What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Union Town: LA's Labor History
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Los Angeles may be home to a powerful labor movement today, but it was not always that way. Los Angeles was once known as one of the most anti-union cities in the country. On this Labor Day weekend, we re-air Mike's 2024 interview with Kent Wong of the UCLA Labor Center. Kent walks us through the ups and downs of the history of organized labor in Los Angeles -- and reveals how victories and losses here shaped the labor movement nationally.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
UCLA Labor Center
Memory Work Los Angeles
Cal Federation of Labor - Labor History
LA Stories: Labor Movements in Los Angeles
Miguel Contreras: Legacy of a Labor Leader
Mike Garcia and the Justice for Janitors Movement
From Coors to California: David Sickler and the New Working Class
Voices from the Front Lines: Organizing Immigrant Workers in Los Angeles
From Mission to Microchip: A History of California Labor by Fred Glass (book)
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
It's Labor Day weekend. That's a perfect time to spend a few minutes learning some new things about the history of organized labor in Los Angeles. We're going to do that this week on What's Next Los Angeles. It was just a year ago that Los Angeles was the focus, nationally and internationally, of the hot labor summer of 2023. Screenwriters, cooks, teachers, actors, hotel workers, film editors, bus drivers, healthcare workers, UPS and Amazon drivers, teaching assistants, public employees. In 2023 in Los Angeles, all of these workers either went on strike or walked out or picketed or publicly pushed for more. And they did so with enormous, and I mean enormous public support. All over Los Angeles, people supported workers. They brought them food and water and sunscreen and even joined them on picket lines. Intersections grew loud with the sound of car horns honking in support. Income inequality, skyrocketing housing costs, corporate greed, and a sense of solidarity born from the pandemic combined to reenergize a movement for worker empowerment. The message was clear. Los Angeles is a labor town. But it wasn't always that way. Los Angeles was once one of the most anti-union cities in the country. A century ago, control of the city was in the tight grips of a corporate class and a powerful right-wing media baron. And their will was enforced ruthlessly by a police force that did their bidding. They put a chokehold on the labor movement here, in contrast to San Francisco, where the Union movement was becoming a robust force. The history of organized labor in Los Angeles has had plenty of ups and downs, and its victories and its failures have shaped the labor movement nationally. On this Labor Day, we're going to do a little LA Labor History 101. And my guest to help us walk through the past century is Kent Wong of the UCLA Labor Center. Kent is one of the foremost authorities on LA labor history. He was executive director of the UCLA Labor Center for over 30 years, steering it to become nationally and internationally recognized for its efforts to advance worker justice. Kent now serves as the center's project director for labor and community partnerships, and he teaches courses in labor studies and Asian American Studies at UCLA. He previously served as staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union and was founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and of the United Association of Labor Education. He's currently vice president of the California Federation of Teachers. He has published a ton of books about the labor movement, and I sat down with him just a couple days ago for this episode. Here's that interview. Labor Day is such a celebration all around the country, and I really want to spend some time this Labor Day sharing with people here in Los Angeles what the history of the labor movement has been in this city, because there have been a lot of ups and downs, and it's a really interesting history. But I I want to go back, you know, a hundred years or or more to the turn of
LA's Anti-Union History
SPEAKER_01the last century, because when you go back into the history of Los Angeles, this was a very anti-union town for a very long time. What was the climate like for workers and organized labor at the start of the 20th century?
SPEAKER_00So this is a really critical issue because we can only appreciate the extraordinary transformation of the Los Angeles labor movement to really understand where we came from. And indeed, Los Angeles was a bastion of anti-union conservatism. We have a situation there was unfettered control by corporate and business interests in the development and establishment of industry and of the economy in Southern California. Los Angeles was known as the wicked city for its fierce anti-union, anti-worker policies. We were known as the Citadel of the Open Shop, the place where anti-union policies were embraced and implemented, where we had the police and sheriffs weighing in aggressively to support corporate and business domination and to bust unions and to violently suppress any attempts by workers to form and join unions. So this is part of the history of Los Angeles. And uh our neighbors to the north, San Francisco, had a much stronger tradition of labor organizing, of growing and building unions that improved the working condition of workers. Los Angeles did not share that similar history. And uh business citizens and corporations that established uh early factories, early industries, uh did so with the express intention of keeping it union-free and of maximizing the control and domination of uh corporations. Uh and so that has been the tradition. Uh in various parts of the country, we have seen some cities that have a stronger union and stronger organizing traditions, and some that did not. And Los Angeles was clearly of the latter category.
