Anaheim Measure A: Voters rejecting $25 minimum wage initiative in early returns

The vote to give hotel and event center workers a $25-an-hour minimum wage in Anaheim is failing with voters in early results reported in Tuesday’s special election.

With more than 29,000 ballots counted, more than two-thirds were against Measure A.

You can track the results on the Orange County Registrar of Voters website. There are more than 160,000 registered voters in Anaheim, a city with more than 340,000 residents.

The Registrar of Voters plans to post vote tallying updates at 5 p.m. on weekdays. It has until Nov. 2 to certify the results.

Immediately after polls closed on Tuesday night, Unite Here Local 11, the labor union that developed the initiative, said in a news release that it had 25,000 conversations with Anaheim voters, urging them to pass Measure A.

The “No on Measure A” group raised more than $3.2 million to fight the initiative, according to campaign filings, with Disney giving the group $1.5 million.

Measure A would raise wages for hotel and event center workers not already at that level, as well as require double pay if hotel workers clean more than 3,500 to 4,000 square feet of rooms a day, depending on the hotel’s size.

Measure A would also require panic buttons to be provided to housekeepers, 24/7 security guards and paid time to report incidents to the police. But many of those safety measures were in new laws the City Council adopted this summer and will go into effect next year.

The union argues Measure A would be a step toward allowing housekeepers to afford to live where they work, while hoteliers counter that by saying the workload regulations would be hard to staff and make it harder to keep their businesses running, ultimately harming the city’s tax revenue.

Anaheim has more than 180 hotels and likely dozens more event centers that Measure A’s rules would apply to, including the Anaheim Convention Center, the House of Blues and the Anaheim Family YMCA.

Source: Orange County Register