intense political mobilization: the los angeles county...

Building Power in Los Angeles -1 -

Intense Political Mobilization:The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

by Larry Frank and Kent Wong

The L.A. County Federation of Labor has

attracted national attention as a focal point of thenew American labor movement. The emergenceof Los Angeles as a union city has been animpressive accomplishment, especially in light ofits anti-union history. The growth of laborpower in the political arena, the organizing ofnew workers, the advancement of progressivepublic policy, and the forging of labor-community alliances, especially with immigrantcommunities, have all contributed to LosAngeles’s new labor power. Power building inLos Angeles combines the sophisticated politicalwork of the L.A. County Federation of Laborand the economic development activism fosteredby its allies.

The L.A. Context

With over ten million residents, Los AngelesCounty has the largest population of any countyin the United States. Within its eight hundredsquare miles sprawls the City of Los Angeles,the second largest city in the country with almostfour million residents. Another eighty-sevencities are incorporated throughout Los AngelesCounty, and one million residents continue tolive in unincorporated areas. The 2000 censusreports that 45 percent of the county populationis Latino, 31 percent Anglo other than Latino, 12percent Asian, and 10 percent Black. 1

A once dominant manufacturing base is nowovershadowed by the regional influences of theentertainment industries, trade-relatedbusinesses, and commercial development.Southern California lost its four auto plants, eightsteel mills and three tire plants largely due to thenational fiscal policies of the early 1980’s.2 Itspowerful aerospace industry did not survive theending of the Cold War and the transfer of

political regional allegiances.3 Once a strongholdof unionized manufacturing, about 500,000 lightmanufacturing jobs still remain in L.A. County,but in low wage non-union industries such asgarment and food processing.4

Until the 1980’s, Los Angeles was headquartersto a host of Fortune 500 companies and othermajor businesses. Their leaders were theoligarchy of the downtown business interests.These companies, such as Hughes, Rockwell,Litton, the Atlantic Richfield Company, SecurityPacific Bank, Great Western Bank, even the LosAngeles Times, have been subjected to mergers,acquisitions, or closures. The heads of theremaining entertainment conglomerates, alongwith the major developers of the region, havelargely replaced the old oligarchy at the seats ofpower.

Construction, business services, the hospitalityindustry and retail have all been greatly impactedby changes in the labor environment as unionworkers were replaced with contracted workerswho were non-union and foreign born.Immigrants are currently measured at 36.2percent5 of the Los Angeles population, 800,000of which are estimated to be undocumented.6 I tis in this context that labor in Los Angeles hasreasserted its power over the past ten years.

The Los Angeles County Federation ofLabor

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has345 affiliates representing over 800,000members. Its largest affiliates are the 75,000 longterm care (homecare and nursing home) workersin SEIU 434B, the 45,000 county workers inSEIU 660, the 30,000 teachers in the AFT andNEA affiliated United Teachers of Los Angeles(UTLA), and the 28,000 members in the various


IATSE locals working in the film and televisionindustry. Its Executive Board is composed ofthirty-five members representing key unionleadership. It has a Committee on PoliticalEducation (C.O.P.E.) with ninety-five votingmembers and over 1300 delegates entitled toparticipate in its monthly delegates meeting.

The County Federation also houses a laborcommunity services program which providessupport for striking and laid-off workers throughimmediate crisis assistance, and major fooddistributions during holidays or at times ofextreme need. Also housed at the CountyFederation is the research unit, the Center forRegional Employment Strategies (CRES). Withpolitical, mobilization, research, andcommunications departments, the federation hasa staff of nearly twenty.

Tradition of Insider Politics

The Los Angeles County Federation of Laborwas chartered in 1959 when six local AFL centrallabor councils merged with the countywide CIOfour years after the national merger between theAFL and the CIO. Under Sig Arywitz, laborplayed a progressive role in Los Angeles throughits support of Tom Bradley’s unsuccessfulmayoral run in 1969 and successful follow-up in1973.7 Arywitz died soon after Bradley’selection in 1973, and his assistant, Bill Robertsonfrom the Hotel Employees and RestaurantEmployees Union, was elected.8 With Bradleyfirmly entrenched as mayor for the next twentyyears, the County Federation of Labor played aninsider political role.

Hired in the early 1980's to direct the work of theCommittee on Political Education (COPE), JimWood replaced Robertson in 1994. Wood was amore dynamic and forceful leader than Robertsonthough his politics were seen as more pragmaticor conservative, depending on the observer.9

Wood was formerly active in Frontlash (the

youth arm of the AFL-CIO) and the SocialDemocrats USA, and he embraced their politics.He was sometimes hostile to progressive forceswithin the federation and to progressivecommunity leaders.

In addition to the endorsement process and themovement of political contributions, Jim Woodfocused much of his efforts on development inLos Angeles. Appointed by Mayor Bradley in1980 to the Community Redevelopment Agency(CRA), Jim Wood served as its chairman duringthe years that the CRA rebuilt the entire skylineof Los Angeles with the tremendous resourcesavailable through tax increment financing.10 Thevast number of union construction jobs requiredfor this endeavor strengthened the existingleadership’s hand internally and externally. Theskyline of downtown Los Angeles remains atestimony to the close relationship between theCounty Federation and the Bradleyadministration. But this relationship ended whenthe Bradley Administration ended.

Leadership Shifts

The current L.A. Federation leadership came topower after the tragic death of Wood from cancerin 1996. Before he died Wood expressed hisdesire to have Miguel Contreras, who he hadhired as COPE director, succeed him11. Thisvote, however, marked the L.A. CountyFederation's first contested election pittingContreras against an Anglo local president. BillRobertson opposed Contreras and was quoted inthe Los Angeles Times as saying, “Contreras isnot qualified. Period.”12 In spite of oppositionfrom the old guard who had worked withRobertson and the racial overtones in thecampaign opposing him, Contreras was elected inMay 1996, becoming the first person of color toassume this position.

Contreras‘s history and background were muchdifferent from Jim Wood’s. Contreras came from


a family of farm workers in Dinuba, California,and learned organizing and movement politicsduring his years with the United Farm Workersof America. Along with a number of the UFW’sbest organizers, Miguel Contreras had been hiredin 1977 by the Hotel Employees and RestaurantEmployees. Contreras first came to Los Angeleswhen he was assigned by the international astrustee to HERE Local 11, which was undergoinga transformation of its own.

At HERE Local 11, Miguel Contreras workedclosely with María Elena Durazo, who had beenelected president in December 1986 as part of anopposition slate to the old guard leadership.Durazo became the first woman and first personof color to assume leadership of the local. Underher leadership, HERE Local 11 adopted a muchmore progressive agenda and militant tactics. Shealso helped empower a largely Latino immigrantmembership that had been disenfranchised by theold administration. Previously, demands totranslate the contracts into Spanish or to conductmembership meetings with the help of aninterpreter had fallen on deaf ears.

When asked to reflect on the CountyFederation’s successes since his election, Migueloffered the following:

Within a period of a few years, you had newleadership of the AFL-CIO, new leadershipof SEIU, new leadership of HERE, as well asnew leadership of the L.A. CountyFederation of Labor. In locals in Los Angeles,you had new leadership in a lot of unions too.You had the janitors organizing. You had thehomecare organizing. And so I think it’s anatural evolution that’s happening, but we’vebeen the convening point of these differentoperations. We have some great organizingcommitments in Los Angeles from thesenational unions. And we continue to grow.For the longest time it was just SEIU andHERE, but now we’ve expanded to include

other unions. We’ve been getting greatassistance from the new Laborers’president—again, new leadership. We havethe new commitments from UNITE—againthere is new leadership in UNITE. Andlocally…[s]ince I’ve been here, we’ve alsohad new leadership from the IATSE. Somany different locals have new leadership inthe past five years, and we’ve been able tobring them into labor’s structure.13

Building Political Power

In the past decade, the L.A. County Federationof Labor has been transformed from an entitymost known for its “checkbook politics” to acutting edge political machine able to elect itsown leadership into state and local office and tofunction as a key participant in regional politics.