SPEAKER_01So to give a little context, I mean, when when people today in Los Angeles hear about business associations, they think of the California Chamber of Commerce or BizFed or maybe the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, Vica or something like that, um, which which have you know an input but are not incredibly powerful organizations. Back then the business interests were hugely powerful, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So we had the establishment of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, the MM, that was uh notorious in uh advancing policies, in uh pulling the strength of the uh police and sheriffs to bear, and the use of large numbers of Pinkertons, private security, and private police that ruthlessly suppressed any attempts by workers to organize.
SPEAKER_01When you say ruthlessly, uh, you know, a lot of folks think back to, say, the the George Floyd demonstrations in in in 2020. How did the police conduct back then compare to to what people regard as uh the police action towards protesters today?
SPEAKER_00The reality is that the fundamental right to form and join unions is a relatively recent development. This only emerged in the 1930s during the Great Depression and during a decade of massive labor organizing and mobilization. And prior to the 1930s, uh activities by workers to form and join unions was enjoined as an illegal activity. It was considered a conspiracy for workers to join together to interfere with the operation of corporations and businesses. So uh when we talk about early Los Angeles developments, this was all prior to the 1930s, when there was even the basic right to form and join unions codified by law.
SPEAKER_01There was even at one point the city council, at the behest of conservative interest, passed an anti-picketing ordinance, right?
SPEAKER_00Very much so. Uh there was laws against the formation of unions, there were laws against strikes, there were laws against picketing as a form of protest that is now upheld as a First Amendment right.
SPEAKER_01And the police were really, as you said, they were agents of uh of these interests. I mean, they were really sort of a big anti-labor force. One of those interests that was really driving it was uh the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So uh the Chandler family, the uh owners of the Los Angeles Times, had a very uh distinct history as being uh viciously anti-union and uh viciously uh you know uh aligning the police and sheriffs uh in opposition to workers organizing to create change. And Chandler, in fact, uh was one of the uh organizers of the Emergency and Manufacturers Association.
SPEAKER_01And
Bombing of LA Times Building
SPEAKER_01at one point back then, uh as part of what was going on during all the controversy, there was actually uh an explosion at the LA Times plant that became sort of pivotal in how things played out in the labor movement here, right?
SPEAKER_00That's correct. Uh there were repeated attempts to organize uh the Los Angeles Times met with fierce opposition. And there was a bombing of the Los Angeles Times that occurred all the way back in 1910, which uh was really used by uh the Chandler family, but also corporations and businesses much more broadly to discredit, to undermine, and to step up the attacks uh by uh unions.
SPEAKER_01And I I read as I was preparing for this podcast, I read that at the time that actually sort of killed the chances of a a socialist who was running for mayor of Los Angeles at the time, who actually seemed like he had a pretty good shot until that incident.
SPEAKER_00Yes, the uh bombing of the Los Angeles Times back in 1910 was met with a fierce backlash and uh undermined not only the labor movement but other progressive movements of Los Angeles of that time.
SPEAKER_01So things began to change in, say, the 30s
The 1930s: New Wave of Organizing & The CIO
SPEAKER_01or so. What were the dynamics that changed? How did we uh how did we go from being such a bleak city for organized labor to a city that that was developing some more energy behind organizing?
SPEAKER_00What we saw in the 1930s was a national phenomenon. We saw uh the rise of uh the sit-down strike uh that brought about the very first successful uh unionization of the auto industry in uh Detroit, Michigan. Uh we saw the uh organizing of uh basic industries, of steel, of coal, uh, of auto. And um uh we saw a massive wave of strikes, of mass mobilizations uh during the Great Depression. Uh, many unemployed workers' councils were established to address the horrendous economic inequality that was marked by the Great Depression. And so, as a consequence, for the very first time, uh the National Labor Relations Act was passed. Uh, there were policies of the New Deal under the Franklin Roosevelt administration that brought about many of the dramatic social changes uh that were um uh key demands of uh the labor movement. So um for the very first time, workers in the 1930s gained the right to form and uh join unions, uh, the right to collectively bargain contracts that would improve their wages and working conditions, and for the first time legalized uh the right to strike and other collective actions on the part of workers to organize.
