City investigates hotel complaint.
By last week, Tomás Rivera had grown antsy.
The organizer for the Living Wage Network helped file a complaint nearly three weeks ago with the City of Santa Fe against a local hotel for underpaying its workers and was still waiting to hear back.
***image1***The complaint alleges that the Santa Fe Sage Inn is not paying its workers in accordance with the city's living wage law, which requires all local businesses with 25 or more employees to pay a minimum of $8.50 an hour. Moreover, the complaint asserts that Sage, which has less than 25 workers, hires out employees from the Inn of the Governors without considering them Sage employees and is therefore deliberately sidestepping the law. According to the complaint, Sage pays its housekeepers, house men, maintenance workers and laundry workers between $7 and $7.50 an hour.
Anxious for an update, Rivera gathered co-organizers and workers from the Santa Fe Sage Inn on Dec. 5 and set out to speak to Assistant City Attorney Angela Pacheco and Citizen and Plaza Affairs Manager Sevastian Gurulé to assess the status of the complaint.
"We were told that the city was still proceeding with its investigation and would decide within 30 days whether to file charges against Sage," Rivera says.
According to Maria Cornejo, another organizer with the Living Wage Network, some Sage workers in attendance expressed fear that they might face retaliation for the complaint but city officials assuaged their concerns.
"We felt supported," Cornejo says. "The city told us how they were proceeding, and in 30 days we'll decide what further steps we'll take."
Pacheco confirmed the meeting. "I basically told them we still need to do some more investigating on the issue."
An Oct. 19 SFR Cover Story, "The Earn Burn," revealed that both Sage and Inn of the Governors are managed by the same company, Team Plus Management. Sage General Manager Charlotte Sliva responded via e-mail to calls from SFR and said: "We are cooperating with the City Manager's Office and the City Attorney's Office in response to the grievance regarding the Living Wage.
As we currently understand the ordinance we think that we are in compliance and we look forward to working with the city as they make their determination."
Meanwhile, a city-commissioned University of New Mexico study on the living wage law's impact on Santa Fe is close to completion.
Lee Reynis, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) at UNM, which is conducting the study, says she expects to have the results by the end of this week.
"Most of the data is in, but we're still analyzing the responses and that takes time," Reynis says. "I'm honestly not sure yet if the study will show a consistent pattern."
According to Reynis, whose research team was contracted by the city of Santa Fe for $90,000, the BBER study is based on surveys of approximately 1,000 local business owners, focus groups and secondary state numbers on wages, gross receipts taxes and welfare programs.
Some city councilors-such as Carol Robertson Lopez and Rebecca Wurzburger-have said publicly they want to wait for the study's results before implementing the law's second phase, which raises wages to $9.50 on Jan. 1, 2006. In 2008 the wage is slated to increase to $10.50. A challenge to the law brought by opponents was rejected Nov. 29 by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
Local living wage advocates are holding their breath on the study's results. "We're waiting eagerly for the results," Living Wage Network co-ordinator Carol Oppenheimer, says. "We're doing phone banking at our office and asking people to urge councilors to vote to increase the wage."