The Old Model

From its inception in 1959, the L.A. CountyFederation of Labor played a key role infinancing many Democratic political campaigns.In return for labor’s largesse, the CountyFederation was seen as a player in the politicalarena and was often at the table on keydevelopment deals. But labor in Los Angelesalso paid a price over time for its closerelationship with the powers in the DemocraticParty and the Bradley administration, as itbecame accustomed to operating largely withouta field mobilization capacity.

Early Get Out the Vote Work

During the 1984 presidential election betweenRonald Reagan and Walter Mondale, neither labornor the Democratic Party had any substantivefield capacity in the precincts. In order to havesome union field program building up to theNovember election, Jim Wood opened up thefederation offices to ex-UFW organizers whowere working in the precincts while waging alocal initiative campaign. Always interested in


the role of technology in organizing, Jim Woodattempted to develop some nascent field workover the next six years, figuring out how to matchcomputerized membership rolls with the voterfiles and conducting early and fitful labor-to-laborcampaign efforts14, but these efforts reportedlyhad more flash than substance.

The more substantive field operations inCalifornia at this time were being conducted byex-UFW executive board member Marshall Ganz.Ganz had developed the “occasional voter”methodology while running a 1983 mayoralcampaign in San Diego. This system, which tookadvantage of the recently computerized voterrolls, is widely embraced today. It focusesturnout efforts on voters with intermittent votingpatterns, which allows “Get Out the Vote”(GOTV) work to more effectively target voterswith a proven need to be encouraged to go to thepolls. The early and documented success of thisstrategy in Senator Alan Cranston’s razor-thin1986 victory over Republican challenger EdZschau and the ambitious 1988 Campaign forParticipation and Democracy15 (which was ledby Ganz along with María Elena Durazo, MiguelContreras, and several of Los Angeles’s otherprogressive leaders) put resources back into fieldoperations and trained the next generation ofunion leaders on how to run political campaignfield efforts. This laid fertile ground for labor’slater electoral successes.

In April 1992, civil unrest came to Los Angelesin response to the acquittal of the LAPD officerswho had been captured on videotape beatingRodney King. The resulting riots took their tollon Los Angeles’s existing Democratic powerstructure. In the 1993 mayoral election,Democrats and labor united around city councilmember Mike Woo. However, on the heels of thefifty-two deaths and massive property lossesfrom the riots coupled with the huge loss ofaerospace and defense contractor dollars at theend of the Cold War, Los Angeles voters elected

a Republican businessman named RichardRiordan, who ran on the platform, “ToughEnough to Lead L.A.”

When the Democrats lost the mayoralty of LosAngeles to a Republican, Bill Robertson steppeddown as the County Federation’s secretary-treasurer, and Jim Wood was elected thefollowing year. This was the year of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 on the November1994 statewide ballot. Not known as a risktaker, Jim Wood agreed to support a rally againstthe measure in downtown Los Angeles eventhough many elected Democrats and politicalconsultants feared a backlash to the “sea ofbrown faces” and the “inevitable Mexicanflags.”16 No rally in Los Angeles had gatheredmore than 60,000 since the 1940’s when laborhad turned out 100,000 for their labor marches.But this time, labor, immigrant rights groups, andthe ethnic media turned out over 100,000demonstrators against Proposition 187 at LosAngeles City Hall. This experience coupled withthe Republican miscalculation in attacking bothundocumented and documented immigrants, firstin California and then as part of Newt Gingrich’snational assault, helped forge a new and powerfulpolitical alliance between labor and the Latinocommunity in California, and specifically in LosAngeles.

Signs of Power -- Key Electoral Battles

In the past decade a growing number of “laborchampions,” including many union andcommunity activists, have been elected to localand state office in L.A. County. The selectedchronology below provides a sense of labor'sgrowing political influence.

1994: A representative from the United Teachersof Los Angeles and a previous local presidentof theAmerican Federation of GovernmentEmployees wins the primary for an


Assembly seat in Northeast Los Angeles.Antonio Villaraigosa had a long and stronghistory with progressives in the L.A. labormovement and with María Elena Durazo inparticular. The success of the Villaraigosacampaign against the old guard Latinoleadership in Los Angeles was not lost on theCounty Federation.

1996: Having lost the state assembly toRepublican control, the County Federationendorsed three Democratic challengers andran field and independent mail programs inthese contested seats, winning all three racesand helping to bring back Democratic controlof the State Assembly.

1997: Labor endorses Gilbert Cedillo, the recentgeneral manager of the largest county workersunion, SEIU 660, for a special electionAssembly seat representing theoverwhelmingly Latino downtown LosAngeles. Behind by double digits, thecampaign developed a targeted registrationdrive and then focused an independent walkprogram and direct mail effort on occasionallyvoting and newly registered Latino voters.The campaign literature explained that GilCedillo and labor were Los Angeles’schampions against the immigrant-bashingRepublicans and Governor Pete Wilson.Gilbert Cedillo, a virtual unknown before therace, won a commanding victory17 against theold guard’s better-known candidate who hadpreviously served on the L.A. School Board.

1998: Labor in California conducts an all outeffort to defeat Proposition 226, an attemptto ban the collection of COPE dollars withoutindividual annual written authorizations fromunion members. Hundreds of staff wereloaned from unions to the L.A. CountyFederation.18 In the fall of 1998, labor andthe Democrats finally get back thegovernorship.19 The election of additional

Latino Democratic assembly membersstrengthens the power of the Latino caucusand they elect the first Latino speaker, CruzBustamante.

1999: In the city elections, Labor throws itsweight behind Alex Padilla, the now citycouncil president, for a San Fernando Valleyseat. But possibly of greater importance, oneof labor’s strongest allies, AntonioVillaraigosa, is elected to the speakership ofthe state Assembly. This ushers in an era ofgreater access for the L.A. County Federationin local, state, and national politics.

2000: The County Federation of Labor focusesits now considerable electoral power behind aprogressive challenger in a primary for theHouse of Representatives, endorsing statesenator Hilda Solis. Solis had led thesuccessful 1986 fight to increase the stateminimum wage. She and the CountyFederation were challenging a long-standingmember of Congress, Marty Martinez, with arelatively prolabor voting record.Mainstream Democratic leaders across thecountry were aghast that labor would violatetheir long-standing commitment not tooppose Democratic leaders who had amoderately supportive voting record.Defending this move, Miguel Contrerasexplained to everyone on the campaign trailthat being a business Democrat was not goodenough, that unions needed “labor warriors”and “labor champions.” Hilda Solis defeatedMarty Martinez in the primary and went onto become one of labor’s strongest allies inCongress. In the fall, labor’s candidates wontwo of three additional contestedCongressional races with Republicans.

2002: Facing a Chamber of Commerce fundedopponent in the primary, labor successfullyelects Fabian Núñez, the former politicaldirector of the L.A. County Federation, to


the state Assembly. In a short period oftime, he is catapulted to the powerfulposition of speaker. While Governor GrayDavis is reelected in November, labor in LosAngeles scores two impressive victories by indefeating a bold “white flight” scheme by theSan Fernando Valley elite to secede from LosAngeles and by passing a parcel tax for thecounty’s public health care system (aninitiative that needed and got a two-thirdsvote of support).

2003: Two leaders with roots from within thelabor movement are elected to the LosAngeles City Council. Following a carefullyconstructed plan by the County Federationof Labor, Antonio Villaraigosa beats anincumbent council member, taking over 50percent of the vote in the primary.Villaraigosa and the L.A. Federation inflictedthe first primary loss by an incumbent in thehistory of Los Angeles’ nonpartisan primarysystem. In the runoff elections MartinLudlow, a former SEIU organizer and CountyFederation political director, goes fromthirteen points behind in the primary to acommanding victory against an opponentwho generated considerable support from theAfrican American power structure. The winstrengthens labor’s role with progressives inLos Angeles’s Black communities.

2004: Karen Bass, the executive director of theCommunity Coalition20 and a close labor allyfrom South Los Angeles, is elected to thestate assembly. With the support of the L.A.Federation and past political director andcurrent council member Martin Ludlow, theBass campaign organized an impressive laborand community coalition, attracting supportfrom unions, community organizations, andprogressives throughout Los Angeles. WhenBass assumes office in January 2005 she willbecome the first African American woman inthe California State Legislature in ten years.