SPEAKER_01So this is when plants really started to organize, and we saw more of a presence of organized labor here in LA, asserting sort of worker strength?
SPEAKER_00Very much so. And Los Angeles emerged as one of the key manufacturing centers in the country. And many of those basic industries were successfully organized and represented by industrial unions in the 1930s and 1940s.
SPEAKER_01Now, everybody now knows the AFL CIO, but back then the AFL and the CIO were two separate organizations with with different approaches to organizing. It was the the CIO that was big in Los Angeles, right?
SPEAKER_00Very much so. The Congress Industrial Organizations led the charge in the 1930s to uh organize what we call wall-to-wall. Uh that the American Federation of Labor was very much focused on craft unions of uh many of the trades that had uh skilled workers in various crafts. Uh the approach of the CIO was much broader. It was led by uh leftists and progressives who saw the need to organize workers regardless of their trades and to organize all workers on an industry basis. So there was a massive growth of organizing led by CIO unions in the 1930s. Uh, subsequently, in the 1950s, the AFL and CIO merged, but truly the 1930s was marked by tremendous leadership by the CIO.
SPEAKER_01So you you talk about the
Organizing in Hollywood
SPEAKER_01plants and there was all the the wartime industry that was emerging. Um, but you can't really talk about or think about Los Angeles without talking about Hollywood. Uh what was going on with labor and organizing in the entertainment industry back then?
SPEAKER_00So um, as I said, you know, uh during this period of of massive industrial growth, uh Los Angeles really emerged as a uh focal point nationally. And most of the major industry was uh successfully organized, unionized, and it brought to birth this emerging middle class. In the post-World War II era, uh unionized workforces uh led to a major change in uh the standards of uh working class families. And so uh workers who were in these basic industries could buy homes, they could uh have vacations, they could have paid health care, uh, they could send their kids to college. So uh indeed the whole growth of the middle class can be attributed to uh the rise of uh labor and to uh the codified labor laws, including the National Labor Relations Act, that for the first time uh granted uh workers the right to organize. Los Angeles also emerged as a major center nationally and internationally of the entertainment industry. And um uh Hollywood became uh the dream factory for the country. And um uh there were um also successful attempts to uh establish unions within the entertainment industry. Uh, and even to this day, uh those unions have uh uh maintained overall uh strong wages and benefits for workers in the entertainment industry.
SPEAKER_01So LA, particularly in the entertainment industry, had a a lot of uh uh strong and outspoken lefties. And in the 50s, we had uh McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Uh, what impact did that have on the entertainment industry in particular, but but labor organizing in general in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00In the post-World War II era, with the rise of the Cold War, there was also a massive right-wing backlash led by Senator Joe McCarthy and others here in the United States that uh attacked uh leftists, that uh caused a massive wave of red baiting, uh, and also uh attacked unions. And so uh many of the unions themselves adopted anti-communist clauses and provisions and purged a lot of some of the strongest uh progressive union leaders uh based on this fear of the red uh scare. So um uh absolutely the the you know role of McCarthyism, this uh right-wing uh attack on um on progressives, on unions uh was a national phenomenon. But here in uh Hollywood and in Los Angeles, you had the blacklist, you had the uh uh uh attempt to isolate and ostracize uh leftist creative um writers, creative filmmakers, um, and to uh try to block them from um uh having a um having a career and having a role within the entertainment industry.
SPEAKER_01And and how did that play out in terms of the temperament of the labor movement in the the subsequent decades? Did uh did did that uh make it more temperamentally uh moderate or less aggressive? Or did did other stuff that happened, say with you know LBJ uh energize in a different way?
SPEAKER_00The red scare, the McCarthy era, the red baiting absolutely took its toll on the labor movement and especially in some of the more progressive roots and progressive leaders uh within the labor movement. Uh, as I indicated in the 1950s, there was a merger of the AFL and the CIO to become the AFL CIO. But in many ways, this represented a domination of the AFL wing of the labor movement that had historically been a much more conservative and a lot of the leftist-inspired organizing led by the CIO was muted following the merger and as a consequence to the red baiting, to the purges, and to the rise of McCarthy era the McCarthyism era.
