From today’s Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles’ hot labor summer will get a little more heated Tuesday morning, when thousands of Los Angeles city workers plan to walk off the job for a 24-hour strike. Tuesday’s action would be the first major city worker strike in at least 15 years.
SEIU Local 721, a union representing county and city employees across Southern California, said that more than 11,000 Los Angeles city workers will participate, including sanitation workers, heavy duty mechanics, traffic officers and engineers.
The city work stoppage comes amid a frenzy of organized labor activity in Los Angeles and across the country, including the first simultaneous strike of Hollywood writers and actors since 1960. Los Angeles and Orange County hotel workers have also engaged in intermittent work stoppages since contracts expired for more than 15,000 hotel workers at some 60 properties.
The union said employees are staging an unfair labor practices strike because the city failed to bargain with their members in good faith and also engaged in labor practices that restricted employee and union rights.
“City workers are vital to the function of services for millions of Angelenos every day and to our local economy. They deserve fair contracts and we have been bargaining in good faith with SEIU 721 since January,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement Friday evening. “The City will always be available to make progress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Read the complete story here.