A garment worker carries a “Bill For Your Dirty Laundry” at a “Day of Conscience to End Sweatshops” rally and march in Los Angeles’ garment district on October 4, 1997. Organized by UNITE and its allies as part of their campaign against Guess? Jeans, the event was part of a national day of action that aimed to pressure the Presidential Task Force on Apparel Manufacturing to enforce a strong accord that would protect garment workers’ rights in Los Angeles and around the world.
Photograph by Linda A. Lotz, CLUE records (LSC.2441), UCLA Library Special Collections Collection Information: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8g167r7/
As the Living Wage Coalition expanded its outreach, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced plans to restrict eligibility to, and cut benefits for, its General Relief (or “welfare”) program in accordance with the passage of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (better known as “welfare reform”) of 1996. Coalition members, including CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), the Community Coalition, the Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, and ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), quickly mobilized to prevent cuts in services that would impact thousands of county residents. In early 1997, they organized a community meeting in which individuals gave testimony and called on Los Angeles County administrators to adopt policies that would protect, rather than restrict, access to social services for those in need. Hundreds of people joined a “Hold the Line Caravan” rally organized by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness in 1997 outside of the meeting to show their support.
Pictured here is Rev. James Lawson Jr. speaking at the “Hold the Line Caravan” rally on behalf of CLUE, as photographed by CLUE’s interfaith organizer Linda A. Lotz. The photograph was featured in an exhibition called “Faith at Work,” which was shown at several congregations and community spaces in Southern California before Lotz left Los Angeles to join the staff of the American Friends Service Committee International Programs in 1999.
As written, the Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance only applied to large companies with contracts with the Los Angeles city government, exempting some 2000-3000 low-wage workers at the Los Angeles INternational Airport (LAX), including baggage handlers, wheelchair runners, security officers, and janitorial staff. Their exclusion from the ordinance was based on a legal technicality: while the airlines at LAX maintained contracts with the City of Los Angeles in the form of leases, thanks to a change in city policies, most services at the airport were provided by companies subcontracted by the airlines, which meant that the Living Wage Ordinance did not apply to them. The change in employment relations at LAX meant that jobs once filled by unionized workers employed directly by the airlines became low-wage subcontracted ones, with LAX workers paid wages of as little as $5.15 per hour and with no sick days, holidays, or health benefits. Mayor Richard Riordan, who had initiated the changes that enabled the subcontracting schemes at the airport, made clear his intentions to prevent the ordinance’s expansion at LAX.
SEIU Local 399, representing building trades workers in Los Angeles, had been working to unionize the subcontracted LAX workers for several years before the Living Wage campaign began. When it became clear that airport subcontractors would not abide by the new standards, Local 399 worked with other members of the Living Wage Coalition to organize massive demonstrations at the airport, including this one in October 1997. After months of pressure, the Los Angeles’ Bureau of Contract Administration ruled that the ordinance did apply to the airlines and their subcontractors, but the airlines still refused to comply. Just a few days later, 450 workers at LAX announced their intention to unionize with Local 399.