SPEAKER_01Uh so let's shift to like say the 60s to to the the 80s, because in in that period of time, not just LA's economy, but also its its demographics changed rapidly with immigration picking up. What what impact did did that have on the trajectory of the labor movement in in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00The 1960s was marked by a time of uh tremendous rise, once again, in social movements. We saw that in the 1930s with uh the role of the CIO, the uh the massive wave of strikes, sit-down strikes, and organizing. In the 1960s, we also saw a rise of powerful social movements, which shook this country to its very foundation. Uh, the work of the civil rights movement in the South, uh, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., led by our very own Reverend James Lawson Jr., who just passed away uh this past June, uh, Rosa Parks. Uh, this led to a massive rise in um a uh civil rights movement led by the black community, but it also had widespread impact in challenging other uh racially discriminatory policies, including immigration. So the 1965 um immigration reform was a direct consequence of the 1964 uh Civil Rights Act. And so all of the racially restrictive immigration policies that had been on the books for over 80 years since the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act were for the very first time overturned. And so with the change in immigration policy in the 1960s, you saw a massive rise in uh the number of immigrants from the global south. Uh historically, there were codified racial benefits and priorities given to European immigrants who were. Considered the good immigrants versus those from Latin America, from Asia, and from Africa and the Caribbean, who were deemed bad immigrants because of the color of their skin. So this highly racialized immigration policy was changed in the 1960s as a result of the civil rights movement. And Los Angeles, since the 1960s, has been a huge beneficiary in the massive increase in immigration. And so we have today Los Angeles as one of the largest centers of immigrants in the nation, the largest Latino community in the country, the largest Asian and Pacific Islander community in the country, and also large numbers of immigrants from all over the world.
SPEAKER_01It
1980s: De-unionization in the Reagan Era
SPEAKER_01wasn't long, though, before organizing or at least union membership took a big hit in Los Angeles in the say 80s and so when plants started closing and sort of whole industries disappeared here.
SPEAKER_00The 1980s was marked by a period of de-industrialization, of uh factory shutdowns, of um deregulation of uh policies implemented by the uh Reagan administration to um um undercut uh protections for uh worker and environmental standards, uh as well as a period of de-unionization, where uh many of the uh high-wage unionized blue-collar jobs were wiped out, um, and in their place uh was uh uh low-wage service jobs. Um in the 1960s and 70s, at the same time, there was a massive growth in public sector unionization due to changes in public sector labor laws, which granted public sector workers who had not been covered by the National Labor Relations Act to, for the first time, have union rights as well. So we see in the 1960s and 70s the growth of public sector unionism, uh, marked by the growth of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Education Association. All of these saw dramatic growth spurts as a consequence of the rights of public sector workers to organize.
SPEAKER_01And it was around then, the mid to late 80s, that that something happened that you consider to be pretty pivotal for the
Emergence of Maria Elena Durazo
SPEAKER_01labor movement in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00So, um, what I think is very important to acknowledge is that uh after emerging as the center of a fiercely pro-corporate, pro-business, anti-union uh environment, uh, which was very much the history of Los Angeles, in the 1980s and 90s, we saw a dramatic upsurge in organizing and in uh work, especially with the new working class. And Los Angeles now emerging as a focal point of successful immigrant worker organizing. Uh, this was led by uh uh Senator Maria Elena Durazo, who emerged as the first woman and first person of color to lead the Hotel Workers Union of Los Angeles. Uh, this was marked by the rise of the Justice for Janitors Union that successfully reorganized workers in um the building service industry and the successful organizing of 74,000 home care workers in Los Angeles back in 1999. And since that organizing breakthrough, here in the state of California, now we have more than 500,000 home care workers that are under union contract.
SPEAKER_01So let me let me pause for a second to talk uh a little bit more about Marielena. A lot of people know her now. As you said, she's a state senator, she's a very powerful political figure in Los Angeles. Uh, what was her story when when she emerged on the scene here in Los Angeles? And why was her emergence so significant?
SPEAKER_00Maria Elena has been a good friend of mine for more than four decades. We went to law school together. We were actually classmates uh with um Antonio Viergoza. Um and um uh Maria Elena was the seventh of 11 children from a farm worker family. She got her start as an organizer for the Garment Workers Union here in Los Angeles, representing largely low-wage immigrant women. Uh, she went on to work for the hotel workers, and uh she ran an insurgency campaign against a white male labor leader who did everything in his power to disempower the growing Latino immigrant workforce within his union. That included refusing to translate any of his meetings into Spanish, refusing to contract uh translate the contract into Spanish, and making his office and staff as inaccessible as possible to the growing Latino immigrant workforce. So when Maria Elena uh became the first woman and first person of color uh to become president of the hotel workers, it sent shockwaves through the Los Angeles labor movement and the work of the hotel workers in successfully organizing the largely Latino immigrant workforce and the Justice for Janitors represented a huge breakthrough not only for Los Angeles, but for the organizing of Latino immigrant workers in the country.