Many other labor electoral victories have notbeen recounted here, such as labor’s role increating pro-labor council majorities in LongBeach and Inglewood, their work in the SanGabriel Valley in support of State Senator GloriaRomero and Assembly member Judy Chu, theirclose working relationship with progressiveleaders such as Assembly member JackieGoldberg, and their amazing recent successworking with LAANE to defeat Wal-Mart’sattempt to force their way into Inglewood on theheels of the long and painful grocery workersstrike in Southern California.21

The campaigns delineated above capture the keyfocused efforts by the County Federation, wherehundreds of thousands of dollars were raised andspent in each effort, using a combination offinancial support to candidate committees,internal labor-to-labor campaigns, and thedevelopment of one or more independentexpenditure campaigns. These independentexpenditure campaigns are often constituency-based towards immigrants, Latinos, Blacks, orwomen. In these efforts, labor has dramaticallyexpanded their technical abilities in targetingvoters, and the skills of their full-time precinctwalkers, paid loss-timers primarily from SEIU1877, HERE 11, and UNITE. Each campaignnow seeks to talk to a sufficient number of votersin order to have sufficient targets to turn-out andwin the specified election with that targetnumber. Voter contacts are made by full-timeprecinct walkers with help from weekendvolunteer walkers. The walk numbers are heavilysupplemented through full-time and volunteerphone calls at the federation’s forty-stationpredictive dialing phone bank and SEIU Local99’s fixed and mobile predictive dialingstations.22

To pay for these efforts at the L.A. Federation,additional funds in excess of the per capitapayments are raised from affiliates, often as


much as three hundred thousand dollars to fundthe labor to labor program and the independentexpenditure campaigns. And some affiliates arenow able to conduct their own independentexpenditure campaigns focused, for example, on aseparate radio, billboard, or open placement signcampaign as a part of Labor’s overall effort.23

Furthermore, the City’s campaign finance lawprovides a one-for-one matching fund program onthe first $250 for council office, or $500 forcitywide office, up to a certain maximum, so thatLabor’s candidates have often been able to raisesufficient progressive and other dollars, allowingLabor to focus their efforts directly into a highlytargeted field and mail program.

Finally, key participants in the L.A. Federationsupported a community based alliance in thedevelopment of a separate non-partisanconstituency-based voter participation effort thatfocuses on voter education and turn-out inunderrepresented communities through walk,phone, and/or mail efforts, be they immigrants,Latinos, African-Americans or women. Thisnon-partisan, non-profit corporation, the VoterImprovement Program (VIP), wasinstitutionalized through a periodic VIP dinnerstarting in 1997. These dinners now raise up to$1 million through a joint sponsorship of labororganizations, key corporate allies andcommunity groups throughout L.A.24

At this point in history, there is a pro-labormajority in the Los Angeles city council, andamong the state and federal elected delegations.The L.A. County Board of Supervisors remainslargely immune to Labor’s power because of thesize of the huge districts, the way they have beencarved, the lack of term limits, and an earlyunsuccessful campaign against a current boardmember. Overall, the trend in Los Angeles istoward labor’s increasing electoral influence asthe Latino population remains on the rise andlabor continues to hone its relationships and itsskills.

Building an Immigrant-Labor Voting Block: theOrganization of Los Angeles Workers (OLAW)

Labor’s growing electoral success in L.A. is theresult of its systematic efforts to build a solidgrassroots political organization and a mobilizedvoting base. The centerpiece of this new politicalcapacity rests in a labor-immigrant alliance forgedat the door-to-door level.

Labor and the Democratic Party had questionedthe value of electoral efforts in Latinocommunities prior to recent demographic shifts.Registration work in Latino neighborhoods in theearly 1980s produced cards that were less than50 percent Democratic and over 30 percentRepublican. After factoring in the differingturnout expectations between parties, Democratsquestioned the efficacy of nonpartisan voterregistration drives among Latinos. However,newer voters who got their citizenship during theRepublican attack in the 1990s have proven notonly overwhelmingly Democratic but also strongsupporters of labor's champions. As a result, theCalifornia State Assembly, which fell briefly intoRepublican hands toward the end of SpeakerWillie Brown’s run, is now two votes short of atwo-thirds Democratic majority in the forty-member Senate and six votes short of a two-thirds Democratic majority in the eighty-memberAssembly.

The mobilization of this new alignment wassparked in early 2000 when labor led a coalitionof immigrants’ rights organizations in an amnestycampaign that filled the L.A. Sports Arena withsixteen thousand supporters inside and over fourthousand more cheering outside. MiguelContreras, along with María Elena Durazo andSEIU international vice president Eliseo Medina,set about to harness this power politically. Theyset up the Organization of Los Angeles Workers(OLAW) to develop a cadre of skilled unionmembers who would be paid their regular salary


to work with the union on political campaigns(these are known as lost-timers).25 In addition toHERE Local 11, SEIU Local 1877 (Justice forJanitors), and UNITE members, full-time walkerscame initially from the Coalition for HumaneImmigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA),Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, Clinica Romero(a Salvadoran immigrant solidarity organization),and a number of Mexican and Guatemalanhometown associations.26

OLAW's first outing in 2000 focused sixty full-time walkers on two Republican-occupiedcongressional districts. In a parallel effort theUFW took on a third congressional race in L.A.Operating outside traditionally acknowledgedLatino communities, OLAW targeted fortythousand Latinos in these previously Republicandistricts for turnout, using candidatecomparisons, a pledge card, and a “stand up andbe counted” message to move these voters to thepolls. Two of these three Republican seatsbecame Democratic with the election of AdamSchiff and Jane Harman in the Novemberelection.27 Eliseo Medina explains OLAW’swork in an interview:

Sometimes the details are important... Wemade up compromisos , commitment sheets, onNCR paper. The person at the door signedand kept one copy, and the other copy wentinto our data bank. That built in a lot ofaccountability with our loss-timers becausethey had to show a signature, not just circle acode.... And the commitment was focused onmaking voting a social act. The commitmentforms said, ‘Por la amnistia, por derechos, mifamilia vota 100 percento.’ [For amnesty, forrights, my family is voting 100 percent.]… Wetried to make everything a family act tomagnify the work and make it resonate.

Defeats as well as successes have built thepolitical clout of labor and its immigrant allies. In2001, in a bold move, the County Federation

“bet the farm” on Antonio Villaraigosa, theformer union president and now Speaker of theAssembly, in his run for mayor.28 In this race,OLAW fielded one hundred and fifty full-timeloss-timers for the full six weeks before theelection, and four hundred and fifty full-timers inthe four days leading up to both the primary andrunoff.29 In addition, the County Federationfielded a powerful labor-to-labor campaign and aseparate independent expenditure campaign.Miguel Contreras reports that in one day in LosAngeles, on the Saturday before the run-offelection, two thousand seven hundred peoplewalked precincts for Antonio Villaraigosa.30

Labor’s candidate placed first during the primarybut was defeated by seven points in a raciallytinged general election by another Democrat,James Hahn, the former city attorney. Despitethe ultimate loss, this effort invigorated LosAngeles, conveying the power and energy of thelabor-Latino-progressive alliance.

In each race OLAW’s loss-timers have gainednew skills. Tracy Zeluff, SEIU State Council’sfield director, comments:

They start with the task of delivering amessage, working as a team, being accountable,being more assertive. They develop politically,organizationally, personally, and they takethese skills back into the workplace for theirunion. And the next campaign they are thereagain, but this time as a team leader or possiblyrunning several teams. A number of OLAWfull-timers are now getting ready to go toArizona and New Mexico, planning to runsignificant pieces of field operations in thesebattleground states. These are investments thathave paid off over multiple elections.31

In addition to its electoral prowess, OLAW alsofocuses on improving the public’s understandingof labor, especially in its base communities. Asearly as 1994 with the 100,000 supporters whoturned out at City Hall against Proposition 187,


it became clear to labor that the ethnic media hadthe capacity to be a partner on several fronts.Continuing to push on this front in developingthe precinct work, Eliseo Medina explains, “Wewould often run paid media in the Spanishlanguage press and use this to leverage PublicService Announcements (PSA’s) with our non-partisan message. We would then routinelyinvite news anchors and reporters to walk withour teams and this would create a buzz, adrumbeat for our efforts. In this way, laborbecame a partner with the community.”32

