Janitors

Rosa Ayala has been arrested seven times, endured three hunger strikes and marched in so many protests, she long ago lost track. As the 67-year-old janitor was interviewed for an oral history project on Saturday, she sat proudly in a chair dressed from head to toe in her union's symbolic red and told her story. "I fight for our union's cause because it comes from deep inside of me," she said, an audio recorder a few inches away. "We will never be satisfied until we have respect and fair wages.

Re "USC made this offer a no-brainer," May 18 In The Times' front-page celebration of USC's poaching of UCLA's top neuroscientists, a story previously reported by The Times, one of the top-paid future employees remarked on how kind a USC administrator was even to the janitors, remembering their families' names. I'm sure the janitors would trade such niceties for a fairer deal. Only a few months into a new contract, the company to which USC has outsourced janitorial work cut back on jobs, forcing remaining workers to do more on low wages.

Re "Gore's Presence at Rally Boosts Janitors' Spirits" (April 17). Of course Vice President Al Gore supports the janitors' strike--it's the politically correct (although gutless) position to take. especially in an election year. I'm of the other ilk, however. I have no sympathy whatsoever for those making $8 an hour emptying waste baskets. Try earning $6.50 an hour in a machine shop deburring sharp aluminum castings eight hours a day for months on end, your hands scarred from cuts, your feet aching from the concrete floor and your shirt drenched in sweat.

SACRAMENTO - A group of Republican state lawmakers Wednesday proposed allowing school districts to spend education funds to train teachers, administrators and janitors in gun use. Responding to last month's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the lawmakers said arming school personnel would help protect campuses against violent intruders. "The idea is to create essentially an invisible line of defense around our kids," said Assemblyman and tea party adherent Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino.

Well, it looks as though the free-handed "blessing" of unprovoked violent acts against the peaceful "rescuers" of Operation Rescue by the LAPD has now led to more violent acts. We now see the Mexican-American janitors being beaten by police. I hope the janitors union fries the police in court with the lawsuit filed. Making it hurt financially enough will help to rid our "civilized" society of billy clubs to the back and knees and illegal martial arts weapons used in violent acts against law-abiding women and men. ROBERT FERGUSON Whittier

Justice for Janitors: It's about time ("Janitors Take Protest to Beverly Hills Shops," April 6). The Justice for Janitors struggle is not just about a current labor dispute here in Los Angeles. It is a struggle for respect, dignity and fair wages long overdue for all low-wage workers. In 1956 my parents came to California to make a living. For several years they worked in the fields in and around Fresno County. In the 1960s, my father was able to secure work as a janitor and my mother worked as a maid cleaning motel rooms.

Beating drums, thumping tambourines and rattling soda cans, about 150 janitors and their supporters demonstrated Wednesday outside three downtown Los Angeles buildings, protesting what they described as heavy workloads and layoffs. The janitors, who belong to the Service Employees International Union, marched for about an hour, chanting, "Unete a la lucha" (Spanish for "Join the struggle").

With brooms hoisted, about 50 janitors marched outside a downtown bank building Tuesday to protest the firing of four custodians who had taken part in a union-organizing drive. Leaders of Local 399 of the Service Employees International Union presented a "turkey of the year" award to the manager of the Banco Popular building at 324 S. Spring St. The manager was not present but was represented by a demonstrator wearing a pig mask.

About 5,000 low-wage janitors will begin receiving health insurance for themselves and their families Jan. 1 under terms of a hard-won contract signed in 1995. The benefits were hailed as a significant development at a union-sponsored news conference Monday, but the addition of the insurance--valued at $1.60 an hour--for this group of janitors also shows how tough it has been for unions to translate high-profile street action into real gains for low-wage members.

Forget the Emmys. Here come the Golden Broom Awards. Seeking to "lift the curtain" on the plight of Hollywood's janitors, union organizers have created their own award competition to recognize the studios with the best and worst records. Union officials acknowledge that janitors at most major studios earn fair wages and benefits. But they allege that others work in illegal and unsafe conditions and struggle to support their families because of low wages and a lack of health insurance.

