CRA Plan to Hike Pay of Janitors and Maids Wins Political Support : Redevelopment: Bradley, 3 councilmen and labor leaders back proposal to require employers getting city funds to increase wages.

A proposed Community Redevelopment Agency policy that could lead to improved wages and health benefits for thousands of Los Angeles janitors, hotel maids and other low-paid workers received support Thursday from Mayor Tom Bradley, three City Council members and a host of trade union leaders.

The plan would require employers whose businesses are built with the help of city redevelopment funds to guarantee wages substantially higher than the near-minimum wage rates that now prevail in the service sector.

Future hotel and office construction projects in more than a dozen redevelopment areas from North Hollywood and San Pedro to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles could be affected, CRA officials said.

Bradley said the policy would help address the growing disparity of wealth in places such as downtown and Century City, where blacks, Latinos and others often toil for miserly pay in gleaming high-rise office buildings and luxury hotels. One dispute over working conditions for Century City janitors led to a series of boisterous protests earlier this year. The janitors eventually won union recognition, wage increases and benefits.

“It’s appropriate that we turn our attention to sharing the wealth,” Bradley told the CRA’s board of commissioners. “Those benefits must be shared from the basement to the boardroom.”

City Council members Gloria Molina, Richard Alatorre and Robert Farrell also spoke in favor of the proposal.

The CRA board is scheduled to vote on the proposal, said to be the first of its kind in the nation, in late November. The agency will schedule a series of public workshops to review the policy, officials said. The plan does not need City Council approval.

The plan is likely to face especially strong opposition from downtown development interests. On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles said the policy, as now drafted, could limit future downtown commercial investment.

“We’re concerned about the overall economic ramifications of this at a time when the economy is slowing and the real estate market is flattening out,” said Carol Schatz, director of government relations for the association. “There are other cities very close to downtown that are competing for development dollars and that do not have policies such as this.”

As drafted, the guidelines would apply only to projects employing more than 10 full-time service employees and with construction costs greater than $100,000, CRA officials said. Only future CRA-backed projects would be affected.

About 200 members of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 11, and members of the group “Justice for Janitors” attended the City Hall hearing Thursday in support of the proposal.

Jesse Guerrero, a 32-year-old bellman at a downtown hotel, told the CRA board members that he supports his wife and two children on an hourly wage of $4.45.

“I take home less than $600 every month. . . . It’s very hard,” he said in Spanish. “We think this policy is very important for all the new hotel workers downtown who will face problems like the ones we are now facing if you don’t do something to protect them.”

CRA board chairman Jim Wood, the No. 2 official in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said the agency drafted the proposed policy after discovering last year that janitors who cleaned the agency’s Spring Street offices were earning only $4.25 per hour.

“This is a major issue; it gets at the heart of our city,” said Wood, a Bradley appointee to the CRA board.