As a next step, OLAW and the CountyFederation worked with Spanish-languageUnivision (channel 34) to conduct citizenshipfairs At the Lincoln Park event, every consulatein Los Angeles set up a booth and over 3,000people attended to inquire about the citizenshipprocess as it relates to their country of origin.Channel 34 set up call-in shows with a toll-freenumber into the SEIU Local 99 phone bank.Univision started conducting other call-in showswith labor, marketing them “Treinta Cuatro enSu Lado” [Channel 34 on Your Side]. Theyadvertised and televised a question and answersession with immigration attorneys, and theunion recruited fifty immigration attorneys tostaff SEIU Local 99’s call center. That sessionled to over 200,000 phone requests. For aquestion and answer session on L.A. schools, theunion recruited school district and unionrepresentatives to field another barrage ofquestions, and a session on community-policerelations filled the phone bank with LAPDcommunity affairs representatives. In this way,Eliseo Medina explains:

With the phone bank at Local 99, the TV hasthe SEIU logo behind all of the experts andpeople start to understand that labor has a roleon all these key issues… As a result of theseand other efforts, the new voters in L.A. arenow almost as progressive as the San Franciscovoter base. With nine to ten million non-citizen

permanent residents, many of them in keystates such as Florida, New Mexico andArizona, whoever is figuring out how to do thiswork can make all the difference.”33

Concerns Along the Path: Shifting Racial Terrain

While building an axis of labor-immigrant politicalpower, L.A. leaders have had to negotiate thecomplex terrain of Black-Brown relations. Fromthe Bradley years, labor was usually seen as areliable ally to the Black community. AfricanAmericans ran the bus drivers union, the cityemployees union, the classified schoolemployees union, the letter carriers union, severalother public sector locals, and added thehomecare workers union. But in the 1980’s otheronce unionized industries began contracting outtraditional African-American jobs in hotels andbuilding services and began filling these “new”jobs with non-union Latino workers. With theongoing demographic shift and the constant battlefor available turf and resources, deep Black-Brown tensions emerged in neighborhoods, theschools, the streets, the jails and prisons, and thegangs, and these tensions spilled into every areaof life. They played out in battles against thefurther contracting out of African American jobsin the public sector to low-wage Latinosubcontractors. And they played out in thesiting of schools to accommodate the burgeoningLatino population.34

Labor’s electoral work in Los Angeles played outon this same stage. There were some who fearedthat too close an identification between labor andLatinos would lead to the exclusion of othergroups. Indeed, powerful political players werenot above exploiting that divide. Toward the endof the 2001 mayoral campaign, Democraticcandidate James Hahn released his smokingcrack-pipe ad with grainy images of AntonioVillaraigosa meant to solicit fear from the averagevoter, à la Willie Horton.35 This fear message


played well to Hahn’s base among Anglo votersin the conservative west San Fernando Valleyalong with his African American base in SouthLos Angeles.36 By contrast, AntonioVillaraigosa’s relationships of trust across raceand ethnic lines were very deep. And his diverseallies argued the importance of a multiracialembrace of the coalition candidate who precededthe coming Latino majority. The Villaraigosa lossand the elected Black leadership’s overwhelmingsupport for James Hahn, partially because of hisfather’s legendary largesse on the Board ofSupervisors, caused some soul-searching at theCounty Federation.

This led to the focus on Martin Ludlow's race in2003. Wit Ludlow, Labor was running itsstrongest ally in the Black community. Ludlowhad worked previously at SEIU, SpeakerVillaraigosa’s L.A. office, as the CountyFederation’s COPE director during theVillaraigosa campaign, and as chief of staff toAfrican American Assembly Speaker HerbWesson. He presented the very face of coalitionpolitics: an African American adopted into anAnglo family who had long relationships of trustwith both Latino and African American leaders.Labor presented a powerful and united campaignin supporting his candidacy and the progressiveBlack leadership in Los Angeles was empoweredthrough the Ludlow victory.

In the very next local race, labor embraced aprogressive African American ally in Karen Bass’race to succeed Speaker Herb Wesson in the 47th

Assembly District. Karen Bass had built a trulyBlack-Brown organization in South L.A. and hadchampioned Villaraigosa’s mayoral effort there.As ethnic housing barriers have been brokendown by the vast influx of Latinos, large numbersof African Americans have left inner cityneighborhoods and spread throughout SouthernCalifornia. As a result, traditional AfricanAmerican neighborhoods and legislative districtshave changed dramatically. California which once

had fourteen Black state elected officials, nowhas six and none outside L.A. And the 2000reapportionment of the 47th Assembly Districtturned this district from a majority AfricanAmerican seat to a plurality Anglo seat. Yet,because of the strength of the candidate, theefforts of labor and its allies, this traditionallyBlack seat remained a Black seat even thoughthree strong African-Americans faced off herewith an Anglo candidate in the wings. In fact,labor’s overwhelming support for Karen Basshelped keep the prominent Anglo, who may havepolled a plurality, from throwing his hat in thering.

With the victories of Martin Ludlow and KarenBass, labor and its allies developed AfricanAmerican loss-timers with skills in the Blackcommunity to add to the loss-timers who havehoned their skills in turning out Latino voters.And labor can also now operate with increasedlegitimacy in South Los Angeles, without beingaccused of acting as an invading army or a frontfor the coming Latino majority.37

Concerns Along the Path: Union ElectoralDivision

The L.A. Federation has been able to buildelectoral power by developing a measure of unityamong its affiliates over political endorsements.They have been able to muster the two-thirdsvote required to endorse a candidate in each ofthe races detailed above, despite regularchallenges to these endorsements from individualaffiliates. Some unions have at times gone theirown way on specific endorsements, but becauseof the power of the L.A. Federation’s collectiveprogram, the impact of this division of labor’sresources has been minimized. The mayoral racein 2001 and the upcoming race in 2005 providesome useful insights into this issue.

In 2001, almost all of the unions that representcity workers endorsed city attorney James Hahn


over Villaraigosa, but they did not have enoughvotes to block a two-thirds endorsement forVillaraigosa. In 2005, the city unions that backedHahn in 2001 will have many more allies withinlabor in the next round as Hahn is now theincumbent. Since the last mayoral election, laborhas developed strategic alliances with MayorHahn primarily through their support of hiscampaign to stop the San Fernando Valleysecession effort that threatened municipalfinancing. This initial alliance led to labor’sappointment by the mayor to key positionsthroughout Los Angeles.38

However, the mayor has angered the Blackestablishment by firing African American policechief Bernard Parks. Parks easily won a councilseat and is now running against his former bosswith the strong support of Hahn’s previousAfrican American base. And Robert Hertzberg,the assembly speaker who followed Villaraigosa,is mounting a significant challenge to the mayorlikely to erode any base the mayor has left in theSan Fernando Valley because of the mayor’scampaign against Valley secession. On August2nd,council member Antonio Villaraigosaannounced his intentions to run against themayor. A minority of labor invokes the Bradleycampaign’s second successful run four years afterthe initial loss as support for this secondcampaign. Others are either satisfied withincumbent Hahn, who has recently reached out tolabor at every recent opportunity, or areconvinced that he is likely to be reelected and donot want to be again outside the halls of power.This complex situation, which in some waysresults from the L.A. Federation’s priorsuccesses, will be a challenge to their leadershiprole in the next city election cycle.

Cashing in on Political Work: The CountyFederation’s Role in Organizing andBargaining

The L.A. Federation’s successful efforts to buildpolitical power has translated into support in the

workplace. The County Federation's ability totranslate electoral success into leverage can beseen in both support for affiliate organizing andcontract bargaining.

Leverage for Organizing Campaigns

While the federation has not been directlyresponsible for the organizing victories, theyhave used their considerable political clout toassist in the organizing campaigns.

The Service Employees International Union hasbeen the most dynamic organizing force in LosAngeles and throughout California. Twoorganizing victories have had national impact:The Justice for Janitors campaign organizedthousands of largely immigrant workers in theearly 1990s. The L.A. Federation recruited laborand community support for many of the publicdemonstrations that galvanized the necessarypolitical support in favor of their recognition andlater contract efforts.39 In 1999, the CountyFederation’s closest ally in Sacramento, SpeakerAntonio Villaraigosa, carried the legislation thatcreated the public authority that allowedhomecare workers to have an employer of recordwith which to bargain.40 This campaign brought74,000 new workers into labor’s L.A. ranks.

