Archival Collections
Winning the Living Wage was the first major campaign of LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for the New Economy, then known as the Tourism Industry Development Council), who helped to conceive of and craft the ordinance in close collaboration with members of HERE Local 11 (representing hospitality workers) and SEIU Local 399 (representing building services workers). LAANE also actively engaged local religious leaders in their efforts, the campaign inspiring the creation of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), and worked closely with various grassroots community organizations beyond the labor movement, including the local chapter of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). In the years that followed, members of the Living Wage Coalition fought to expand the ordinance to include workers at LAX and to pass similar ordinances at the county level as well as in West Hollywood, Pasadena, and Santa Monica. The success of L.A.’s Living Wage campaign was both part of, and helped to inspire, a national movement, with some 63 cities passing similar policies by 2001 and by 2006, 19 states had raised their minimum wages above the federal level, prompting the federal government to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 in 2007, where it has remained since.
Archival Collections (UCLA Library Special Collections)
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) records (LSC.2252)
UNITE-HERE Local 11 records (LSC.2325)
UCLA Digital Library: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) Photographs
Memory Work Photo Archives
Linda A. Lotz Photo Collection
Los Angeles Living Wage Photo Collection
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