16 Arrested in 24-Hour Sit-In at Rebuild L.A. : Demonstration: Union activists claim organization has failed to address city’s economic problems.

Nearly a score of union activists were arrested on trespassing and other charges Friday after refusing requests to leave the headquarters of Rebuild L.A., which they had occupied for more than 24 hours to protest the organization’s “failure to address” the city’s “despair and economic disintegration.”

“Peter Ueberroth’s naive leadership hasn’t taken us anywhere for the working poor,” said one of the protest leaders, Rocio Saenz, an organizer for the Service Employees International Union Local 399’s Justice for Janitors campaign.

Saenz said the sit-in protesters, along with about 150 chanting, sign-carrying supporters, were demanding that RLA spend its energies on creating good jobs--not just minimum wage jobs.

They also were demanding the resignations of RLA Co-chairman Ueberroth and five other directors, including Gov. Pete Wilson and mayoral candidate Richard Riordan, and their replacement with union organizers.

LAPD Sgt. Bob Carter said 16 of the sit-in demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, one for battery of an RLA employee, and one on a weapons charge stemming from possession of a .38-caliber revolver.

“They wanted to be arrested to make a statement,” Carter said.

Witnesses said the protesters were handcuffed and led to a waiting LAPD bus without incident.

Susan Gonzales, a spokeswoman for RLA, said officials had offered to meet with representatives of the group Thursday afternoon, but the offer was declined.

The group spent Thursday night inside the one-story building on 8th Place, a quiet downtown street in the shadow of the financial district skyscrapers.

Then, on Friday, one of RLA’s co-chairmen, Tony Salazar, agreed to meet with the sit-in protesters on the condition that they leave afterward, Gonzales said.

Salazar is on leave from his job as a senior vice president of McCormack Baron & Associates, a real estate firm specializing in urban redevelopment.

“They wouldn’t agree to leave afterward,” Gonzales said. “The meeting went nowhere.”

When it broke up, she said, one demonstrator pushed and punched an RLA employee. “Concerned for the safety of our employees and visitors, we arranged to have them removed,” she said.