In the last few years, SEIU has also scoredimpressive organizing victories in the LosAngeles health care industry with successes atthe two large chains, Catholic Healthcare Westand Tenet hospitals, and numerous independents.Thousands of new health care workers have beensuccessfully organized, and hospital-basedprivate sector health care within the past fewyears has gone from 8 percent organized to over50 percent organized. This has been the result ofa combination of strategic research, a top-notchteam of organizers, strong labor and communityalliances, and aggressive corporate campaignstargeting the major employers in the industry.


The County Federation’s main contribution hasbeen to get “labor’s warriors” up to Sacramento,and these legislators have carried many bills insupport of organizing. These bills have includedprohibitions on the use of state funds to fightunions, card check legislation for statecontractors, employer mandates on healthcare,limits on contracting and outsourcing, and bills toexpand the prevailing wage. Most recently, theL.A. Federation’s past political director andcurrent speaker, Fabian Nunez, played the keyrole in negotiating labor’s right to organize at theIndian casinos as part of the compacts negotiatedby Governor Schwarzenegger between Californiaand several of the tribes. In addition, the L.A.Federation has been able to help secure cardcheck agreements for several member unions.

From 1998 to 2001, the L.A. County Federationof Labor hired an organizing director to try tosupport multi-union organizing campaigns and towork with affiliates to strengthen their organizingand bargaining capacity. Ultimately, thisposition was eliminated based on the difficultythe County Federation experienced in clearlydefining their role in this arena. The CountyFederation continues to sponsor the work of theLos Angeles-Orange County OrganizingCommittee which is housed in their building.The LAOCOC holds monthly meetings withorganizers, promotes best practices, and clearstargets for organizing.

The difficulty that the County Federation hasexperienced in relation to organizing is not unlikethe problems faced by the AFL-CIO nationally.As a coalition of existing unions, they do nothave their own independent membership base ortheir own organizing targets. They can use theirposition and moral authority to encourage unionsto organize and bargain effectively, butultimately, whether unions organize and preparesufficiently for their work actions is not really upto them. The experiences in this arena have ledthe County Federation of Labor to pursue their

current campaign to establish a million dollardefense fund (to be explored in the final section).

Leverage for Contract Campaigns

On the bargaining front, the County Federationhas developed a powerful reputation in elevatingthe visibility of a local fight. In 2000, over250,000 workers in Los Angeles were facingcontract expirations. The Los Angeles CountyFederation of Labor skillfully coordinatedmembership mobilization, community outreach,and media to aggressively support the contractbattles. The campaigns helped to strengthen thelinks between the existing unions and create astronger sense of class solidarity in the area.

The first major campaign battle involved a three-week strike of the janitors. The strike attractedhuge public support. Cardinal Roger Mahoneypresided over a public mass for thousands ofstriking janitors. Members of the Californialegislature and the L.A. City Council jockeyedwith each other to join with janitors in civildisobedience actions shutting down several majorintersections during rush hour. Even theRepublican mayor of Los Angeles publicly statedthat the janitors were not asking for enoughmoney at the bargaining table, much to thechagrin of his corporate backers.

At the height of the strike, thousands of janitorsmarched for fourteen miles from downtown LosAngeles to Century City. Thousands ofsupporters lined the streets, many withhandmade signs of support. Many other officeworkers rushed into the crowd to spontaneouslycontribute to the striking workers. The bright redT-shirts worn by janitors became so publiclyidentified with the strike, that public bus driverswere giving free rides to any of the strikingworkers wearing a janitors’ T-shirt. At theculmination of the three-week strike, the janitorswon a 26 percent wage increase and full family


medical coverage. This strike has deservedlybeen studied as a model of union preparation.41

The janitor’s strike set the pace for subsequentnegotiations involving the bus drivers. The L.A.Federation’s profile was even higher while it wassupporting the United Transportation Union.Martin Ludlow, the L.A. Federation’s politicaldirector was assigned to build support amongstelected officials and church leaders. The L.A.Federation’s overall efforts on the coalition andmedia fronts helped build strong public supportfor their contract demands. And labor’slegitimacy in the community with bus users andtheir advocates strengthened the bus drivers’position. It was the L.A. Federation thatultimately brought Jesse Jackson to Los Angelesand positioned Jackson as the mediator. And itwas Jesse Jackson who brokered the high stakesdispute.

Labor’s success with the janitors and the busdrivers worked to the advantage of the teachers,screen actors, and L.A. County workers later thatyear in helping to settle their disputes.

Over the past year, the County Federation ofLabor has played a key role in supporting threeworker actions. Members of the ILWU werelocked out of their jobs by the Pacific MaritimeAssociation, and the L.A. Federation sponsoredsuccessful labor solidarity efforts at the port onseveral occasions. When the MetropolitanTransit Authority’s bus mechanics went out onstrike in October 2003, labor’s recently electedchampions, Antonio Villaraigosa and MartinLudlow, played the key front roles in moving themediation proposal once Mayor Hahn appointedthem to the board of the Metropolitan TransitAuthority and they won a related legal case. AndMiguel Contreras played the key background rolein working with the MTA unions to settle thisstrike after five long weeks.

And then came the devastating strike and lockoutof 70,000 grocery workers at Vons (Safeway),Albertsons, and Ralphs (Kroger) all acrossSouthern California. The federation loaned fivestaff members to the UFCW during the course ofthe action. But the strike and lockout wereemotionally draining on the staff who weredealing with the personal tragedies of unionmembers whose strike fund benefits kept beingreduced. The UFCW’s lack of preparation forthe titanic battle that ensued has become wellunderstood. Less understood is the consensus-based decision-making of seven separate localsattempting to take on national companies at onlya regional level. As hard as they worked, the dieseemed already cast when the L.A. Federationbecame involved in this strike and lockout andthey indicate that they have learned volumesfrom their solidarity efforts in support of thiswork action.

The County Federation's CoalitionBuilding

The different campaigns and issues haveprovided the impetus for several coalitionrelationships worthy of mention. In the electoralarena, a number of community organizationsparticipate in the field campaigns that are basedat the County Federation of Labor, most notablyHermandad Mexicana Nacional and ACORN.Each electoral effort pulls together a differentelectoral coalition depending on the district andthe related issues, including the work of OLAWand its coalition partners.

The L.A. electoral arena cannot be addressedwithout some mention of the work of AGENDA(Action for Grassroots Empowerment andNeighborhood Development Alternatives), itscoalition arm the Metropolitan Alliance, and theirkey organizer Anthony Thigpenn. AGENDAhas teamed up in the past three years with theCommunity Coalition, SEIU Local 1877 (Justicefor Janitors), SEIU Local 434B (Home HealthCare) and SEIU Local 99 (Classified School


Employees) to build a 501(c )(4) labor-community field effort in South Los Angelescalled ALLERT (Alliance of Local Leaders forEducation, Registration, and Turn-out).

Intentionally developing Black/Brown precinctteams in the changing Black community,Anthony Thigpenn’s work has been instrumentalin spinning off independent expenditure effortsfor candidates Martin Ludlow and Karen Bass.And while independent expenditure campaignscannot coordinate with candidate campaigns,they can do some coordination with each other,and the close working relationship between theCounty Federation of Labor, AGENDA, theCommunity Coalition, and ALLERT has beenhighly productive. As a result, ALLERT hasbegun to play the role in the traditionallyAfrican-American community that OLAWcontinues to play in Latino communities.

In supporting the work of the constituencygroups, the County Federation has turned theannual MLK breakfast into a fundraiser for theA. Phillip Randolph Institute (APRI), the AsianPacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), theCoalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW),Labor Committee for Latin AmericanAdvancement (LCLAA), the Jewish LaborCommittee (JLC), and Pride at Work (the gayand lesbian constituency group of the AFL-CIO).The constituency groups meet together monthlyjust before the federation’s delegates meeting.42

The County Federation’s Role in LaborPolicy Debates

With the increased political power of the CountyFederation of Labor has also been increasedactivism on the public policy front. There aretwo major public policy areas where thefederation has had a particularly successfulimpact: on immigration and immigrant workersand on economic justice and the living wage.