George Perez started at the bottom of Cudahy city government, cleaning toilets as a $6.50-an-hour a janitor. He was ambitious, though, and in eight years was elected to the City Council. Six years later, with no college education or management training, Perez was running the southeast L.A. County town as city manager. He became the embodiment of power in the working-class immigrant city along the 710 Freeway. His up-from-the-bootstraps story made him a hero to some - a kind of "Mr. Cudahy," with a tattoo of the city seal on his right leg to prove it. He served as emcee at town hall meetings, where door prizes such as blenders, fans and heaters were raffled off. When people came to City Hall to complain, Perez sometimes met them personally.

Outer space is about to get its first janitor satellite. Engineers from the Swiss Space Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne announced this week that they soon will begin work on CleanSpace One, a prototype for a line of brand-new satellites whose sole mission will be to remove defunct satellites from orbit. If the prototype is successful, the EPFL hopes to create a family of "de-orbiting" satellites so that humanity can practice in space what the Boy Scouts preach here on Earth - take only pictures (or data readings)

The Times' Nov. 23 editorial, "Clueless candidates," which criticized Newt Gingrich for his call to loosen child labor laws and allow kids to work as janitors at their schools, prompted reader Mike Gallagher to write the following defense of the former House speaker's proposal: "I can only assume that the editor did not work as a child, unlike the children of most small-business owners. I've never known a working kid who didn't have time for homework, so long as there wasn't a long transportation requirement.

Promising “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America,” Newt Gingrich said Friday that he would fire school janitors and pay students to clean schools instead. Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House challenged laws that prevent children from working certain jobs before their mid-teens. Gingrich blames “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization" for “crippling” children.

These days, the battle for economic justice is fought daily in a thousand obscure skirmishes in boardrooms and executive suites across the country. It's a conflict usually waged under the cover of smugly technocratic euphemisms such as outsourcing, right-sizing and resource rationalization. To the extent they're counted at all, the human casualties are reckoned as collateral damage. As early as Tuesday, one of those skirmishes may occur in the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration, where the Board of Supervisors will consider whether to outsource the janitorial work at its Olive View-UCLA and Harbor-UCLA medical centers to Sodexo, a multinational corporation based in France.

Rosa Ayala has been arrested seven times, endured three hunger strikes and marched in so many protests, she long ago lost track. As the 67-year-old janitor was interviewed for an oral history project on Saturday, she sat proudly in a chair dressed from head to toe in her union's symbolic red and told her story. "I fight for our union's cause because it comes from deep inside of me," she said, an audio recorder a few inches away. "We will never be satisfied until we have respect and fair wages.

So, there they are at the corner of 5th and Flower, and we've got trouble in the streets. Trouble in downtown Los Angeles on a balmy Tuesday afternoon, with traffic blocked off, police mobilizing and hundreds of citizens squatting or sitting or kneeling on the hot pavement, demanding their rights. Or perhaps "trouble" is too dramatic a word. An uprising in the streets . . . that's what this is. A revolt.

A janitor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Willowbrook has been charged with felony commercial burglary for allegedly selling 14 boxes of patient records to a recycling center, authorities said Thursday. The boxes contained computer printouts of about 30,000 patient names, addresses, phone numbers and medical record numbers — not private medical information, according to William T Fujioka, L.A. County's chief executive. Robert Sanders, 55, was arrested Sept.

A life's gift Re "In death, a promise for the future," Aug. 29 Thomas Curwen's feature article absolutely captivated me. The subject was heart-wrenching, but I was moved even more by Curwen's ability to juxtapose the practical and real world of ALS, death and giving and the less-definable space of suffering, hope and future. Thank you for sharing with us this woman's powerful and significant life — and death — and promise. Nancy Strow Sheley Long Beach What a treat to see a positive article about donating one's body to science on the front page of The Times.