L.A. businesses to form new federation

Hoping to provide harried business owners a way to influence decision making, several Los Angeles business groups have formed a coalition to copy and counteract what they called the considerable organizational clout of the county’s labor union federation.

The Los Angeles County Business Federation, which will be formally unveiled Tuesday, so far includes 44 organizations that represent more than 70,000 businesses employing more than 1.2 million people, said Tracy Rafter, chief executive of the group and a former publisher and chief executive of the Daily News.

Although many of the local chambers of commerce and other groups in the federation already serve as advocates for business, federation members said that they weren’t speaking collectively, quickly or often enough to influence elected officials on important matters. The new organization’s leaders say it is important to emulate the fast footwork of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in bringing together large groups of people to address issues.

“Labor is organized and they have done a fantastic job. Businesses are not organized, and because of that, we do not get our message across. We tend politically to be an afterthought,” said David Fleming, chairman of the new group and outgoing chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “For that reason, we formed it to organize businesses, the collective chambers, trade groups and business organizations so that we can put together the numbers and get the attention of the political leaders.”

The business federation plans to release the result of a poll Tuesday of its members that found that most believe the biggest need is to reduce ever-worsening commute times, curb urban crime and gang violence and reform education.

Businesses, Fleming said, are tired of their employees spending too much time and energy on the freeways, are concerned about the threat of gangs and are fed up with of having to spend money to educate new hires in basic skills they failed to learn in school.

If poll results like that are going to set the group’s agenda, labor experts said, there could be grounds for cooperation with labor.

“If they are serious about those things. That is something that labor can cooperate on because labor has been talking about things like that for decades,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at UC Santa Barbara.

But he added that it was more likely to be an adversarial relationship, trying to counter labor’s clout rather than work with it.

“Despite the poll results, I think they will end up going toe to toe with labor over things like living wage ordinances and expensive health care mandates,” Lichtenstein said.

Although Fleming said they would take stands on matters they felt would hurt business, he added “we are not anti-labor. We are pro business.”

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, found it curious that business would present an image of itself as unorganized and lacking in clout.

“Business has a very strong and active presence with regard to the political decisions made in the city and county of Los Angeles and it always has,” she said, but she added that she was hopeful about the business poll results as potential points of agreement between labor and business.

“It could be good if they use it in a positive way, and not just as another tool to defeat reasonable proposals on made on behalf of workers in Los Angeles,” she said.

ron.white@latimes.com