A food workers union pushing to organize workers with Mother’s Market & Kitchen may have to wait until September to learn if Irvine City Council will support an ordinance designed to temporarily preserve hundreds of jobs with the small supermarket chain.
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, the council voted 5-2 to delay its decision on the proposal to a Sept. 22 meeting after Irvine Mayor Larry Agran threw his support behind the measure, which 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.
Agran said that he supports the proposal — as did four other councilmembers — but wants City Attorney Jeffrey Melching to draft an ordinance to make sure it’s compliant with state law.
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 store formats, like with Mother’s Market and even Trader Joe’s.
“I understand the burning issue of unionization and what may be unfair labor practices, but good luck in filing a claim with the national government at this point,” Agran said at the meeting. “Your recourse here locally seems to me an appropriate avenue and something I want to be part of, if we can do it in a thoughtful way, and I believe we can.”
The proposed ordinance surfaced after concerns were raised by Mother’s Market workers who are worried they could lose their jobs in a possible sale of the company by its private equity owner.
Vice Mayor James Mai and councilman Mike Carroll opposed the measure while councilmembers Betty Martinez Franco, William Go, Melinda Liu and Kathleen Treseder supported Agran’s push to delay taking action on a final proposal until September.
The proposed 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 proposal, called the Irvine grocery worker retention ordinance, would close a loophole in the state law, which only applies to big grocery stores with formats larger than 15,000-square feet, according to a memo attached to the proposed ordinance.
Treseder, who is seeking reelection this November, proposed the ordinance.
Not everyone was in Treseder’s camp.
“While I absolutely understand and respect the intent of this proposal, I worry that it comes counterproductive by adding another mandate for businesses to consider in investing or taking over an underperforming location,” Mai said. “It’s not the prerogative of this council to dictate how private businesses must operate simply because we believe we know what the morally correct business decision should be.”
In a letter to city council, the California Grocers Association expressed opposition on similar grounds.
“At the end of the day, I think pursuing any policy that’s not going to improve food affordability should be a non-starter for elected officials,” said Nate Rose, a spokesman with the Sacramento-based grocers’ group, in an interview with the Southern California News Group. “In California, we pay the highest grocery prices in the country, and that’s even though we’re a global food producer. You can draw a straight line from those prices on the store shelves to the actions of elected officials. It’s ridiculous to say that the ordinance is closing a loophole because that insinuates grocers are somewhow intentionally building a certain square footage just to avoid some state law.”
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 UFCW spokeswoman Leigh Shelton.
Melissa Wilson, a spokeswoman with Connecticut-based private equity firm Mill Road Capital Management — which bought the Newport Beach-based chain in 2016 — could not be reached for comment on Irvine’s proposed measure.
The UFCW-supported workers with Mother’s Market — many of whom have signed union cards pledging unionization — say they are worried about losing their jobs should the chain be sold.
The UFCW says that it has heard a rumor that a broker has been hired for a possible sale of the grocery chain to an unidentified bidder — thus the reason for Irvine’s proposed measure.
Neither Mill Road Capital’s Wilson nor Charles Kirk, chief financial officer of the chain since 2018, could be reached for comment regarding questions about whether the chain’s dozen stores are up for sale.
At a recent rally in front of the company’s Costa Mesa store, workers confronted Kirk to ask him about the possibility of a sale.
“He denied knowing anything about it,” according to a statement from the union.
On Aug. 3, 15 union supporters protesting at the chain’s flagship store in Costa Mesa were suspended indefinitely without explanation, but told they would still receive compensation, according to Shelton, who maintained that workers were penalized for being active in the union’s campaign to organize.
‘Really inadequate’ pay
Jacob Ramos, an Irvine resident who began working at the Costa Mesa store a year ago, told SCNG that the pay is “really inadequate” at Mother’s Market.
“I’ve been there for over a year, and I’ve received consistent compliments and positive reviews from customers and even management. But it’s still at $17-an-hour,” said the 21-year-old Ramos, who graduated in June with a bachelor’s degree in criminology from UC Irvine, but can’t find a job in his field. “I’ve never been offered the chance for a performance assessment or a raise, and that story is definitely not unique to just me. It’s a pretty tough place to work.”
Ramos, who spoke at the Irvine meeting, also complained about poor staffing. Before he was suspended, Ramos was paid 28 hours a week over a four-day period.
Ramos remains suspended indefinitely and is not working, though the company is offering to pay him for 17 hours of work on Friday, Aug. 14. “I have not yet received my paycheck since my suspension. They’re just paying me to do nothing.”
Shelton said that her union is attempting to unionize more than 500 of the chain’s estimated 1,000 workers at seven of the chain’s 12 stores — including those in Anaheim Hills, Brea, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Santa Ana and Signal Hill. The chain also has stores in Corona del Mar, Dana Point, Hollywood, Laguna Woods and Sunset Beach, a coastal neighborhood in Huntington Beach.
The first Mother’s was founded in Costa Mesa in 1978 by a group of yoga enthusiasts that included Bruce Macgurn. At the time, it was one of the only large-scale health and natural food stores operating in Orange County. While first catering to vegetarians, the market has since grown its shoppers to include those seeking organic, preservative-free and non-genetically modified foods.
Macgurn died in November 2015.
Today’s owner of the grocery chain, Mill Road Capital, also owns Rubio’s Coastal Grill, a restaurant chain specializing in Mexican food that opened its first restaurant in 1983 in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego. Mill Road Capital bought Rubio’s in 2010 and took private the publicly traded company. Rubio’s later filed for bankruptcy in 2020.
Mill Road Capital also owns Noodles & Co., founded in Denver, and Skullcandy, a maker of headphones, earbuds and speakers, and founded in Park City, Utah.