Mayor Villaraigosa meeting with janitors, building owners
Los Angeles janitors and key building owners are meeting with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at City Hall today, a day after contract talks broke down and the janitors authorized a strike.
Villaraigosa called the closed-door meeting to encourage the two sides to return to the bargaining table and "settle on an agreement that's good for workers and business," said Janelle Erickson, a spokeswoman for the mayor.
On Wednesday, janitors authorized a strike in a near-unanimous vote, held a rally downtown and launched one-night walkouts at about 40 buildings across Los Angeles County.
The union is seeking unspecified wage increases, but the main issue is to narrow the gap between janitors with the highest and lowest pay, said Mike Garcia, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1877.
Dick Davis, chief negotiator for the contractors, said the cleaning companies offered annual raises of 50 cents an hour for three years and 55 cents for the fourth year under a proposed contract, but they were rebuffed. He said the total package, including benefits, amounted to a $3.55-an-hour increase.
Local 1877's members include 6,000 janitors in Los Angeles County. Their contract, last renegotiated in 2003, expired April 30. About 450 of the union's Los Angeles County janitors, or less than 10%, didn't show up for the Wednesday-night work shift.
As labor actions go, the strike by the janitors is peculiar -- going beyond the typical rallies to include videos posted on YouTube and workers who are still on the job.The union has long engaged in unusual tactics, said economist Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues.
"What we're seeing now is innovative and different, but it didn't appear yesterday," Shaiken said. "This is a union that's been strategically very savvy from when it first began organizing janitors, particularly immigrant janitors. It's raised a lot of issues and it's tended to be quite effective."
If the union's demands are not met, widespread work stoppages could begin next week, Garcia said.
In Orange County, where 2,000 janitors are represented by the union, members voted Saturday to authorize a strike. Walkouts have not occurred there yet.
In 2000, janitors staged a three-week work stoppage that drew national political figures, including former Vice President Al Gore and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. That strike helped galvanize immigrant workers across the nation and was considered a watershed moment for Los Angeles labor.
andrea.chang@latimes.com
