El Monte : City Loses Pay Appeal
The state Court of Appeal has ruled that the city must pay about $54,000 in back wages to 122 employees who worked on the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last year.
Los Angeles City Employees Union, Local 347, which represents the workers, filed suit last May after the city refused to give employees a paid day off in observance of the holiday, which Gov. George Deukmejian declared would be Jan. 16, 1984, and on the third Monday in January in succeeding years.
The city, which contends that the governor’s order did not apply to local workers, won the first round in Los Angeles Superior Court. But the union, arguing that its contract called for members to be paid for holidays declared by the governor, appealed the decision to the Second District Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court ruling.
The ruling applies only to 1984 and the city will appeal that decision to the state Supreme Court, City Manager Gregory Korduner said. He added that employees were not given the holiday this year and will not be in the future.
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