Palm Springs Desert Sun
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – The Coachella City Council unanimously approved hero pay for certain essential workers Wednesday night and extended the controversial hazard benefits to farmworkers.
The emergency ordinance requires certain agricultural operations – as well as grocery stores, retail pharmacy stores and restaurants – to provide an additional $4 per hour to their employees in Coachella for at least 120 days. The regulation applies to those who employ 300 or more workers nationally and more than five employees in the city.
Coachella is the first city in the nation to require premium pay for farmworkers, according to city leaders.
Three cities sued in federal court
Elias: California paying price for Sheriffs refusing to enforce COVID rules UP NEXT
The list of California law enforcement agencies refusing to enforce current stay-at-home, crowd-size, and masking orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom and county health officials numbers at least two dozen, stretching into most parts of the state.
Negative results of those scofflaw inactions were not obvious at first, while some counties let restaurants stay open despite closing orders, made no effort to prevent gatherings of more than 10 persons, and assigned no sheriff’s deputies to enforce face masking.
But now some nasty consequences are clear. Leaping out at readers of county-by-county statistics during Christmas Week was a direct correlation between lack of enforcement and coronavirus prevalence, infections, and deaths.