On Labor’s Day . . . : Campaign to Revive Cal-OSHA Begun by Workers’ Group

Organized labor and its allies will launch a ballot initiative campaign this fall to restore the state’s occupational safety and health program, the head of the state federation of labor announced in Los Angeles on Monday at the 41st annual Labor Day breakfast of the Catholic Labor Institute.

John F. Henning, executive secretary of the California Federation of Labor, said that petitions will begin circulating the first week in December, providing five months to collect enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot next November.

Henning and several other speakers at the breakfast blasted Gov. George Deukmejian for eliminating $8 million from the state budget that would have been needed to continue Cal-OSHA, the state’s worker health and safety program.

“It’s incredible that a governor who prides himself on prudence would do this to save $8 million out of a $41-billion budget,” Henning said.

Several speakers, including Archbishop Roger Mahony, also urged the nearly 1,000 people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel breakfast to continue their support for an increase in the minimum wage, which has been $3.35 an hour since 1981.

The state’s Industrial Welfare Commission is scheduled to discuss a possible increase at a meeting in San Francisco on Friday and at a public meeting Oct. 24 in Los Angeles.

Mahony said the minimum wage must be raised to a point where it would provide “a good standard of living that enables all members of a family to grow and prosper.” He said that henceforth no job in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will have a wage of less than $5 an hour, an announcement that brought considerable applause from the audience.

Disclosed Plan in January

Deukmejian first disclosed that he planned to eliminate Cal-OSHA last January as a cost-saving measure. He asserted that the state’s workers would be just as safe under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration as they were under the state program.

That contention was disputed by a host of labor, public health and business leaders, but the governor could not be persuaded to change his position. So in July, federal OSHA assumed jurisdiction over all private-sector worker health and safety in California. The California Department of Industrial Relations remains responsible for protecting state and municipal workers against hazards on the job.

Support for a ballot initiative to restore Cal-OSHA also was voiced at the breakfast by a host of labor, political and religious leaders, including Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor chief William R. Robertson.

“The governor’s decision to unilaterally destroy Cal-OSHA was hardly an act that would ensure domestic tranquility,” Van De Kamp said, referring to the breakfast’s theme of linking the activities of labor to the Constitution’s Bicentennial.

“It would appear we have to write worker safety into law where the governor can’t touch it,” he added.

As is the custom, several awards were presented to local labor, political and business leaders at the breakfast.

One award was presented to the Rock Products and Ready Mixed Concrete Employers of Southern California and Joint Council 42 of the Teamsters Union and seven of its locals for creating good long-term labor relations in that industry.

A special award was presented to David Sickler, director of the Los Angeles-Orange County Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO, for his decade-long role as the coordinator of the Coors boycott. Last month, the AFL-CIO announced that it was ending the boycott, having secured an agreement from the company that it will not oppose attempts to organize its workers and agreed that union laborers will be utilized in building a major new brewery in the southeastern United States.

Leaders Express Optimism

“The Coors victory is symbolic of the renaissance of people power by the trade union movement in this country,” said Bradley, presenting the award to Sickler.

Indeed, labor leaders around the country on Monday expressed more optimism than they have in several years.

“Labor Day, 1987, is a brighter holiday for American workers,” said AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland in his annual Labor Day statement. “On every front since last year, a revitalized and resurgent labor movement has been moving strongly ahead.”

Kirkland pointed to the recent decision of the nation’s air traffic controllers to once again be represented by a union, six years after President Reagan crushed the union during an illegal strike.

Secretary of Labor William E. Brock praised a growing spirit of cooperation between labor and management in an interview on NBC-TV’s “Today” show Monday morning. He said that the relative labor peace of the last year was due to “an understanding that labor and management can’t spend all their time kicking each other in the shins and competing with the Japanese, the Koreans, the Brazilians and the French at the same time.”

Calm Labor Day

A few hours after Brock spoke on NBC, guests filing into the breakfast saw a sign telling them that NBC news personnel were unwelcome at the event. The National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians is now in the 11th week of a strike against NBC, protesting changes the company wants to impose in its contract with the union.

Monday was mostly a calm day for labor at parades and picnics from Wilmington to Buffalo. However, in San Francisco, 33 members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union were arrested after staging a sit-in at the offices of the Bohemian Club. A union spokesman said the workers were protesting attempts of the club to lower wages and reduce medical benefits. Reagan and several members of his Cabinet are members of the club.

And in Bridgeport, Conn., it was a day of remembrance. The city unveiled a memorial for 28 men who died in the April 23 collapse of an apartment complex under construction. Mayor Thomas W. Bucci said the L’Ambiance Plaza memorial was dedicated “with the hopes that reforms would be forthcoming in monitoring the construction industry and construction projects such as this on both the state and federal levels.”