An ordinance designed to temporarily preserve hundreds of jobs with small supermarket chains was approved by Irvine’s City Council on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
The measure backs workers’ rights to keep their jobs for 90 days without fear of being fired during a corporate takeover. The new owner can offer a job to the workers during the first 90 days, but there’s no guarantee that any of them will be retained afterward.
The measure, which goes into effect in mid-November, was supported by a food workers union pushing to organize workers with Mother’s Market & Kitchen, a 12-store chain with smaller stores.
A 2015 state law already protects grocery workers who are squeezed out in larger chain mergers — but worker protections are minimal for those in small-format stores such as Mother’s Market and even Trader Joe’s.
Two of the council’s seven members opposed the ordinance, including Vice Mayor James Mai and councilman Mike Carroll. The measure was supported by Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and councilmembers Betty Martinez Franco, William Go, Melinda Liu and Kathleen Treseder, who introduced the ordinance.
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The ordinance first surfaced in August after concerns were raised by Mother’s Market workers who worried they could lose their jobs in a possible sale of the company by its private equity owner.
The organizing drive to unionize workers at Mother’s Market is being led by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324. The workers say they are struggling with low minimum wages at $16.90 per hour, chronic understaffing in the stores and last-minute worker scheduling, according to Leigh Shelton, a spokeswoman for the organizing drive.
Suspended employees who participated in a union organizing drive at Mother’s Market over the summer were fired in late August by the supermarket chain.
The ordinance is modeled after state law, which helps grocery workers retain their jobs in the event of a merger or sale of the business. The city’s measure, called the Irvine grocery worker retention ordinance, attempts to close a loophole in the state law, which only applies to big grocery stores with formats larger than 15,000-square feet.
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