Union Disrupts Council Meeting

The latest dust-up between city engineers and architects and Los Angeles officials ended Tuesday with the arrest of four union employees who interrupted a presentation by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council to the makers of the Oscar-winning movie “Crash.”

The union wants a pay increase similar to the one that Villaraigosa and the council gave to Department of Water and Power employees last year. Thus far, the mayor and council haven’t budged.

As a result, members and employees of the union have been regularly showing up at council meetings and mayoral events in recent weeks, trying to drown out speakers by chanting, “Equal pay, equal work,” a reference to the DWP pay raise.

The twist Tuesday was that the union was able to bedevil Villaraigosa and the council at the same time, because the mayor was in the council chambers to honor the people involved in making “Crash.” Among those was its writer and director, Paul Haggis.

The chanting delayed the presentation about 10 minutes while police peacefully escorted the protesters from the room.

During the delay, the mayor and recipients of the city proclamation kept their backs to the demonstrators and chatted and joked among themselves. As is usually the case, Villaraigosa seemed unfazed.

After being removed, the protesters resumed their chant in the hallway.

“We love Los Angeles, because there’s always a crashing together of all sorts of issues,” said council President Eric Garcetti, responding to the protesters as they were cleared from the room.

The executive director of the Engineers and Architects Assn., Robert Aquino, and three other union workers were arrested on suspicion of disrupting a public meeting, police officials said.

“It makes it clear that this is not business as usual,” said union President Michael Davies, a planner for the city Department of Transportation. “There aren’t going to be any smiley press events.”

Davies said the union would fight any charges brought against the four arrested employees. “This is about the mayor and the City Council ignoring us,” he said. “Ignoring us isn’t the solution.”

The union later issued a statement: “There can be no doubt now that Mayor Villaraigosa is a hypocrite. He only advocates for labor when he needs money for his elections, and he only spews the ACLU line when it supports his free speech.”

The four union employees were held briefly and then released.

Times staff writer Steve Hymon contributed to this report.