Unions focus on race for supervisor

Leaders of Los Angeles’ labor movement declared Monday that they would make the race for a successor to county Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke their top political priority next year. The outcome, they said, could affect the welfare of hundreds of thousands of workers.

The Feb. 5 election to replace Burke, who is expected to step down after 16 years on the Board of Supervisors, will initiate a frenzied year for labor.

Unions are set to renegotiate 32 contracts for nearly 340,000 workers throughout Los Angeles County, while pressing campaigns to organize another 30,000 guards, hotel workers, port truck drivers and others.

The looming contract talks will ripple through county government, the largest employer in the region.

Firefighters, sheriff’s deputies, probation officers, home healthcare workers and other groups will negotiate new contracts in 2008 and 2009 that require the supervisors’ approval.

And that, union leaders say, is why Burke’s seat is so important: She is one of three Democratic supervisors on whom labor has counted when contracts are at issue.

So far, two prominent Democrats -- Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks and state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) -- have declared their intention to replace her. They are likely to need the support of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents more than 800,000 workers.

“We in the labor movement can determine the outcome of that all-important race,” Maria Elena Durazo, the federation’s executive secretary treasurer, told about 1,000 union leaders who gathered Monday at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel for the group’s second Delegates Congress.

Durazo’s comments resonated with leaders whose contracts are set to expire next year.

“We need three votes on the board,” said Amanda Figueroa, secretary treasurer of the United Long-Term Care Workers’ Union, which represents 120,000 workers. Its contract expires in June.

The union wants higher wages and healthcare coverage expanded to more of its members. “We need somebody who is going to support our fight,” Figueroa added.

An economic study, paid for by the labor federation and released Monday, underscored what leaders said were the benefits of unionizing lower-wage workers.

The report, by the Economic Roundtable, found that union workers in Los Angeles County earn an average of 27% more than nonunion workers in the same jobs, and 64% more for those in the service sector.

Those bumps can translate into improved standards of living.

“It means moving workers out of the core zone of poverty into the more sustainable range of . . . working poor,” said economist Dan Flaming, the study’s author.

“The bump is not going to allow them to buy a Winnebago. It may allow them to move out of a house where they are doubled up with another family.”

The labor federation on Monday endorsed a $243-million telephone utility users tax that Los Angeles city voters will consider on the Feb. 5 ballot. The tax is threatened by lawsuits.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa addressed the labor leaders Monday, declaring his support for the fair treatment of workers and urging them to back the phone tax measure. Villaraigosa, a one-time union organizer, received a standing ovation when Durazo introduced him as “a warrior for working people.”

“We’re looking at a crisis in the city today,” Villaraigosa said. “What happens when you cut” the users tax? “I think you know the answer: You cut parks; you cut libraries; you cut street repairs. You cut it all. If we want a good quality of life, we’ve got to pay for it.”

--

duke.helfand@latimes.com