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Justice on the March
News From Around Los Angeles
Living Wage Opponents Qualify Living Wage Referendum Ignoring Pleas from Elected Leaders and Hotel Workers
Opponents of extending the Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance to LAX-area hotel workers gathered sufficient signatures to qualify a referendum for the ballot ignoring pleas by hotel workers and elected and religious leaders. The Los Angeles City Clerk certified the signatures on January 11.
LAX-area hotels and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce raised an estimated $1 million dollars to hire signature gathered who were paid $3 for each of the signature collected, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“It is unfortunate that hotels and business groups chose to spend millions of dollars for a referendum rather than complying with the law that would give these hotel workers a small increase in their pay," said LAANE Director of Hospitality and Tourism Derek Smith, who organized a broad coalition of elected officials, faith and community leaders and workers to improve conditions in the Century Corridor near LAX.
The groundbreaking legislation, which extends the city’s living wage law to 3,500 workers employed at hotels along the Century Boulevard was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council in late November. The living wage would boost workers’ incomes to $9.39 per hour with health benefits or $10.64 per hour without benefits.
 The Coalition for a New Century has pledged to fight to uphold the law. Eighteen hotel workers took part in a seven-day fast in early December in front of the Westin LAX hotel to demonstrate the depth of their support for the newly passed living wage policy that applies to the thirteen hotels adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport.
“We hope our sacrifice will bring attention to this struggle,” Enedina Alvarez, one of the fasting workers, wrote in an opinion piece that appeared in La Opinion. “We hope it will strengthen our resolve, and that it will remind Angelenos that all hard-working men and women in our city deserve a living wage.”
The workers also fasted in memory of a co-worker, Margarita Uriostegui, a room attendant at the Radisson LAX, who was a leader in the fight for better conditions in her workplace. A mother of three, she died suddenly in September of an aneurysm at the age of 36.
The fasting workers drew broad support from local and national leaders, including Senator John Edwards, Service Employee International President Andy Stern, twenty two members of the California Congressional delegation, City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, actor Ed Asner, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
LAX Four Points Sheraton Reinstates Workers, Calls on Other LAX Hotels to Abandon Referendum on Living Wage
On December 12th, the day that workers concluded a fast in support of the newly passed hotel living wage law, Century Corridor hotel workers and their supporters were shaken by an announcement that the Four Points Sheraton’s new owners had fired 12 workers who were leaders in the living wage fight.
Following discussions with elected officials, labor leaders, and other supporters of the workers, Four Points management did an about-face and not only reinstated the workers but spoke out strongly against the plans of other hotel owners to mount a ballot referendum to overturn the policy. The Four Points management announced that that the hotel would implement the new laws immediately.
“I am embarrassed that my fellow hotels are trying to overturn this living wage,” said Michael Gallegos, CEO of American Property Management, the new owner of the hotel. “I am embarrassed that they don’t feel it’s important to provide a living wage to workers.”
The Century Corridor hotels enjoy the highest occupancy rate in the County and yet the pay levels are 20 to 22 percent lower than those for comparable facilities.
The worker retention ordinance, which the Los Angeles City Council passed in November at the same time as the living wage law, protects employees from arbitrary firing after a change in hotel ownership. The living wage law also prohibits retaliatory action against workers who advocate for the policy.
LAX Four Points Sheraton Reinstates Workers, Calls on Other LAX Hotels to Abandon Referendum on Living Wage
On the day that workers concluded a fast in support of the newly-passed hotel living wage law, Century Corridor hotel workers and their supporters were shaken by an announcement that the Four Points Sheraton’s new owners had fired 12 workers who were leaders in the living wage fight. One of the fired workers had worked for the hotel for 20 years.
Following discussions with elected officials, labor leaders, and other supporters of the workers, Four Points management did an about-face and not only reinstated the workers but spoke out strongly against the plans of other hotel owners to mount a ballot referendum to overturn the policy. The Four Points management announced that that the hotel would implement the new laws immediately.
“I am embarrassed that my fellow hotels are trying to overturn this living wage,” said Michael Gallegos, CEO of American Property Management, the new owner of the hotel. “I am embarrassed that they don’t feel it’s important to provide a living wage to workers.”
The Century Corridor hotels enjoy the highest occupancy rate in the County and yet the pay levels are 20 to 22 percent lower than those for comparable facilities.
The worker retention ordinance, which the Los Angeles City Council passed in November at the same time as the living wage law, protects employees from arbitrary firing after a change in hotel ownership. The living wage law also prohibits retaliatory action against workers who advocate for the policy. The laws are scheduled to go into effect in January 2007. Implementation of the living wage would be delayed by the hotels if they succeed in gathering enough signatures to place the measure on the May ballot.
“This company and its CEO have taken a courageous step, and shown by example how businesses, elected officials, labor leaders and workers can come together to make Los Angeles a better city,” said Vivian Rothstein, deputy director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which helped secure passage of the living wage law. “Now it's time for the other LAX hotels to heed his call and drop their attempt to repeal the living wage law, which will help lift hard-working men and women out of poverty.”