Immigrant Rights

The County Federation of Labor has beeninstrumental in helping to change the nationalpolicy of the AFL-CIO with regard toimmigration as well as advancing policyinitiatives in California that have impactedimmigrants.

The AFL-CIO change in policy came about inpart as a result of a new wave of immigrantworker organizing in the 1990s, including theJustice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles.The janitors’ campaign successfully unionizedthousands of Latino immigrant workers andcaptured the spirit and imagination of millionsthroughout the country. The campaign hasgenerated international interest, in part because ofKen Loach’s film, Bread and Roses.

Other Los Angeles unions have won impressivegains in organizing immigrant workers, includingthe Hotel Employees and Restaurant EmployeesUnion (HERE); the Union of Needletrade,Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE); theInternational Association of Machinists (IAM);SEIU’s Homecare local, and numerous buildingtrades unions, in particular, the Laborers and thePainters.

Prior to 2000, the activities of unions in LosAngeles were putting them increasingly at oddswith the national policy of the AFL-CIO thatcontinued to oppose the granting of legal statusto undocumented workers and supportedemployer sanctions, including civil criminalpenalties for hiring the undocumented. Unions inLos Angeles argued that the AFL-CIO could notcontinue to encourage immigrant workers to jointheir ranks while, at the same time, upholdingpolicies opposed to immigrant workers’interests. This conflict came to a head at the1999 AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles.Several unions, most notably the ServiceEmployees International Union (SEIU), HERE,


UNITE, the United Farm Workers of America(UFW), and California-based central laborcouncils took the lead in advancing a resolutionfrom the convention floor to change the AFL-CIO’s policy regarding immigrant workers.While no consensus was reached at theconvention, John Sweeney appointed acommittee to review the matter, chaired by JohnWilhelm, president of HERE. By the February2000 executive committee meeting, the AFL-CIOadopted a new platform in defense of immigrantrights. This resulted in a dramatic shift in thenational debate on immigration reform and onceagain brought the issues of legalization and therepeal of employer sanctions to the forefront.

In the summer of 2000, the AFL-CIO held aseries of "Town Hall" meetings to announce theirchange in immigration policy and to reach out toimmigrant workers to share their stories. Themost impressive of these meetings, discussedearlier, was held in Los Angeles where 20,000immigrant workers turned out at the downtownSports Arena for a powerful immigrant rightsrally that, in a historic turnaround, was led by theAmerican labor movement.

In California, unions were major supporters oflegislation introduced by State Senator GilbertCedillo, a former union leader, providing drivers’licenses for undocumented immigrants. Althoughpassed into law and signed by Governor GrayDavis, this law was subsequently overturnedwith the election of Republican Governor ArnoldSchwarzenegger. Labor continues to play acentral role in negotiating a compromise with theSchwarzenegger administration. Also on theimmigrant rights front, the national chairpersonfor the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, MaríaElena Durazo, is based in Los Angeles, and LosAngeles became an organizing center for theOctober 2003 national effort.

Economic Development and the Work ofthe Los Angeles Alliance for a NewEconomy (LAANE)

While a number of central labor councils havespun off their own non-profit entities that workon economic justice and economic development,LAANE largely occupies that turf in LosAngeles. It is thus important to understandLAANE’s role and their relationship with theL.A. Federation

In 1993 HERE Local 11 launched LAANE as anonprofit advocate for workers’ interests in thepublic policy arena. With its ability to attractfoundation funding LAANE today supportsroughly twenty staff. LAANE's work is threepronged: research, policy development andcampaigns, and coalition work. Through allthree, LAANE works to refocus public debatesabout economic development on issues ofeconomic justice and a worker's right to organize.Pursuing this work, involves LAANE is a wealthof on-the-ground organizing.

The Value of Research at LAANE

Research has proven critical to raise publicawareness of the bankruptcy of current economicdevelopment policy and to identify areas forgrassroots and policy action. In 2000, LAANEreleased a report detailing the magnitude of socialand economic problems produced by the massivegrowth of low-wage jobs. This report built onearlier studies that focused light on the two majorlocal economic development programs: the city’sCommercial Redevelopment Agency and theMayor’s Los Angeles Business Team. Withaccess to millions of dollars in public subsidiesand other incentive mechanisms, these twoprograms helped drive development in the city.Researchers found that job quality was not acriteria being used in either program. Publicefforts were not targeted specifically towardunder-served communities. Indeed, the city hadno coherent strategy targeting key industry


sectors, but rather focused its energy onattracting individual firms. The reportsrecommended far less emphasis on retail andmuch greater attention to smaller projects. Therecommendations also looked toward living wagepolicies, labor peace compacts, greater attentionto job creation and job quality, and far morepublic accountability. Together, these threereports articulated an organizing agenda forenergizing local progressive politics.

Policy Action: Retention and Living Wage

Starting in 1993 LAANE led a successfulcampaign to pass the country's first workerretention ordinance that required existing workersto be hired during a change of contractors.Amongst others, the ordinance helped save thejobs of hundreds of airport employees. Thisworker retention ordinance played a key role insupporting HERE and SEIU organizing efforts atLAX, since key committee members could not beeasily discarded with a change of contractors.

In 1997 LAANE spearheaded the effort to enactLos Angeles's living wage law. The Los AngelesLiving Wage campaign had a powerful impact onthe local political scene. An impressive coalitionof labor unions, religious groups, communityorganizations, and economic justice advocatesjoined together and launched a spirited campaign.Rallies and demonstrations were held in the CityHall chambers. During one holiday seasonaction, actor David Clennon came dressed as theghost of Christmas past complete with chainsand moneyboxes, deriding greedy employers forrefusing to pay their workers a living wage.

The living wage policy that was adopted by thecity council was the first to include a provisionfor health benefits and has became a nationalmodel. It was also the first piece of living wagelegislation to bar retaliation by employers againsttheir workers. The ordinance also pioneeredliving wage coverage that applied to those that

lease land from the city, those requiring cityoperating permits, or those receiving cityfinancial assistance as well as the alreadyestablished coverage of contractors. Morerecently, LAANE coordinated with the CountyFederation to secure a county living wageordinance and a Pasadena living wage law. BothLAANE and the L.A. Federation support anongoing living wage battle in Santo Monica.

LAANE’s work on the L.A. living wage hasemerged as a model for aggressive enforcement.LAANE actively monitors the city's contractingand economic development activity in order toactively intervene in the process. The livingwage coalition pushed the city council to takecity enforcement efforts out of theunsympathetic and ineffective hands of the officecharged with implementing the living wage lawand placing authority into a new staff establishedfor that purpose. LAANE has been theimplementation arm of a city-sponsored programto train covered workers on their rights under theliving wage ordinance.

This living wage work has helped produceleverage to support workers' right to organize.At LAX, the living wage coalition has intervenedin the process by which the airport grants foodconcessions, supporting employers who arecommitted to respecting their workers right tofreely decide whether or not to join a union.They have also obtained amendments to theoriginal living wage law to make clear that theairlines themselves are covered and to providestrong protections and employer sanctions inworkplaces where workers are harassed fordiscussing their rights under the living wageordinance. The retention law protects union andnon-union workers from losing their job if acontract changes hand.

When the living wage law was passed 30,000 outof the 50,000 airport worker were not in a union.Since this time HERE has gone from representing


roughly one out of five airport workers in itsbargaining to four out of five. SEIU has movedfrom representing one in ten workers within theirjurisdiction to representing more than half.HERE has used the living wage coalition'ssupport to win a neutrality agreement andsubsequent union recognition at the new site ofthe Academy Awards in Hollywood. SEIU alsowon union jobs for janitors using the living wagelaw and coalition support.

Policy Action: Community Benefits Agreements

LAANE has also pioneered work to developcommunity and labor involvement in theeconomic development process through thestrategy of community benefits agreements.These community benefits agreements take theform of legally binding documents that areincluded as part of the formal economicdevelopment agreement between localgovernment and the developer.

By 2002, LAANE's Accountable DevelopmentProject had helped coalitions secure private andlegally binding agreements with five majorentertainment, housing & retail, and industrialdevelopment projects. The first breakthroughagreement, with the massive Staplesdevelopment, was won in coalition with SAJE(Strategic Actions for a Just Economy) and setthe framework for future work. All such largescale development projects benefit from millionsof dollars of public funds. Community benefitsagreements commits the developer to suchprovisions as 70-75% living wage jobs at thebusiness which will operate in the developments,affordable housing and childcare centers, a youthcenter, local hiring, a neighborhood improvementfund, and card check recognition and employerneutrality during union organizing. In one case,the developer approached LAANE becausecommunity support can help make a proposeddevelopment project's journey through the publicapproval process much easier.

