Accusation anger
Santa Fe business owners
don’t like getting letters from the city saying they’re not paying minimum
wage — especially when they are
By Bob Quick The New Mexican
Based on employee complaints made to the Santa Fe
Living Wage Network, the city’s attorney’s office has formally notified more
than 50 businesses they are not in compliance with the city’s minimum-wage
ordinance.
In most cases, however, it appears that the
businesses are paying the $9.50 wage now in effect and are abiding by the
law, said Angela “Spence” Pacheco, assistant city attorney.
“We sent a letter to have the business contact us,
and if they call us or send us a fax to say they are in compliance, that’s it
— the case is closed,” she said.
“We have sent out about 50 letters, and most have
responded by phone to say, ‘Yes we are in compliance.’ ”
Despite that apparent resolution of the matter,
several Santa Fe business owners
who received a letter are upset that they are being accused of not complying
with the law.
“I’m miffed at this list and how it was devised,”
said Terrell White, owner of El Rey Inn on Cerrillos Road. “It’s rather
scary that someone can be targeted by a group because of someone’s suggestion
or innuendo.”
When he called Sevastian Gurulé, the city’s citizen- and Plaza-affairs manager,
White said, “I told him to find out if there was a complaint. And if they
have a complaint, they should certainly contact me and find out my side of
the story.”
Being accused out of the blue, White said, “makes us
feel like a secondclass citizen. It’s more and more
of a challenging time to be in business in this city. Things like this drive
a wedge between the employee and the employer.”
In addition to paying the minimum wage, White said he
is continuing to contribute to a profit-sharing fund that has already paid
out almost $2 million to employees.
But that employee benefit may not continue. “It’s
still in effect, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to fund with all
these rising costs,” White said.
Al Lucero, owner of Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen, also
received a letter, which led him to write to the mayor, city manager and all
eight city councilors to complain.
“I said I’d like to know who made the accusation,”
Lucero said. “Not only do I pay the living wage — we are continuing to pay
for health insurance and paid vacations and don’t consider that part of the
living wage.”
Of those letters, only the city manager replied. “He
said it was strictly a formality,” Lucero said. “It was something they were
asked to do by the City Council.”
Lucero has spoken out against the city’s minimum wage
previously and continues to believe it doesn’t really help people escape
poverty — only training and education will do that, he said.
“Because I’m against government being involved in
business and dictating how we should run our business, somebody has concluded
that I don’t comply with the living wage,” he said.
At Nambé, a Santa Fe-based
manufacturer of table and decorative ware, the company’s chief operating
officer, Dan Castilleja, said he was “upset” to
have received a letter. “We shouldn’t be on this list.”
In response, “We sent a letter back that we are in
compliance,” he said. “We have always complied. We pay well above” the
minimum wage.
Many business owners were angered by the letter,
Pacheco said, especially by the first sentence, which states, “The City of
Santa Fe has been notified that your business is not in compliance with the
living wage ordinance.”
“I tell them the letter was intended as an inquiry,”
she said. “I spoke to one business owner, a woman, and I told her, ‘If this
offended you, I apologize. The letter was not intended to be harmful or
insulting. These are the facts, and sometimes the facts don’t feel good.’ ”
Carol Oppenheimer of the Santa Fe Living Wage
Network, the nonprofit group that led the effort to create Santa
Fe’s minimum wage, said her organization had
received “a number of complaints” from workers who said they weren’t
receiving the minimum wage.
“We then contacted the city to ask them to check to
see whether the businesses were in compliance or not,” she said. “There was a
serious backlog (at the city) — there was no way to check” on compliance.”
The Living Wage Network then took the matter to the
City Council, which ordered officials to send out the letters to businesses
workers had complained about.
“We had a right to file a request that the city
investigate,” Oppenheimer said. “The good news is that the city is finally
taking action to resolve a lot of unresolved complaints.”
Pacheco said most businesses that receive the letters
will be in the clear once they notify the city they are complying with the
minimum-wage ordinance.
But if there is a subsequent complaint, “We’re going
to visit that business and talk to them and tell them about the information
we received and try to work it out with them,” she said.
If the dispute can’t be resolved, the ordinance
allows the city or employees to take employers to court if they think the
ordinance has been violated.
There have been two minimum-wage lawsuits filed so
far by employees — one by those at local McDonald’s restaurants, another by
workers at a Coldstone Creamery — claiming their employers
violated the minimum-wage ordinance.
Both were handled by Albuquerque
attorney Shane Youtz, and both were settled out of
court, a spokeswoman for Youtz said.
The Santa Fe City Council on Feb. 27, 2003, voted 7-1 to make businesses and
nonprofits in the city with 25 or more workers pay at least $8.50 an hour to
full- and part-time employees by Jan.
1, 2004. The hourly minimum wage was to rise to $9.50 in 2006 and
$10.50 in 2008.
Implementation of the first phase was delayed by a
lawsuit brought by the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce and other business
groups. On Nov. 29, 2005,
the state Court of Appeals rejected their appeal of a District Court decision
upholding the ordinance. In December, the chamber announced it would not
pursue the appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Lauren Clifton/For The New Mexican
Terrell White, owner of El Rey Inn, recently
received a letter from the Santa Fe
city attorney stating that he was in violation of the city’s minimum-wage
law. White said the implication jeopardizes the reputation the inn has built
in 33 years. ‘We take care of our staff and they take care of our guests, and
it works beautifully,’ White said.
Lauren Clifton/For The New Mexican
Housekeeper Blanca Carmona of Santa
Fe finishes cleaning a
guest room at El Rey Inn. Inn
owner Terrell White said that besides paying the city’s new minimum wage,
he’s continuing to contribute to a profit-sharing plan.
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