SPEAKER_01So, and and so Maria Elena went from heading uh Unite here, and then she eventually became uh the head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Uh, and now, of course, as we said, she's a state senator, such a long and fascinating history.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So Maria Elena went on to become the first woman and first person of color to lead the 800,000 member of Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. And from there, she went on to become uh a state senator and has been one of the strongest champions for worker rights and for immigrant rights in the state of California.
Justice for Janitors
SPEAKER_01You you've mentioned a couple times the the justice for for janitors movement. Um for so many of who's so many of us who've been involved in Los Angeles politics for a while, it's it's almost it's it's something that is almost sort of in our sort of uh political or historical DNA. We're familiar with it, we know about it. Uh it's a movement, a moment of sort of uh great awe and and reverence for us. But it's you know, it's it's getting close to 35 years ago now. Um talk to listeners who are not familiar with Justice for Janitors, who were not here in in 1990 about what it was and what it was like to see that happening in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00So I worked as a union attorney for the Service Employees International Union back in the 1980s when the Justice for Janitors campaign was just getting off the ground. And uh this was a workforce that had dramatically shifted. It was at one point a primarily African-American unionized workforce. And because of the existence of the union, these jobs were solid middle class jobs. The building owners then decided that they were going to downgrade the pay and benefits for the janitorial workers of Los Angeles and shifted from directly hiring the janitors to uh a contract labor situation where they would put out a bid and have contractors compete for who could come in with the lowest bid. And of course, in order to get the lowest bid, it meant busting the union, throwing out a predominantly unionized African-American workforce, and instead recruiting uh Latino immigrant workers to take their place. So this resulted in a massive dislocation and a massive decrease in the wages and benefits for the janitorial industry. The Service Employees International Union uh took on this very bold campaign to reorganize the janitorial industry and launch the Justice for Janitors campaign. And um, this uh resulted in the successful reunionization of this industry. On June 15th, 1990, there was a pivotal campaign when the janitors were marching in Century City and were ruthlessly beaten by the LA police department. Dozens were sent to the hospital. One woman suffered a miscarriage as a result of the beating that she suffered at the hands of the police, and dozens of peacefully protesting janitors were hauled away and thrown into jail. Uh, this ultimately represented a multi-million dollar settlement in support of the janitors who were unjustly beaten by the LAPD, but it also represented a major turning point in providing national attention to the janitors' campaign and led to a string of extraordinary unionization victories for the janitors. Um, I'll also point out that this very same union, the Justice for Janitors, went on to successfully organize the largely African-American security officers who were working for the very same multinational corporations in the building service industry. And to this day, you will have workers in this very same union that represent both the Latino immigrant janitors and the African-American security officers. They may not speak the same language, but they're aligned and working together for justice.
SPEAKER_01And was that the real emergence of SCIU as a powerhouse in Southern California?
SPEAKER_00The SCIU janitors campaign was absolutely one of the key organizing breakthroughs. The home care organizing campaign was another significant organizing breakthrough. But uh SCIU has also grown tremendously because of their position in the public sector. So uh SCIU has city workers, county workers, state workers, and the growth of successful unionization in the healthcare sector. So these are all growth industries uh that have led to the SCIU becoming the largest union in the state of California.
SPEAKER_01So this this period of
Miguel Contreras: Flexing New Power
SPEAKER_01time that we've been talking about also saw the emergence of another really major figure in LA political, uh LA labor history. Sadly, someone who's who's no longer with us, uh Miguel Contreras. Uh, can you tell us a little bit about who he was and and what he did and why he looms so large in our history?
