By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

April 6, 2016 -- Hotel employees in Santa Monica’s busy tourism industry should receive higher wages that match those for their Los Angeles counterparts, according to recommendations meant to clarify the City’s new minimum wage law.

The report by the Minimum Wage Working Group proposes only minor changes to Santa Monica’s minimum wage law, which was adopted by the City Council in January.

But it does touch on several hot button issues related to the new minimum wage law, including the handling of paid sick leave; wages for seasonal employees, including youth who work at tourist spots; higher pay for non-union hotel workers and service charges.

The Working Group’s mission “was to clean up” lingering questions among City Council members about such provisions in the law, said Stephanie Lazicki, a principal analyst for the City who authored the report.

“The recommendations reflect a complete set of recommendations by the Working Group members, with representatives of business and labor seeking to reach common ground,” Lazicki wrote in her report to the Council.

All of the votes were unanimous, she said, and the product of “prioritization of issues and give-and-take negotiations.”

Like its counterparts in Los Angeles City and unincorporated Los Angeles County, Santa Monica's law phases in higher wages for the lowest paid workers, for the most part starting at $10.50 this year and incrementally rising to $15 hourly by 2020.

Santa Monica’s law already increased the pay for most non-union hotel workers to $15.37 by 2017. But the Working Group recommends aligning the city with L.A. wages by adding inflation to the rate next year -- one year ahead of the current schedule.

“It was always the intention of the City Council to match Los Angeles,” Lazicki said. “It makes sense regionally. Hotel workers in Santa Monica provide the same work as they do in Los Angeles.”

The group also recommends that the City delay how soon the ordinance would begin requiring extra sick time, Lazicki said. The Council was undecided about whether to impose a flat sick-day policy or make it variable based on a business' total employees.

The Working Group recommends phasing in the extra sick days and varying the total depending on business size.

Additional paid sick days for workers in Santa Monica should start in January of 2017 with four days for small businesses and five days for large businesses, the group said.

A year later, five days would be allowed for small businesses and nine days for their larger counterparts in Santa Monica.

Despite the delay, the City’s law would have a more generous minimum than the three days paid sick leave California has required since 2015 for part and full-time workers.

The Council spent eight months debating the higher minimum wage before voting to adopt in January. But it also asked that a broad-based group be established to address some issues the Council still was unsure how to handle.

The Working Group of five voting members and three non-voting members began work in February and its findings are scheduled to go before the City Council on April 26.

Also addressed is the need for clearer language to enforce the minimum wage law, which can punish violators with fines of $100 and triple that amount if needed.