In attempting to institutionalize a communitybenefits process, LAANE has pushed for therequirement of a social impact report that detailsthe social impact of certain developments. Thiseffort has required dialogue with some of thebuilding trades and the mayor’s office, both ofwhich initially opposed such reforms. This effortseeks to lay the framework for subsequentcommunity benefits negotiations. The long-termgoal is to institutionalize such practices so thatan assessment of the community impact is anormal city action and so that large developersare required in certain instances to sign acommunity benefits agreement as part of thenormal public approval process.

LAANE’s Role in Building Coalition Capacity

On the religious front, the County Federation ofLabor has developed a close working relationshipwith Clergy and Laity United for EconomicJustice (CLUE). This organization wasdeveloped by LAANE in pressing their livingwage campaign and continues to be based atLAANE’s main office. CLUE has been deeplyinvolved in supporting Justice for Janitors, thegrocery workers, and the battle shaping upbetween HERE and the region’s hotel industry.CLUE has also directly aided area unions. Forexample, when the Westside Hotels balked at afirst contract with the HERE to gradually raisehousekeepers’ wages from $8.15 to $11.05 anhour, CLUE dispatched small teams in fullministerial garb to deliver brief sermons onworkplace fairness while ordering coffee atseveral hotel dining rooms. On April 8, 1998, aninterfaith procession of sixty ministers, priests,and rabbis marched through Beverly Hills todeposit bitter herbs outside the Rodeo SummitHotel, which still had not signed the HEREagreement, and offer milk and honey to the twowhich had. Two months later the Summit signed.CLUE has organized similar religious support fora campaign against a union-busting hotel in Santa


Monica, an organizing drive at St. FrancisHospital, and protests over the University ofSouthern California’s decisions to contract outwork to low-wage employers. In addition toCLUE, the County Federation has a strongworking relationship with the CatholicArchdiocese, holding an annual workers’ mass onLabor Day at Cardinal Mahoney’s new cathedral.And on the Sunday before Labor Day, theCounty Federation continues to build their Laborin the Pulpit program, primarily in South LosAngeles.

LAANE also developed Santa Monicans forResponsible Tourism (SMART) as a grassrootsmember organization that has pushed living wageand economic justice issues. SMART developeda zone-based living law that would have requiredall employers within the city's lucrative coastalzone to pay a living wage. The ritzy-touristindustry has benefited enormously from thepublic investment provided within the zone onlyto generate an exploding low-wage workforce.To head off the measure an alliance of wealthyhotel and restaurant owners placed a bogus"living wage" law on the ballot that would havecovered few workers and prohibited the cityfrom passing any further living wage statutes.LAANE, SMART, and the County Federationhelped defeat this sham proposal and won citycouncil passage of their authentic living wage law.Unfortunately, the opposition forced the newlaw onto the ballot. In November 2002, a scarecampaign convinced a majority of voters torescind the law. Despite this setback, SMART'sorganizing has continued to support theunionization of several of these coastal hotels.

Relationship Between LAANE and the LosAngeles County Labor Federation

In many ways, LAANE operates in the politicalspace that has been created by the L.A. CountyFederation of Labor. When Mayor Hahn soughtdétente with labor -- after his campaign against

labor’s mayoral candidate and in order to addlabor’s muscle to the defeat of the Valleysecession effort -- the L.A. Federation’s firstrequest was to have the mayor appointLAANE’s executive director, Madeline Janis-Aparicio, to the powerful CommunityRedevelopment Agency. Aparicio now occupiesone of labor’s two seats on the CRA.

A recent collaboration between LAANE and theCounty Federation demonstrated how economicdevelopment and electoral work combine insupport of union causes when the two led aneffort to successfully defeat Wal-Mart’smultimillion dollar effort to site a supercenter inLos Angeles’s inner city community ofInglewood. LAANE did all the early work inInglewood with the leadership of Clergy andLaity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). Thechurch-based organizing framed the coalitionwork and LAANE’s research effort framed theissues. The UFCW and the L.A. Federation hadhelped bring pro-labor council members onto theInglewood City Council so that Wal-Mart wasforced to bypass the council through an initiativein order to enter the jurisdiction.

With the grocery strike and lockout tying theUFCW’s hands both politically and financially inthe months leading up to the Inglewood election,the L.A. Federation engineered the placement ofthe region’s largest UFCW support march andrally through the streets of Inglewood. This verypublic event with over ten thousand supportershighlighted the claim by the grocery chains thatthey were forced to dramatically cut the wagesand benefits of grocery workers because of theentry of forty Wal-Marts into the Californiamarket. And when the Walmart initiative wasvoted on one month later in April 2004, thetreatment of the grocery workers was fresh oneveryone’s mind. Compared to the two milliondollars spent by Wal-Mart in support of theirinitiative and the additional millions spent onadvertising images of happy workers into the


L.A. market, the L.A. Federation spent less than$150,000 in the final three weeks of the campaignon a highly targeted walk and phone operationand managed to defeat the Wal-Mart measurewith a 61 percent no vote. LAANE’s early andconstant work on this campaign was essential inbuilding the local campaign and cannot beoverstated, while the L.A. Federation’s role wasalso necessary to the result.43

Political columnist Harold Meyerson recentlyobserved,

The political clout LAANE brings to the tableis not really its own. It belongs chiefly to theL.A. County Federation of Labor, whoseelection-day batting average is so high that localelected officials flout its agenda—which verymuch includes LAANE’s agenda—on virtualpenalty of political death. It would be anoverstatement to say that the Fed provides themuscle and LAANE the brain for working-classLos Angeles—Fed leader Miguel Contreras isan innovative strategist and Janis-Aparicio isno mean organizer—but it wouldn’t be wrongexactly, either.

A trip through the city’s corridors of powerthese days provides a clear indication of theeffect LAANE has had over the past decade.“The debate is different now,” says Janis-Aparicio. “Decision-makers talk about povertyand the lack of affordable housing, in CityCouncil meetings, at commissions, even at theChamber of Commerce.” In a city of chutes,LAANE has assembled some ladders.44

Future Ambitions for the L.A. Federation

The L.A. County Federation of Labor iscurrently embarking on a new campaign to holdthe first county-wide delegates’ convention onSeptember 30, 2004. To achieve this goal, theL.A. Federation will “house visit” each of the327 affiliates of the federation with over one

hundred members, to encourage their activeparticipation in federation activities, and toassure that their delegates are assigned and attenda thousand-member delegates’ convention tochart the path forward. The goal of thesemobilization efforts is to strengthen the overallparticipation of the County Federation unionsand to in turn strengthen the capacity of thefederation to do more. The plan to be laid out atthe General Assembly is three-fold: one electoraland two programmatic.

On the electoral front, the Federation needs toexpand its capacity because, due to term limits,there will be sixteen open senate and assemblyseats in its jurisdiction in 2006. The immediatefocus is in defending a contested Senate seat thathas been targeted by new Governor ArnoldSchwarzenegger. The long-term plan is todevelop more “labor warriors” for Sacramentoand the Los Angeles City Council. Plans are justnow being developed by the L.A. Federation,focused on strengthening its regional COPEcommittees in the San Fernando Valley, the SanGabriel Valley, and the Harbor.

There are also two programmatic plans that arebeing discussed. The first would be to set up a $1million campaign defense fund to assist unions inorganizing and contract campaigns. This wouldnot be a strike fund, but would instead provideresources that would enable the L.A. Federationto intervene more aggressively in support ofsignificant union campaigns. It will thus give thefederation more leverage to help these unionsplan ahead and conduct their campaigns in waysthat will build public understanding and support.As Miguel Contreras says, “None of us areindependent. If one union loses its battle overhealth care benefits, other unions will definitelysuffer. When another union is forced to accept atwo-tier system, it is that much harder for therest of labor.”45


The second programmatic plan is to launch apublic policy campaign that will help promotelabor’s social change agenda on a larger scale.The current proposal is to eliminate fees for LosAngeles city residents for the first year ofcommunity college, to be paid by a localemployer tax or fee. The two-year communitycollege system serves the working class of LosAngeles, and the colleges are highly unionizedinstitutions, including faculty and staff. Inaddition, the first and second years of highereducation are decisive in determining the long-term earning power of working people. Thehope is that this plan will help to build a far-reaching labor and community alliance that alsoconnects with youth to advance a change agendathat serves the working people of Los Angeles.

