On Saturday, April 9, a quorum of politicians and activists called the Coalition for a Better Inglewood celebrated not just the one-year anniversary of thwarting Wal-Mart’s plans in the area but also the recent throwing down of the gauntlet on the corporate giant’s own turf. Earlier that week, a group from the Coalition consisting of California Assemblyman Jerome Horton, City Councilman Ralph Franklin, and Coalition organizer Elliott Petty, and others, dropped by Wal-Mart’s first-ever press conference in its hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. The Coalition demanded that if Wal-Mart was really so keen on coming to Inglewood, then it had better show some respect. It had better sign a CBA.
A CBA, or Community Benefits Agreement, is a legally binding contract whereby a corporation promises certain concessions to communities affected by its presence and activity. “We’re changing the power imbalance between public and private sectors,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), which pioneered the CBA concept in 1998, as community benefit provisions were incorporated into the development of Hollywood and Highland.
In Inglewood’s case, the Coalition wants Wal-Mart to guarantee living wage jobs, affordable family health care, pension benefits, job training and advancement, and freedom from retaliation and basic rights on the job. It also wants protection for the interests of small businesses and assurances a “big box” store would not increase traffic, noise, and pollution. A pretty tall order, to be sure. But this isn’t just wishful thinking. There are currently half a dozen CBAs in place in the Los Angeles area alone. And with LAANE’s website offering a how-to guide to CBAs for community groups facing major development projects, more are sure to follow.
If you just tilt your head back and follow the trajectory of one of the low-flying planes zooming west over Inglewood, you’ll soon touch down right in the middle of one of Los Angeles’ newest and biggest CBAs. Danny Tabor, a negotiator of the CBA that became part of recent negotiations over LAX expansion, says, “We had three areas of focus: schools, environmental concerns, and economic impact.”
In demanding a CBA, community groups essentially take for granted that the project is going forward, but insist that the community needs to be compensated. “We were not there to say, ‘No, no, no,’” Tabor explains. He and his fellow negotiators tried to get Los Angeles World Airlines (LAWA), owner of LAX, to think of itself as a partner with the community. Mitigation, and the money for mitigation, are then easier to secure. So Tabor introduced the members of his community to William Smart, Tabor’s former coworker in the Clinton administration and member of LAANE.
At first, the community balked, telling Tabor, “If you get involved, we’ll get involved.” He did. LAWA soon realized it didn’t have the votes necessary for the project to be approved, so, through months and months of negotiations, the community convinced LAWA that the way to get the proposal through the council was to sign a CBA. The end result was a $500-million legally binding promise from LAWA that covered everything from soundproofing schools to diverting construction traffic from residential streets; from environmental studies in the area to a system of apprenticeships for locals to get the long-lasting, well-compensated jobs to be available at the new LAX.
And just outside downtown Inglewood, adjacent to the giant swath of Hollywood Park parking lot already owned by an eager Wal-Mart, is the Forum arena, the former home of the Lakers. When the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District Project sought to build a $1 billion complex of arenas, shops, apartments, and hotels in the area surrounding the Lakers’ current home at Staples Center, the communities of the Figueroa Corridor didn’t want to be left out of the economic boom.
The 2001 Staples CBA, the first full-fledged CBA, requires that 70 percent of new jobs be at the officially recognized living wage (in Los Angeles that’s $9.78/hr without benefits, $8.53/hr with benefits), a hiring program that gives local residents and those displaced by the project first shot at new jobs and training, community consultation on the selection of the project’s new commercial tenants, a 20 percent set-aside of affordable housing within the complex, and a commitment of $1 million for community parks and recreation. The developer in the Staples project, L.A. Arena Land Company, L.L.C., is the largest private company ever to sign a CBA. But there’s always someone bigger … .
In Chicago, when Wal-Mart’s price-slashing smiley-face was eyeing up the city’s South Side and licking its lips, residents pushed for a CBA from the company. Wal-Mart quickly labeled those in favor of the CBA as “obstructionists” preventing their neighbors from the job opportunities the big-box stores would bring. But with Wal-Mart’s arrival generally coinciding with the destruction of competition through a policy of predatory pricing, good jobs turn to low-paying, uninsured Wal-Mart jobs. “That’s not a good trade-off,” says James Thindwa, executive director of Chicago Jobs with Justice.
With more and more big-box stores en route to Chicago, the suggested Wal-Mart CBA changed to a sweeping city ordinance aimed at any store over 75,000 square feet. The proposed ordinance calls for living wage jobs (in Chicago, that’s about $10.50/hr), an added $3/hr for health insurance, the right to unionize, and regulations on predatory pricing. Wal-Mart did break ground for one store in the area, but a second store was stopped dead in its tracks.
For its part, Wal-Mart claims it is willing to open a dialogue with the good people of Inglewood, but hesitates to use the word “negotiations.” Bob McAdams of Wal-Mart even suggests that the Inglewood Coalition’s trip to Bentonville was the “typical, common” process Wal-Mart engages in with the communities surrounding its stores. And though Wal-Mart likes to “make the most people happy,” McAdams quickly and tellingly points out that no other retailer has ever signed a CBA.
“That’s a little disingenuous,” says Roxana Tynan, LAANE’s director of accountable development (home of the CBA). While Wal-Mart is nominally a retail chain, its aggressive expansion goals and profound effects on communities lead some to consider the company a “developer,” which is a category of business well-acquainted with CBAs. Also, with rival Costco agreeing to a CBA (plus insurance benefits for 95 percent of its employees) for a planned store in south Los Angeles, Wal-Mart is seemingly behind the times.
Danny Tabor was also a member of the Inglewood platoon that went to Arkansas to make its case to Wal-Mart. He says it took the company a couple of days to get used to the Inglewood contingent, initially assuming they had arrived just to wreck the joint. But now Wal-Mart seems to realize that the Coalition is not wholly opposed to Wal-Mart. The Coalition, he says, wants “good development, not just any development.”
