Garden Grove hotels required to provide panic buttons to housekeepers next year
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Taking a page from neighboring Anaheim, the Garden Grove City Council voted this week to put panic button protections in place for hotel workers beginning next year.
A unanimous vote on Tuesday formally adopted the new law, which comes on the heels of a hotel workers union circulating a ballot petition for more wide-ranging changes to working conditions, including an immediate $18 an hour minimum wage hike.
When the council first discussed the issue on Aug. 25, one councilmember denied the effort sought to undercut Unite Here Local 11’s push, but did distance the ordinance from it.
“It’s a clean ordinance,” said Councilmember George Brietigam. “It’s specific to one item. [We’re] not trying to compound pay raises and all kinds of other issues into it. It’s simply about these devices and if you’re looking for other things, we can do other ordinances.”
Maria Hernandez, a Unite Here Local 11 spokesperson, criticized the law adopted by council.
“We’re glad Garden Grove is willing to act on hotel worker safety, but the ordinance adopted Tuesday isn’t the policy workers asked for,” she said. “To our knowledge, not a single hotel worker was contacted before this item was placed on the agenda.”
Orange County supervisors deadlock on approving leases to help finance hotel developments in Dana Point Harbor. Hotel worker retention remains a sticking point.
City officials noted that staff worked with hoteliers and the city attorney’s office in crafting the panic button law.
Hernandez argued that the standalone law watered down hotel worker protections by having no minimum training for panic button responders, an 8-hour paid time cap to report a violent incident, a $500 cap on penalties and no city enforcement mechanism.
Unite Here Local 11 is confident Garden Grove’s registered voters will qualify their Hotel Worker Protection ordinance for the ballot, but it will not appear in the November election.
For decades, Garden Grove officials have supported the development of a resort area along Harbor Boulevard with hotels seeking to capture a share of Disneyland’s tourism draw nearby in Anaheim.
Bed taxes from two dozen hotels in Garden Grove now pour $28 million into the city’s general fund every year.
On the question of protecting women working in those hotels from physical assault or sexual harassment when alone in guest rooms or other isolated areas, Garden Grove officials looked to recent policies adopted by the cities of Anaheim and Ontario.
In 2023, Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava led an effort to adopt a standalone panic button law for the city’s hotels that was similar to provisions promoted by Measure A, a ballot initiative backed by Unite Here Local 11 that also called for a $25 per hour minimum wage and housekeeper workload caps.
The measure failed to pass during a special election that October.
Councilmembers had approved the standalone panic button months before the vote. The following year, the law went into effect while Rubalcava survived a recall election backed by Unite Here Local 11.
This summer, the union pushed for a similar ballot measure in Garden Grove.
It called for panic buttons, protections against mandatory overtime shifts, a worker retention policy when a hotel comes under new ownership or management, protections against subcontracting housekeeping jobs and a wage scale that raises to $25 an hour by July 1, 2030.
By contrast, the law adopted by Garden Grove solely focuses on providing panic buttons for employees who work alone in guest rooms or other designated areas. Once alerted to an incident by a panic button, hotels must designate and train responders, whether they are security guards or an on-duty manager.
Following the firing of 15 Mother’s Market & Kitchen workers in Costa Mesa, more than two dozen employees seek back pay for missed rest breaks.
The provisions found favor with representatives of the 10 biggest hotels in the city during the Aug. 25 meeting.
“One of the biggest concerns that hotel general managers and owners have is the safety and security of your employees as well as of your guests,” said Dieter Hissen, general manager of the Marriott Suites Anaheim and president of the Garden Grove Tourism Promotion Corp. “Garden Grove has a very safe environment. However, this will take it to a whole new level.”
He noted that two-thirds of Garden Grove hotels already use panic buttons.
In August, councilmembers debated one provision of the law. As originally proposed, an affected hotel worker would be given “reasonable paid time” to contact law enforcement and cooperate with an investigation within three hours.
“I am concerned about the three-hour max for workers when they have to report an incident involving a violent action or threatening conduct,” said Councilmember Ariana Arestegui. “This is not necessarily a situation that will wrap up neatly in a three-hour timeframe.”
When the law came back for a second reading on Tuesday, it specifically outlined up to eight-hours of paid time for a hotel worker to address a panic-button related incident with law enforcement, a counselor or an adviser.
With the revision in place, councilmembers moved to adopt the panic button law, which will take effect on Jan. 1, 2027.
