LA County Board of Supervisors Adopt Right of Recall and Worker Retention Policies

Los Angeles, CA — Today, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted Right of Recall and Worker Retention policies to protect workers in the janitorial, maintenance, security service, and hospitality industries in unincorporated LA County during this pandemic.

The “Right of Recall” ordinance ensures that workers who are laid off due to the pandemic have first right of recall to their jobs, when their employer is ready to bring employees back. The “Worker Retention” ordinance ensures that workers would get to keep their jobs in the event the business they work for gets sold because of the pandemic.

“These added protections give workers who have built careers and livelihoods in industries that have been absolutely decimated by this pandemic, the peace of mind that, as these businesses start to come back, their jobs will still be there for them,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who authored the motion.

The ordinances would only apply to hotels in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County that contain 50 or more guestrooms or has earned gross receipts in 2019 exceeding $5 million, as well as businesses that employ 25 or more janitorial, maintenance or security service workers. Any of these employers that have a collective bargaining agreement in place would be exempt.

“This pandemic has highlighted the need to further strengthen protections for our workforce, particularly those in the leisure, hospitality, and retail industries. Workers in these industries are overwhelmingly people of color, who are already severely impacted by COVID-19, and we need to provide these hardworking employees and their families necessary protections at this critical time,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, who co-authored the motion. “This effort to protect these workers started 30 years with the launch of the Justice for Janitors campaign and now it culminates with a Board motion and ordinance that recognize that workers deserve to earn living wages and be safe during this pandemic. By adopting these permanent Right of Recall and Worker Retention policies, we will ensure people will have jobs to come back to once it’s time to return to work.”

Workers will have five days to respond to a recall notice. An amendment was made to the ordinance to ensure that workers who cannot return to work due to health concerns may use their remaining sick leave before accepting their job back.

Moreover, the ordinance leaves it to businesses to determine what jobs they need to bring back and at what time so that they can offer those jobs to the employees who meet the job description they need.