Workers Take Part in Seven-Day Fast as
Recently-Passed Hotel Living Wage Law Comes Under Attack
 Eighteen hotel workers took part in a seven-day fast in early December in front of the Westin LAX hotel to demonstrate the depth of their support for the newly-passed living wage policy that applies to the thirteen hotels adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport.
The groundbreaking legislation, which extends the city’s living wage law to 3,500 workers employed at hotels along the Century Boulevard, adjacent to LAX, was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council in late November.
The hotels, along with Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, hired signature gatherers to collect the approximately 50,000 signatures needed to place the ordinance on the ballot in May, a move that was greeted with dismay by hotel workers struggling to make ends meet.
“We hope our sacrifice will bring attention to this struggle,” Enedina Alvarez, one of the fasting workers, wrote in an opinion piece that appeared in La Opinion. “We hope it will strengthen our resolve, and that it will remind Angelenos that all hard-working men and women in our city deserve a living wage.”
The workers also were also fasting in memory of a co-worker Margarita Uriostegui, a room attendant at the Radisson LAX who was a leader in the fight for better conditions in her workplace. A mother of three, she died suddenly of an aneurysm in September at the age of 36.
The fasting workers drew broad support from local and national leaders, including Senator John Edwards and Service Employee International President Andy Stern, who joined the hotel workers in late November in announcing the water-only fast.
California clergy, elected leaders, and activists also came to the site of the fast to demonstrate their support for the workers, including City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and actor Ed Asner. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led the closing ceremony on December 12 as the fast ended in a candlelight procession of 500 people from the Westin to the LAX Airport Hilton.
The City Council vote in November also extended to those workers coverage under the city’s worker retention law – which protects employees from arbitrary firing after a change in hotel ownership – and requires the hotels to pass on to the workers service charges paid by banquet guests. The living wage will boost workers’ incomes to $9.39 per hour with health benefits and $10.64 per hour without benefits.
The nearly year-long fight for a living wage was led by the workers with support from the Coalition for a New Century, which includes clergy, community members, students, immigrant rights organizations and other groups. LAANE has played a leading role in the Coalition from the beginning, providing the Coalition with key research, community organizing, communications and policy analysis resources.
In September, thousands of Century Corridor hotel workers and their supporters from all sectors of the community carried out a dramatic march and action culminating in nearly 300 arrests for civil disobedience. Among those arrested were City Council members, union leaders and state elected officials.
LAANE Helps to Launch Campaign for Clean Air and Good Jobs
at the Ports
 Demonstrating the need for reforming the trucking system at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, 16 port drivers drove a convoy of their diesel pollution-spewing trucks around Long Beach City Hall on November 20 while the commissioners of the two ports met to discuss a Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP). The drivers are part of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports in which LAANE helped to launch in July. During the driver convoy, other Coalition partners, including labor unions, a range of environmental and public health groups, clergy and community organizations, presented their analysis and conclusions to the Port Commissioners inside the Hall.
While the CAAP has been highly touted as an ambitious solution to the pollution originating with port activity, it does not fully address the contribution to that pollution made by the 16,000 trucks that service the Ports. While the Ports are the single greatest fixed source of air pollution in the region, the trucks account for 30 to 40 percent of that problem, leading to serious impacts on public health including high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases and cancer.
The Coalition is urging the Ports to develop a comprehensive plan to address port trucking that goes beyond band-aid solutions, such as simply providing new trucks to drivers. Coalition partners have illustrated for the Ports the nexus between dirty, polluting trucks; poor working conditions for drivers (and pay that is insufficient for maintenance of trucks); threats to Port security; and overall inefficiencies in the port trucking system.
One of the main reasons port trucking does not function effectively is that the drivers are misclassified. Called “independent contractors” rather than employees, they are paid piece rate, denied vital legal rights and resources and have the entire burden of the trucking system resting on them, rather than on the trucking companies at whose behest they work.
This campaign is part of a national effort initiated by the Change To Win Federation and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union targeting all the major ports in the U.S. LAANE’s success in jump-starting the campaign in Los Angeles won kudos from both national organizations and has generated excitement among local environmentalists, public health advocates and residents of the most heavily impacted communities.
Safe and Secure Policy Clears First Hurdle
in Committee
 A Los Angeles City Council committee unanimously approved several measures to ensure that office building owners designate and train on-site private first responders, which will improve the city’s emergency preparedness. The November vote was the first hurdle for a policy advocated by the Stand for Security Coalition, which is led by African-American clergy and community groups that, along with LAANE and the Service Employees International Union, support the officers’ demands for better wages, healthcare benefits and training.
