Here at the Anaheim City Council meeting, the chambers are packed to overflowing for the big vote on the proposed Anaheim Convention Center expansion.
A different issue popped up during the public comments period: a “job retention” ordinance. That’s the innocuous term for forcing contractors, after they take over a contract from a different firm, to hire (or at least pay) the employees of the preceding contractor for a period of time, usually 2 or 3 months. It’s the type of invasive regulation one finds in politically left-of-center cities.
UNITE-HERE – which represents workers in the hotel and food service industries — mustered half a dozen members to take to the microphone and ask the City Council to adopt just such an ordinance. These members identified themselves as no longer working at Angel Stadium since their employer, Aramark, was terminated by the Angels in favor of Legends Sports and Entertainment.
One after another, they approached the lectern, related their situation and asked the council to adopt a job retention ordinance, with Noel Rodriguez, staff organizer for UNITE-HERE (or its sister group OCCORD; I’m not sure which) batting clean-up. One gentleman who said he’d been a bartender at the Diamond Club, asked in disbelief why there “wasn’t a law to protect my job?”
Good question. Is it government’s responsibility to prevent someone from losing their job? Not wrongful termination or discrimination — but losing a job because your employer lost a contract?
How is that person’s situation any different from someone who works at an accounting firm or an ad agency or a manufacturer whose winds up jobless when his or her employer loses a contract or a client? Should the new agency who wins the business be required to hire the workers from the losing firm?
I bring this up because it is the desire for this type of liberal anti-business regulation that drives much of left-wing coalition pushing for single-member council districts for Anaheim.
Anaheim is the largest city in California with a Republican majority. As long as that is the case, union-protection laws like job retention ordinances aren’t going anywhere. Hence the push by groups like UNITE-HERE, OCCORD and the OC Labor Federation and the Democratic Party of Orange County to carve the city into council districts in the belief they will be able to elect like-minded candidates.
This ought to be a wake-up call to somnolent Orange County Republican activists afflicted by the delusion that the GardenWalk deal represents the sum total of Anaheim politics. The Left is very serious about making Anaheim a Democratic city; OC conservatives are unserious about keeping it Republican.
If an employee wants to join a union, that’s perfectly their right. I believe in a persons right to join a union a have protection. However, unions are entitled to any preferential treatment over he next company. They too have to compete in the free market.
They had an opportunity to be re-hired. Obviously,
they did not make it past the first interview
and they need to find another field of work.