The L.A. County Federation of Labor has madehuge strides in the last ten years. They havemoved from an organization that represented thestatus quo, old guard union leadership, to onethat aggressively embraces a social action agenda.They have revitalized the political scene; electedcrucial progressive leaders, often from their ownranks, to local, state, and national office; forgednew labor and community alliances; impactedlocal and statewide public policy through theirown power and the work of their allies; andactually expanded their per capita membership.In the midst of a national decline in labor’s powerand influence, the Los Angeles CountyFederation of Labor indeed provides a degree ofhope for working people. 1 U.S. Census Bureau. 2002. “California Quick Facts: Los AngelesCounty, California”2 Bluestone, Barry and Bennett Harrison 1982. TheDeindustrialization o f America: Plant Closings, CommunityAbandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry,” New York: BasicBooks.3 With California’s ex-governor, Ronald Reagan, in the White House,Los Angeles received over $20 billion each year in defense-relatedprime contracts. The end of the Cold War coincided with the rise ofpresidents from Texas and Arkansas and the control of Congress byRepublicans from Texas and the South. Many of these prime contractsleft Southern California which had become Democratic turf. Aerospacecompanies and dependent electronics subcontractors had to either close

down or follow the defense dollars that still remained away fromSouthern California.4 A review of California Employment Development Department dataover time shows Los Angeles County’s average manufacturingemployment peaked in 1979 at 924,900 jobs, but has dropped to500,000 in 2003. This material is documented by Goetz Wolff in hisforthcoming article, Manufacturing Still Matters in Los Angeles:Analysis of a Neglected Sector, UCLA Urban Planning.5 Los Angeles Almanac, based on the 2000 U.S. Census6 The U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services estimates2.6+ million undocumented immigrants statewide7 Phone interview with Elinor Glenn, July 16, 2004.8 Interview with Bill Robertson, July 22, 2004.9 “Labor Federation’s Robertson to Retire.” Los Angeles Times, June17, 1993, B3.10 Tax increment financing is available in California in designatedredevelopment zones, allowing the agency to amass the differencebetween the old property tax contribution and the amount that wouldhave been assessed under the new appraisal and to use those monies tofund future development.11 Interview with Rick Icaza, June 29, 2004.12 Silverstein, Stuart 1996. L.A. Labor Federation Vote Divides AlongEthnic Lines, Los Angeles Times, April 17, D1.13 Ruth Milkman and Kent Wong. 2001. Interview with MiguelContreras, ILE Occasional Paper No. 5, September, p. 6.14 Interview with Kelly Candaele, July 18, 2004, Labor to laborcampaigns involve union members talking to other union memberswhich can be done with union dues money, while labor to neighborcampaigns require the use of COPE dollars.15 The Campaign for Participation and Democracy registered over aquarter of a million voters in California and built a precinct leadersystem in thousands of precincts across the state.16 Phone interview with Kelly Candaele, quoting other consultants’comments, July 18, 2004.17 The final vote tally gave Cedillo 43.75 percent of the vote toCastro’s 22.12 percent.18 Proposition 226 was defeated with a 60 percent no vote.19 Gray Davis received 58 percent of the vote while Republican DanLungren received 38 percent.20 The Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention andTreatment started as a progressive effort to address the impact of drugsand alcohol in South L.A. It has branched out to deal with liquorstores, the education gap, foster care, youth programs, and otherissues. Its activists were key supporters of the Villaraigosa mayoralcampaign in South L.A. The organization later helped develop a keyc(4) labor-community partnership which has worked on initiativebattles with labor and other partners.21 In April 2004, Inglewood voted against Wal-Mart’s arrival, 61percent to 39 percent.22 In this system, computers generate all phone calls and then place thedetails of a voter and a general script from which to work on a computerscreen in front of a caller. The predictive system can weed outanswering machines, busy signals, and not homes and restrict downtime between calls to an average of ten seconds, greatly increasingboth productivity and the callers’ enjoyment of the experience. Thestrategic advantage that came from the County Federation’s predictivedialing phone stations cannot be overstated.23 IBEW Locals 11 and 18 have conducted significant efforts in theseareas.24 Interview with County Fed President Rick Icaza, June 29, 2004.


25 The inclusion of a loss-time provision in union contracts, whichallows the union to buy out the time of workers who are on leave fromtheir job to work with their union, has been another cornerstone in thedevelopment of labor’s political power.26 Phone Interview with Tracy Zeluff, July 24, 2004.27 Interview with Eliseo Medina, June 30, 2004,28 A description employed by Miguel Contreras in the Los AngelesTimes in describing the County Federation’s commitment to theVillaraigosa campaign.29 Phone interview with Tracy Zeluff, July 24, 2004.30 Ruth Milkman and Kent Wong. 2001. Interview with MiguelContreras, ILE Occasional Paper No. 5, September, p. 13.31 Phone interview with Tracy Zeluff, July 24, 2004.32 Interview with Eliseo Medina, June 30, 2004.33 Interview with Eliseo Medina, June 30, 2004.34 Los Angeles needs to site and build over one hundred new schoolsfocused especially in the increasingly dense central city. Withmanufacturing and other commercial space hopelessly polluted, theLos Angeles Unified School District has increasingly turned toresidential zones. One prominent Black politician was quoted asmaking the following inflammatory yet true statement in attemptingto stop the eminent domaining of several Black owned homes, “Theyare tearing down African American homes to build schools forLatinos.”35 This ad made reference to a letter that Antonio Villaraigosa sent onbehalf of Carlos Vignali, an individual convicted for his role in a drugconspiracy, but it did not mention the panoply of other electeds whosent similar letters. For example, the Villaraigosa letter was muchsofter than the one sent by Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahoney.Harold Meyerson quotes Father Greg Boyle in the week before theelection, “You look at the Vignali letter. That was a mistake. You lookat the Hahn ad and say, That was morally reprehensible.”(www.ncl.org/cs/conversations/documents/vargas_bad_feelings.html)36 James Hahn benefited from a peculiar coalition betweenconservative white voters, who found it difficult to vote for a Latino,and African American voters who loved James Hahn’s father, perennialcounty supervisor Kenny Hahn, who represented South Los Angeleswell and was the only elected leader to meet Martin Luther King Jr. atthe airport when he first came to Los Angeles.37 The L.A. County Federation has worked hard to develop AfricanAmerican leadership throughout its ranks. Charles Lester is the Fed’spolitical director and Steve Neal who is in charge of the LaborCommunity Services based at the Fed, has taken several leaves to runfederation campaigns. Other African American staffers have also beenkey to the Fed’s successes.38 For example, Miguel Contreras was appointed to the AirportCommission and ally Madeline Janis-Aparicio was appointed to theCommunity Redevelopment Agency soon after the successfulconclusion of that campaign.39 Roger Waldinger, et.al. 1998, “Helots No More: A Case Study of theJustice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles,” Organizing to Win,Cornell Univesity Press, pp. 102-119.40 Phone interview with Antonio Villaraigosa, August 9, 2004.41 Stephanie Arellano, “Year 2000 Justice for Janitors Campaign:Reflections of a Union Organizer,” 2002. Teaching for Change, UCLACenter for Labor Research and Education, George Meany Center forLabor Studies.42 The L.A. Federation also connects to religious groups in ways thatwill be described later in the discussion of LAANE’s work.

43 LAANE organizers have carefully clarified the unique circumstancesthat led to the defeat of Wal-Mart, which talks of Wal-Martoverreaching and placing an initiative on the ballot that avoids all cityinput in their development within the city. They explain that Wal-Mart is unlikely to a similar mistake in the future.44 Harold Meyerson, 2003. “Ladders of Hope: How the Living-WageCoalition is Remaking L.A.,” L.A. Weekly, August 29.45 Interview with Miguel Contreras, August 2, 2004.

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