of Wednesday.

If Katz and Ross were to be elected, advocates of a coastal zone living wage would still have a slight majority on the seven-member City Council. And this week, Mayor Genser and Councilman Michael Feinstein said the coastal wage concept is far from dead, simply set aside for further analysis. Work on drafting the ordinance could resume early next year, officials said.

Business leaders are hoping they’re part of the discussion. “The reason we put it on the ballot in the first place was that nobody would sit down and discuss it with us,” said KK supporter Jeff King, who owns Ocean Avenue Seafood in Santa Monica and a string of other restaurants on the Southern California coast. “It was being rammed down everybody’s throat.

“It’s become a very adversarial and destructive process,” King said. “There is such a thing as a win-win, but also a lose-lose.”