AFTER THE RIOTS : Riot Job-Loss Figure Is Halved

Early estimates of riot-related job losses, once feared to have forced temporary layoffs of up to 40,000 Los Angeles workers and the permanent end to as many as 10,000 jobs, have been slashed in half.

The improved picture of the riot’s likely effect on the labor market is primarily due to the revised--and significantly lower--count of the number of buildings burned in the three days of rioting and looting.

Fire officials last week lowered their estimate of the number of buildings that burned from more than 5,500 to about 1,100 countywide. In addition, city officials said this week that a complete survey of riot damage showed that only about 900 commercial addresses sustained structural damage of 50% or more.

Labor analysts say another reason for the lower-than-expected job loss is a concerted attempt by employers and labor groups throughout the city to save as many jobs as possible.

The employers’ response is widely considered to be far greater than what was made after the Watts riots in 1965. It may represent one of the first firm indicators that the rebuilding launched this year will follow a different path from the one begun 27 years ago.

“Corporate consciences have recognized the failure of their past responses to unrest,” said Goetz Wolff, a labor market analyst and former chief economist for Los Angeles County. “This was their wake-up call to the potential dangers in this region in the future. Businesses have got to realize that this unrest was a forceful demonstration by less-fortunate members of society that they need to be incorporated into our economy.”

Both Wolff and Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., now estimate that a maximum of 20,000 employees lost work because of rioting.

Of this number, Wolff estimates that half are back on the job. Of the remaining 10,000 jobs, half should be filled within a year. Wolff and Kyser said the other 5,000 positions, including jobs at burned-out stores that must be rebuilt, will take more than a year to return--if they ever do.

Meanwhile, employees whose jobs are still out of commission are finding other solutions.

According to the state Employment Development Department, the number of people seeking riot-related unemployment insurance as of May 16 stood at 3,083. The number includes 369 applications for special federal disaster unemployment assistance, a program designed primarily to help business owners. The remainder applied for standard unemployment insurance.

In other cases, employers in the riot-affected areas say they have gone out of their way this month to keep their employees working--despite, in many instances, the loss of, or damage to, their businesses.

Food 4 Less, the grocery chain that suffered the greatest losses of any business during the riots, is keeping more than 1,000 workers at its closed stores on the payroll with the help of a new agreement with the grocery workers’ union.

Thrifty Drug has reassigned about 200 workers from its five destroyed drug stores to other outlets. It has managed so far to keep all its employees on the payroll despite its heavy riot losses.

At Fedco, about half the 750 workers whose jobs were temporarily lost because of the riots were assigned to clean up the violence-damaged store at La Cienega Boulevard and Rodeo Road. Despite sustaining heavy damage and a thorough looting--losses are near $14 million at just that site--the store will reopen today.

Barnett Williams, the owner of two Carl’s Jr. franchises in South-Central Los Angeles, said he is using insurance money to pay some of the workers at his severely vandalized outlet on Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vermont Avenue to clean the restaurant for its expected opening Tuesday. Other employees have been given food and money to tide them over until they can return to work.

“We’ve been doing everything we can to help the employees while they are out of work,” Williams said. He estimated that about half are drawing unemployment insurance. He added that he is hoping that all of his 32 employees will return for next week’s reopening.

The Food 4 Less agreement calls for the grocery chain to suspend payments to the employee health care fund for eight weeks. The company will use the savings, estimated by the United Food and Commercial Workers union at $720,000, to help pay more than $2.1 million in salaries for the more than 1,000 workers once assigned to the 12 Boys, ABC and Viva stores still closed as a result of looting and fires.

Although Food 4 Less will make no payments into the health care fund, workers will still be covered by their normal insurance and benefits programs. A union spokesman said other grocery chains in Southern California, whose workers are among the 100,000 Southern California members of the UFCW, have agreed to pick up any shortage that could result from the extraordinary efforts by Food 4 Less to continue providing jobs to its employees.

By the end of July, union sources said, all but five of the most seriously damaged stores are expected to reopen, allowing most workers to return to their normal assignments.

The remaining workers, the union said, are expected to be sent to other stores in the chain until the five burned and severely damaged stores are rebuilt. During the riots, Food 4 Less, the dominant grocer in South-Central Los Angeles, had 40, or about two-thirds of its stores, damaged.

Times staff writer Stuart Silverstein contributed to this story.