SPEAKER_00Miguel Contreras was an extraordinary labor leader here in Los Angeles. Like Maria Elena, he came from a family of farm workers uh from the Central Valley of California. His first start in the labor movement was when he was recruited by the Lores Huerta to become a boycott organizer for the United Farm Workers of America. He went on to work for the Hotel Workers, and he was actually brought to Los Angeles to serve as a trustee over the contested election of Marielena Drosso, who subsequently would become his wife. So uh the two of them worked together to build the hotel workers. Uh, he went on to become the political director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. And when Jim Wood passed away while in office, Miguel Contreras was elected as the first person of color to lead the LA County Federation of Labor back in 1996. He served in that position for almost a decade. I actually published a book on uh the life of Miguel Contreras, which is still used by high school students at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, named in his honor. And Miguel Contreras's contribution to this day, which is felt in the state of California, was his ability to mobilize and galvanize the very strongest rank and file union organizers to take part in a political mobilization approach that transformed politics here in Los Angeles and here in the state of California. And it was Miguel Contreras who said that we can no longer serve as an ATM for elected officials. We need to build worker power. And he understood that the strongest strength that the labor movement brings to the political arena is not the money, it's the people power. And so he developed a culture within the labor movement where everybody takes part in the political mobilization process. And he was decisive in shifting the political power in Los Angeles and in the state of California to where it is today. And a lot of people to this day wrongfully say that it is because there has been a demographic shift in California. That's why we shifted from purple to blue. Uh, I disagree. Uh Florida and Texas have had similar demographic shifts. It has not resulted in political shift. It was through organizing, it was through building labor and community alliances that realigned politics in the state of California.
SPEAKER_01So that that dynamic that Miguel created and that that that power clearly changed who was in office, what people in office did. Certainly no surprise that it that it made government more labor-friendly, but it also had the impact over time of making government and making the electorate, I think, uh more progressive generally. Why is that? What was the connection between what he was doing that made us not just more labor-friendly, but also more politically progressive generally?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question because the rise of the labor movement resulted in the rise in progressive political uh environment. And uh, you know, Anthony Villargosa, the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in 130 years, was a former union organizer. He worked for the uh United Teachers of Los Angeles. Uh Karen Bass, our current um mayor, the first uh woman, first woman of color to ever become mayor of Los Angeles, was recruited by Miguel Contreras uh to run for office because he saw the necessity of electing progressive leaders. And although Karen Bass did not herself come from the labor movement, she was a community organizer. She founded Community Coalition, and it was very much uh a, uh, to this day, an organization that builds labor community alliances to empower uh people of Los Angeles. So uh uh we see the extraordinary role that labor has played in recruiting and positioning uh progressive politicians who in turn will support a pro-worker agenda.
SPEAKER_01The the dynamics of what was happening in Los Angeles with Miguel and others really bringing uh immigrants into the labor movement was sort of contrary to what had been happening in in a lot of other parts of the country, the attitude that organized labor had towards immigrants. What impact did LA have and how did it change things in terms
Labor & Immigration
SPEAKER_01of labor's relationship with immigration?
SPEAKER_00The major change in terms of the national policy of the AFL CIO came in 1999 when the AFL CIO National Convention was brought to Los Angeles. And Miguel Contreras organized a march on the first day of the AFL CIO convention that brought together over 500 recently organized workers of Los Angeles who had been brought into the labor movement. And the vast majority of those workers were Latino immigrant workers. And so I remember that day when you had 500 immigrant workers march into the convention of the AFL CIO proclaiming that we are here, we are part of the labor movement, and we demand that our issues be heard. It was that 1999 convention that for the first time elevated a national debate on the policy of the FLCIO with regard to immigration. Previously, the AFL CIO was on the wrong side of history. They uh supported regressive anti-immigrant policies, they supported employer sanctions to bar job rights for undocumented immigrants. Uh, and it was that 1999 convention that flipped the AFL CIO position. So in the year 2000, they embraced immigrant worker organizing, they embraced a call for uh legalization for the 11 million undocumented immigrants and full rights for immigrant workers. Los Angeles was also home in the year 2006 to the largest May Day demonstration in US history. And although Mayday was born out of the Chicago struggle for the eight-hour day back in 1886, it took 120 years for the spirit of May Day to be brought back to this country by a new generation of immigrant workers. No longer were they immigrant workers of 1886 from Ireland and Italy and Poland and Russia. The new working class of 2006 were immigrant workers from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras,
May Day 2005
SPEAKER_00the Philippines, China, the Caribbean. And this new immigrant working class uh led the largest Mayday demonstration in US history in the streets of Los Angeles in 2006.
SPEAKER_01That was an amazing moment. I I was a council staffer at the time uh for my predecessor Bill Rosendahl, and council was in session that day. And the noise was was was so raucously joyous and loud outside, you could not hear anything in the chambers. And ultimately, everybody went outside to to to witness and to participate. And it for me, it was one of the most inspiring optimistic moments uh in the all the time I've lived in Los Angeles. It was just it was something else.
