Janitors Lash Out at Rebuild L.A. in Rally

Several hundred low-wage janitors protested at Rebuild L.A. headquarters Thursday, demanding that the organization start focusing on improving working conditions for “the hundreds of thousands of workers in the city who live in poverty despite working full-time jobs.”

The noisy but peaceful protest on West 8th Place downtown was spawned by remarks made by Rebuild L.A. Co-chairman Peter V. Ueberroth last month during a news conference announcing the launching of a job training program by Toyota. He said “minimum wage jobs brought dignity to those who labor in them,” according to rally organizers.

Ueberroth’s statement “is a gross distortion and causes us great concern as to the ability of RLA to adequately address the needs of the city,” said James Zeller, president of Service Employees International Union Local 399, which has been waging a vocal campaign to raise janitor wages in the city.

“Minimum wage translates into an annual salary of $8,840 gross earnings, less than it costs to rent the average two-bedroom apartment in the city,” Zeller said in a letter to Ueberroth.

He and several other speakers at the lunch-hour rally, which followed a short march from the union’s headquarters a few blocks away, said that low-wage jobs with no benefits were among the underlying reasons for the spring riots. The protesters were primarily Latino. Although there has been a variety of criticisms of Rebuild L.A. since its creation in May, Thursday’s rally was the most direct attack on the organization’s approach to solving the city’s problems.

“Rebuild L.A., under the direction of Peter Ueberroth, has failed to recognize the real issues that block the path to the revitalization of Los Angeles,” said Jono Shaffer, chief organizer of the “Justice for Janitors” campaign here. “Mr. Ueberroth and RLA have acted on their position that we can rebuild the economic base of our city by putting a few more people to work in the same dead-end, minimum wage jobs of which our city already has too many.”

Zeller said conditions for the city’s 15,000 janitorial workers have declined dramatically in the past decade, with wage and benefit reductions that took as much as $1 billion out of the local economy in the 1980s. “That money was taken directly out of the neighborhoods most affected by the outbreak of social unrest in April,” he said.

Janitor David Martinez, 54, said he makes $5 an hour cleaning a building in Beverly Hills, less than he was earning a decade ago. Moreover, he said he no longer has health benefits.

Zeller said none of the 22 recommendations that Rebuild L.A. gives to companies considering aiding its efforts “mentions working conditions, decent wages or health insurance.”

Rebuild L.A. spokesman Jerry Arca said Ueberroth was traveling Thursday and was unavailable to respond to reporters’ questions or meet with protesters.

Arca told union officials Shaffer and Zeller that Rebuild L.A. leaders would meet with “four or five” of the protesters if they came inside the organization’s headquarters. Shaffer suggested that Arca ask a Rebuild L.A. leader to address the crowd.

Both men declined the other’s invitation.

Rebuild L.A. presented Zeller with a response to the letter he wrote Ueberroth. It was signed by Tony Salazar, who last week became the group’s fourth co-chairman after months of lobbying by Latinos who said that they were not represented in the organization’s leadership.

“We support and encourage the creation of any job that will provide greater opportunity to our community,” wrote Salazar, whose father was a union railroad yard worker for many years in Kansas City, Mo.

He said that Ueberroth’s comments on low-wage jobs “stressed much more than the value of a job at minimum wage. . . . RLA’s hope is for an economy that allows for all workers to be paid better.”

In response to the health care issue raised by Zeller, Salazar’s letter said that Rebuild L.A.’s Health/Human Services/Youth Task Force “is working to address many of your concerns.”

Shaffer said the workers were not encouraged by Rebuild L.A.’s response. “Our letter,” he said, “was sent to Ueberroth who is clearly the named and visible force behind RLA. . . . For Rebuild L.A. to sink to the level of taking their Latino face and putting it forward because most of the people who showed up at their office were Latino is really bad. The fundamental issue is low-wage workers and corporate responsibility toward those workers. It’s not just a Latino thing.”