Faith, hope and callousness

I HAVE A DAILY ambition of taking an hourlong walk around the Forum in Inglewood. I don’t realize that goal every day, but I have managed to fulfill a few others in the process, including staving off weight gain and literally keeping an eye on signs of life (or decay) in my fair city.

Usually my walk is a reaffirmation of small-town stability and continuity that counters a sense of urban decline; from day to day, not much changes around the Forum. That lack of change, while frustrating in one sense, is also comforting. I was jolted out of that comfort a couple of weeks ago. Turning the corner at 90th Street, I came upon a knot of picketers outside the Forum.

They were with Local 33 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the stagehands union. A union official told me that after trying for two years to reach a new contract agreement, things reached a serious impasse a month ago; the Forum’s management and booking company, SMG, accused the union of a work slowdown and locked its members out. (SMG says the union decided on its own to go on strike.)

SMG is the world’s largest operator of places such as the Forum, a multimillion-dollar company with nearly 200 contracts at sites around the world. The Forum’s owners hired it to revive a venue that saw its biggest regular draw, the Lakers, depart in 1999. SMG has evidently done that, booking popular acts like Pearl Jam, Coldplay and Madonna.

But the SMG management deal comes at a particular cost to the Forum’s owner. It is not some faceless corporation but the Faithful Central Bible Church, a predominantly black mega-church based in Inglewood that bought the Forum in a historic deal six years ago. Faithful Central, which uses the Forum for its Sunday services, was hoping to successfully run a major venue and do some much-needed community improvement at the same time.

It’s an ambitious, even admirable plan; in addition to bringing in family-oriented entertainment, the church envisioned building a hotel or some other amenity on the grounds. But from the outset, Faithful Central struggled with finances and inexperience in running a complex like the Forum profitably.

In retaining SMG and allowing it to dictate business, Faithful Central may have made a pact with the devil. Photos distributed by the union show scab workers being helped across picket lines in Faithful Central buses on at least one occasion. Though it initially tried to stay neutral in the dispute, the church and its bishop, Kenneth C. Ulmer, tacitly agreed to the harsh conditions SMG imposed on the union before the lockout -- including a 35% pay cut for rehearsals and a dissolution of standard divisions of stage labor, such as separate crews for property, carpentry, sound and electricity. Ulmer has promised to meet with the union but has yet to do so.

This adds up to a distinctly worker-unfriendly attitude that should give Faithful Central pause. Inglewood is a middle-class town full of retired union members who supported the grocery workers’ strike a couple of years back. Nor did it take kindly to Wal-Mart’s ham-handed attempt to set up a supercenter via a ballot initiative in 2004. If Faithful Central wants to do community good, union busting hardly qualifies.

The only response the church has issued thus far is a bloodless e-mail statement notable for its attempt to put a positive face -- a Christian face, if you will -- on its support of SMG’s decision. “We have invested in the Forum and support this community,” the statement says. “Our vision and our actions have been consistent and remain clear.”

Consistent with what, I’m not sure. No solution is forthcoming. The little knot of picketers is still there, on the second leg of the walk that I strive to take one day at a time. They look more anxious than indignant; their union is mostly hoping for a way to talk to Ulmer and to get back to work as soon as possible. Even if that happens tomorrow, my Forum walk, with its assurances of security and predictability for all who care to take it, won’t feel the same.