SPEAKER_00It was something else I could not agree more. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. Uh, May Day 2006 was the closest I have ever seen to a general strike where everything shut down. Because if immigrant workers of Los Angeles don't go to work, nobody goes to work.
SPEAKER_01That's for sure. So Miguel died uh young and tragically in 2005, just a few days before the the mayor's election. Uh the the the May Day celebration and demonstration that we're talking about was 2006. Um, what happened in Los Angeles between 2005, 2006, and the past couple years that led us to be the site of what we have seen over the past couple years with actors, entertainment workers, hotel workers, healthcare workers, school employees, all taking major actions uh uh in a way that really brought in the love and the support of greater Los Angeles. So they weren't just out there alone, they were out there with the love of Los Angeles. How did we get from 2005 and 2006 to that moment? Because that's pretty profound, too.
SPEAKER_00So um, as we indicated, Maria Elena Doraso uh left her position as president of the Hotel Workers after her husband tragically passed away. And she became the new leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Maria Elena very much uh carried on the tradition. That was established by Miguel Contreras to build and to promote a very dynamic, a very inclusive, very worker and organizing centered labor
Hollywood to the Docks: Roots of the Hot Labor Summer
SPEAKER_00federation. And one of the extraordinary campaigns that Maria Elena launched when she was head of the LA County Federation of Labor was this march on foot called Hollywood to the Docks, where for a um a number of days, thousands and thousands of workers marched in the streets of Los Angeles, a city where no one walks. But yet thousands of workers of Los Angeles from the entertainment industry, from the uh the longshore workers, from the public sector workers, from the teachers, uh, from the home care workers, from the janitors, from the hotel workers, everybody came together to establish a sense of solidarity that we need to support each other workers' campaigns during this critical uh contract year. And uh, in my view, that really set the foundation for uh unions of Los Angeles to see themselves not just as members of their individual unions, but members of a broader labor movement. And that spirit
The Hot Labor Summer of 2023
SPEAKER_00absolutely was in full force in the hot labor summer of 2023 when once again over 500,000 workers of Los Angeles County had contracts that were expiring and where workers saw the power of supporting each other on their just demands for a decent wage and a decent uh uh contract. And so uh mind you, 2023 was coming out of the um of the pandemic. And uh during the pandemic, here uh when on the one hand, our society was congratulating and celebrating our so-called so-called essential workers, we saw that economic inequality grew during the pandemic. We saw that billionaires were making massive profits, the pharmaceutical companies, tech companies were making obscene profits during the pandemic. And so this also heightened a sense of solidarity among the workers who were the essential workers who weren't on the front lines, putting their lives at risk. And they saw that this was their opportunity, the hot labor summer of 2023, to stand together. So we saw an unprecedented show of unity where the United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Service Employees International Union, local 99, representing blue-collar workers within the LA Unified School District, stood together and won a 20% wage increase across the board. We saw the largest demonstration of in higher education history at the University of California, 48,000 graduate students standing together and securing a 30 plus percent salary and benefits increase for their 48,000 members. We saw 65 hotels successfully win um a union contract and some of the highest wages in the country for hotel workers right here in Los Angeles. We saw the city workers stage a one-day strike. We saw the entertainment unions, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Writers Guild standing in solidarity, along with some of the behind the camera uh you know, IATSI uh and other uh uh entertainment unions standing in solidarity, the musicians union standing in solidarity. So uh what we saw last summer was an extraordinary display of labor solidarity that was built off many, many years of work to grow this spirit of solidarity.
SPEAKER_01Man, solidarity is really the word, too. My I think one of my defining memories of our hot labor summer was I was at a Unite Here Hotel Workers uh action outside of one of the hotels in Santa Monica. And uh they were there, and uh over the course of an hour or so, more and more community members came out to join in, not even union members, just to came out to support, uh, to join in the chance, and then uh a bunch of SCIU workers came, and then a bunch of uh SAG workers came and uh and a bunch of IATSI workers came, and it was you could see, you you could feel and you could witness the solidarity growing right in front of your eyes. It was it was really something else. Um but we're so we're a year out from that now. It's now the the the the the hot summer of 2024. And I'm I'm curious how you would assess the the the relative strength of the labor movement in Los Angeles now. What are its its challenges or perils and what are its uh opportunities
LA Labor: Challenges & Opportunities
SPEAKER_01going forward?
