THE ANGELS.- Thousands of City of Los Angeles employeessuch as sanitation workers, lifeguards and traffic officers, staged a 24-hour strike on Tuesday to demand higher wages and to denounce unfair labor practices.
Protest lines were already active before dawn at Los Angeles International Airport and other locations, and a rally was held outside City Hall in the morning. The SEIU Local 721 union said the 11,000 striking city workers included mechanics, engineers and airport guards.
Union members voted in favor of the day-long strike because the city has failed to bargain in good faith and has employed labor practices that restrict the rights of employees and unions, the organization said.
“City workers are crucial to running services for millions of Angelenos every day and to our local economy,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “They deserve fair contracts and we have negotiated in good faith with SEIU 721 since January. The city will always be available to make progress, 24/7.”
Strike participants said some employees earn so little money they can’t afford to live close to their jobs, sometimes commuting 100 miles (160 kilometers).
“You can’t work for the city and live in Los Angeles,” said Marce Dethouars, 54, who works in garbage collection services and lives east of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley.
Destiny Webb, a college student who works at a municipal swimming pool, said she and her fellow strikers were asking for a 40-50% raise and more resources at the understaffed Los Angeles facility. .
“A lot of us are students and what they pay us doesn’t help us at all,” said Webb, 21. “So with inflation and all that, it’s not working.”
A pay increase would give young, part-time employees like her an incentive to stay in the city to work there after graduation, Webb said.
It is the most recent strike in the second most populous city in the country in recent months. Hollywood screenwriters have been on strike since May, and actors joined them last month. Los Angeles hotel staff have staged several staggered walkouts over the summer, and a few months ago school employees staged protests. There was also a labor dispute at the southern California ports.
“The city of Los Angeles is not going to shut down,” Bass insisted. But his office said some services would be affected, such as parking lot surveillance and some traffic operations. Garbage collection will be done in phases this week until normal service resumes on Monday, according to authorities.
For their part, employees at Los Angeles International Airport urged passengers to allow extra time on trips to and from LAX during the strike. Some transportation services operated on a reduced schedule, but no major disruptions were reported.
“LAX is working diligently with our airport partners to ensure our operations continue as close to normal as possible and to mitigate the impacts of worker actions on our guests,” Dae Levine, an airport spokesperson, said in a statement. email on Monday.
The union said it expected some 300 lifeguards who work at dozens of municipal swimming pools to go on strike. The Parks and Recreation Department reported that some pools were closed Tuesday.
Michael Mitchell, a 33-year-old dockworker, said many employees struggle to meet the basic costs of living and just want a fair wage.
“We just want to be able to survive and feed our families,” he said. “Everything is expensive, food, gasoline. In a minute we will have water up to our necks”.