The Public Safety Committee action will affect about 239 Los Angeles buildings and is an outcome, in part, of a LAANE study which documented the lack of consistent training standards and accountability in the industry. Undertrained, Underpaid and Unprepared: How L.A.’s Commercial Office Building Owners Are Failing Security Officers and Compromising Public Safety found turnover rates as high as 243 percent in some commercial office buildings. To read the report, visit www.laane.org/research.
The committee’s recommendation will be forwarded to the City Council which, if it agrees, will direct the City Attorney to draft an ordinance. In addition, the Council’s Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee will take up the issue of reducing turnover in hearings to be scheduled soon.
Building Owners Agree to Allow Security Officers to Organize
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Los Angeles agreed to remain neutral in union campaigns to organize security officers, an important step in the fight to upgrade the jobs for a largely African American workforce. The agreement was reached minutes before African American civil rights leaders, including South Los Angeles clergy and community leaders, were to begin a 24-hour “Fast for Freedom” in support of security officers.
The security officers’ campaign began several years ago as part of a national SEIU initiative to organize in buildings in major cities around the country. The fight has important implications for the role of African Americans in the Los Angeles labor movement and for forging alliances between African Americans and Latinos. The officers are largely African-American, while Local 1877 is largely Latino in membership and leadership.
In a positive sign for the future of the Los Angeles labor movement and for race relations in the city, the security officers campaign has built strong bonds of solidarity across racial lines.
The neutrality agreement accepted by BOMA will affect about half of the 10,000 officers in L.A.’s major commercial buildings. The agreement permits a “card check” process through which the officers would decide whether to be represented by a union without interference from employers or building owners.
LAANE, as part of the Stand for Security Coalition, has worked to ensure that all the officers are able to exercise their right to choose union representation, and has advocated for the passage of a policy that reduces turnover and guarantees training.
Hotel Union Contract Includes Historic Breakthrough
for
African Americans
 A historic breakthrough for African Americans in the labor movement took place in early October when the Beverly Hilton Hotel agreed to sign a pact, calling for the hiring of more African American workers at the hotel.
The agreement, which comes as workers employed by top-tier hotels in Los Angeles are fighting to upgrade their working conditions, is the first of its kind in the country. The three-year contract calls for an increase in pay, and an affordable health care package, revises work rules to improve work productivity and employer fairness, and adds new retirement incentives.
The deal was brokered by local clergy and community leaders, and specifically includes language aimed at the direct hiring of more African Americans.
African Americans were once mainstays in the hotel industry. However, in moves to cut cost, hotels began to hire immigrant workers at low wages, which kept many African Americans out of the tourism industry.
The move by the Beverly Hilton to try to eradicate that trend is significant, not only for the African American community, but for all hotel workers, said Dr. Frederick O. Murph, Senior Minister at Brookins Community A.M.E. Church and a lead negotiator of the deal.
"This is an historic contract,” Murph said. “I believe that this is the beginning of a new paradigm that will drastically change management and employee relations.is our hope that other hotels will follow suit in order that every working man and woman in the hotel industry will be assured of a decent wage and health benefits, so that they can provide for their families.”
City Attorney Ruling Extends Living Wage Ordinance
to Cover 600 Airplane Janitors
On November 20, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office and the city agency that enforces the Living Wage Ordinance announced that the city’s Living Wage law applies to about 600 janitors who clean planes at LAX. The decision reversed an earlier legal opinion that exempted the companies that employ these workers. About 300 of the janitors work for the contractor World Service, and voted this summer to join SEIU Local 1877 as a way to improve the benefits and working conditions at jobs that pay $8.50 per hour on average with no affordable health benefits.
LAANE Executive Director Madeline Janis Reappointed
to the CRA Board
 On November 15, 2006, the L.A. City Council confirmed Mayor Villaraigosa's reappointment of LAANE Executive Director Madeline Janis to another four-year term on the board of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency ( CRA). As a commissioner, Janis is among those responsible for overseeing the CRA, which is the largest such agency in the country with nearly a half-billion dollar annual budget. The CRA’s mission is to foster economic development in impoverished communities. The seven-member governing board is appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the City Council.
Over the past four years, Janis has fought to increase the number of affordable housing units in CRA-subsidized projects and to promote economic development that provides good jobs and is responsive to community needs. Janis has successfully advocated for the adoption of Living Wage, Worker Retention and Responsible Contractor policies for all subsidized projects, and the inclusion of Community Benefits programs in virtually all major development projects approved by the agency.
Janis’ initial appointment to the board in 2002 was a victory for community members who had fought for years for more accountability from the agency in order to promote responsible development. In 1999, LAANE released a report that found that the CRA had invested millions of dollars in retail projects that produced low-paying jobs.
Janis says that over the next four years, she intends to continue her work to make the redevelopment agency an agent for tackling the growing poverty in the region. "Our region faces rising inequality, a severe shortage of affordable housing and a growing number of low- wage jobs," Janis said. " Los Angeles needs to continue to be a leader in promoting high-road development, and it is a privilege to be able to support the Mayor in this program and do my part as a commissioner."
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