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A Living Wage
Read more: A Living WageAs written, Los Angeles’ Living Wage Ordinance, passed by the City Council in 1997, applied to all large companies doing business with the city government. But owed to the subcontracting practices used by major airlines at LAX, the baggage handlers, wheelchair runners, security officers, and janitorial staff who worked at the airport were exempted. After the ordinance’s passage, workers, religious leaders, and community members marched in support of expanding the ordinance to include service workers…
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Fighting for Joint Liability
Read more: Fighting for Joint LiabilityWhile many recognize the 1990s as a time of the labor movement’s resurgence in Los Angeles, for garment workers, it was a time of existential crisis. Facing new competition from imported goods, local manufacturers returned to old ways of doing business, hiring mainly undocumented immigrants, firing union activists, and severing long-standing contracts. A raid on an apartment complex in El Monte revealed how dangerous the exploitation had become: the CA Department of Industrial Relations found…
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Day of Conscience Against Sweatshops
Read more: Day of Conscience Against SweatshopsA 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’…
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Expanding the Living Wage at LAX
Read more: Expanding the Living Wage at LAXAs 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…
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Hold the Line Caravan
Read more: Hold the Line CaravanAs 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…
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Don’t be a Scrooge: Ghost of Christmas Past visits L.A. City Council
Read more: Don’t be a Scrooge: Ghost of Christmas Past visits L.A. City CouncilThis video produced by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy documents elements of the Living Wage campaign in Los Angeles. After months of organizing and outreach, the campaign crested in December 1996, with a holidays-themed action at City Hall. Dressed as the ghost of Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” community member Dave Clennon entered City Hall with members of the coalition and addressed the Council, warning theme not to go…
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Living Wage Holidays Action at City Hall
Read more: Living Wage Holidays Action at City HallIn 1996, as the Los Angeles City Council’s holiday recess approached, members of the Living Wage coalition organized a Christmas-themed action at the last committee hearing on the ordinance. In the preceding weeks, they had sent delegations of workers to council offices and sent heartfelt Thanksgiving messages written by workers and their families to each council member. On the day of the hearing, the Living Wage Coalition planned a theatrical action on the steps outside…
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Taking on the New Otani
Read more: Taking on the New OtaniAfter a majority of workers at the New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles supported unionization, hotel management refused to negotiate. Members of HERE Local 11 from other Los Angeles hotels pledged to support the New Otani workers with weekly demonstrations that escalated into long-lasting boycott. This 1996 video produced by HERE Local 11 documents the union’s strategy of targeting the Kajima Corporation, a large Japanese construction firm that was the major stakeholders in the…
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Lobbying Day At City Council
Read more: Lobbying Day At City CouncilThe Living Wage was the first major campaign of LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for the New Economy, then known at the Tourism Industry Development Council), who helped to conceive of and craft the ordinance in close collaboration with HERE Local 11 (representing hospitality workers) and SEIU Local 399 (representing building services workers). To ensure its passage, they engaged local religious leaders inspiring the creation of CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. Many of…
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Guess? Who Pockets the Difference
Read more: Guess? Who Pockets the DifferenceIn 1995, UNITE! (Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, formed after a merger of the ILGWU and ACTWU) launched a campaign against Guess? Jeans, the largest apparel manufacturer in Los Angeles. Known for its distinctive stone-washed jeans, Guess? operated its own retail stores and made down-market lines sold at department stores, averaging over $500 in annual sales. UNITE estimated that some 5000 workers in Los Angeles cut and sewed garments for Guess? ,…
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