SPEAKER_00I'm very excited and I'm very hopeful about the future of labor here in Los Angeles and in California. For the first time in history, we have a black woman who leads the LA County Federation of Labor, Yvonne Wheeler. For the first time in history, we have a woman of color leading the California Labor Federation, uh Lorena Gonzalez. Uh I see unions standing together, working together, organizing together. And um uh there has been uh a new energy uh that we have seen in um in the labor movement uh that is very diverse, that includes public sector, private sector, building and construction trades, that includes manufacturing unions, that includes uh dock workers. Uh all these workers stand in solidarity to build a better future for uh all working people uh within Los Angeles and within the state of California. Uh, we just came off a very exciting uh California Labor Federation convention. We have now four uh top officers, including uh Lorena Gonzalez and Yvonne Wheeler, which reflects a growing solidarity between the LA and the California uh labor movements. Uh, we also have the president of the California Federation of Teachers as one of our uh top uh officers, Jeff Freitas, um, and the head of um ASME 3299 representing um workers within the University of California. We have uh three out of the four who are women, we have uh uh two out of the four who are people of color, and two out of the four who are LGBT. So this represents the uh the new leadership of the California labor movement, which is a reflection of the membership of the state of California.
SPEAKER_01Uh you you mentioned your book about Miguel. Uh for people who are listening and have sort of had their appetite wetted and want to learn more about the labor history of Los Angeles or of California, uh, where what would you point them to?
SPEAKER_00Please uh go to the website of the UCLA Labor Center. I've actually published more than a dozen books. One on Miguel Contreras, one on Mike Garcia, the legendary leader of the Justice for Janitors Union, one on David Sickler, who was the regional uh director of the AFL CIO, who led the charge in getting the national AFL CIO to organize immigrant workers when no one else in the country uh was doing that. I've also published two books with Reverend James Lawson Jr., uh, one uh entitled Revolutionary Nonviolence, and one on uh nonviolence and social movements, which highlights Reverend Lawson's critical role in growing the Los Angeles labor movement and infusing the power of nonviolence uh within the labor movement. I also have a book on the home care organizing, women's work, uh, that I published in partnership with now Senator Lola Smallwood Cuevas. So please check out the UCLA Labor Center uh website and you can order all of these books online.
SPEAKER_01You need to publish a survey book for someone who doesn't have time to read 10 books. Uh so final question is what is the best way to celebrate Labor Day in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00Well, um every year there's a great march and rally in the South Bay area uh that you know uh leaders of the Longshore Workers' Union and other uh uh unions in the port area uh have held for many, many years. It's always a spirited event. Um, and um uh you know, I think fondly of uh the extraordinary work of uh of David Arian and and his leadership as the former president of the ILWU. Um and uh it's always a great way to celebrate uh Labor Day. I'm also partial to May Day because uh I pride Los Angeles in bringing back uh the spirit of May Day to the uh uh US working class and to leading the largest Mayday demonstration in U.S. history. Um so I think that um uh as we are uh acknowledging, celebrating, and growing uh the labor movement here in Los Angeles, uh Labor Day and May Day is a great time uh to get on your marching shoes and to uh uh uh join uh unions and workers in celebrating the rich labor tradition of Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01The uh the gentleman Davarian that Kent just gave a shout-out to was uh my father-in-law, who passed away a few years ago, uh, was a uh a staunch and and fiery progressive uh labor leader who was once president of uh Longsherman's Local 13 and then the International Uh Longsherman's Union, an amazing, um, amazing man. So I I I dedicate this show to him. I thank you for for giving the the shout out to him. And I I went to that that Labor Day event with him many times in in Wilmington and look forward to to doing so again. Uh Kent Long, thanks so much for joining me and happy Labor Day.
SPEAKER_00Happy Labor Day to you, Mike.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thanks, man. That was freaking awesome. All right. Kent listed a lot of resources he's published on L'Abor History. I have put that information and a few other resources in the show notes for you. My thanks to Kent for joining me and to my friend Marta Avery for sound editing. My thanks to LA Forward for partnering and sponsoring this podcast, and of course to you for listening. Please follow or subscribe or like this podcast, and please tell your friends. Until next time, happy Labor Day. Take good care and peace.