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L.A. Workers’ Fight for Good Jobs Combines Organizing, Bargaining and Politics |
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It is an axiom in the union movement that organizing, collective bargaining and politics are all part of creating and maintaining good jobs. But in Los Angeles, workers have taken the combination to the next step by integrating the three into one campaign.
Next year not only is an election year with national and local offices on the line. In addition, some 350,000 workers in the L.A. area, members of 30 local unions, will renegotiate their contracts in 2008. And another 30,000 are poised to join a union.
So, under the leadership of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, workers are combining their resources in contract fights, organizing and politics into a single “Fight for Good Jobs” campaign.
Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. federation, says:
Whether it’s workers fighting to ensure that their jobs remain good middle class jobs, or it’s about fighting to move out of poverty by joining a union or voters ensuring that elected leaders fight for workers and children—all of these struggles overlap for one common goal—the need for good, not poverty jobs. So in 2008, workers will work together like never before. We will combine all of our resources and tap every ally to ensure that we win.
According to a report by the nonprofit research group the Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, the earnings of the L.A. County union members whose contracts expire next year support 126,700 additional jobs because the workers have more money to spend on housing, dinning out, health care, shopping, transportation, entertainment and savings. In addition, the spending by these workers stimulates $21 billion in sales annually and generates $3 billion in taxes to all levels of government, according to the report.
The study, The Economic Footprint of Unions in Los Angeles, also found that union workers in Los Angeles County earn an average of 27 percent more than nonunion workers in the same jobs, and 64 percent more for those in the service sector.
And they need that extra money. Studies show that Los Angeles has a diminishing middle class—43 percent live below the federal poverty line—and a place where the dream of owning a home is often unattainable. Today, one-third of the county’s 3 million full-time workers earn less than $25,000 a year, an income not even near the $133,506 needed to purchase a median-priced home ($549,000).
To dramatize the importance of the campaign for good jobs, L.A. workers in coming months will hold a “Hollywood to the Docks” march—a 28-mile trek by thousands of workers and supporters. The march will make its way from Hollywood, where contracts for members of the Screen Actors and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists expire in June, to the docks of the harbor of L.A., where deals with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union expire in July.
At the same time, delegates to the federation’s congress made the 2008 County Board of Supervisors race the L.A. labor movement’s highest political priority.
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I would like some information on city employees who do not have a union, but an association where dues are paid and grievances are not filed on behalf of the employee. There are employee’s who have been violated, but no grievances are filed - the motto is ” to talk things over to resolve the issues”. Please respond as soon as possible.