Blue-Collar Workers March on City Hall in Protest : Labor: With no pay raise in two years, service employees union members voice complaints about lack of a contract. Council members later debate their own salaries.

More than 1,000 city employees--the blue-collar workers who wash windows, empty trash and maintain sewers--marched on Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday to press for a new contract in the latest outbreak of unrest among city laborers.

The workers converged on the City Hall steps in a raucous demonstration and then filed quietly into the City Council chambers to address their elected representatives. The police union had used similar tactics in September to press its case.

“We come to work day in and day out and we work hard,” Linda Stone, a custodian, told the council in a halting voice. “But we need a contract.”

Like thousands of other disgruntled city workers, the 6,500 members of the Service Employees International Union Local 347 have not had a pay increase in two years and have been without a contract since July, 1992. They accused the city of refusing to negotiate and overlooking the contributions they make to the city.

“We’re the guys you don’t see,” Tony Williams, a sanitation worker, said to the crowd gathered outside City Hall. “You set your trash out in the morning and when you come back your cans are empty.”

Kevin Morris, a traffic officer, emphasized the little-known dangers of his job. Outraged motorists have assaulted those who put tickets on their cars, he said. Nonetheless, he told the council, “we go out there and work.”

After the union made its case, council members spent almost an hour debating their own salaries and how they should handle a 5% pay increase they are scheduled to receive on Jan. 1. Under Proposition H, an ethics reform measure approved by voters in 1990, council members receive the same raise as Municipal Court judges.

Councilwoman Laura Chick and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky had called on their colleagues to give up the raise, which would bring their salaries to $95,214. But the end result left many observers and even council members scratching their heads.

Unwilling to give up the raises completely, the council finally voted 10 to 2 to forgo the raises but to allow council members the last word on what to do with the money. Council members Nate Holden and Mark Ridley-Thomas voted against the measure, calling it a publicity stunt.

“This is public policy by posturing,” Ridley-Thomas said. “It’s public policy by pacifying. It’s empty.”

The service employees had ended their three-hour rally and returned to work by the time the council discussed its own raise. But the debate did not sit well with some union representatives.

“I think it sends a bad symbolic message for them to talk about what they are going to do with their raises when there are workers outside with no raises,” said union negotiator Julie Butcher. “It’s kind of like putting it in the workers’ faces.”

The service employees’ union is one of more than two dozen employee groups in negotiations with the city, including those representing police officers and firefighters. None of the workers have received pay increases in the last two years and all are working under expired contracts.

But the city granted a 9% pay increase over four years to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees after they held a nine-day strike in September.

The other unions are seeking a similar deal but city officials say the city treasury cannot afford such raises.

City officials point out that the semiautonomous DWP pays its workers through utility and water rates, not the taxes and fees that pay for most other city workers. In addition, the city is facing a $125-million budget shortfall and recently had to lay off a handful of employees, officials say.

A salary increase is just one of the service employees’ demands. Just as important, according to union leaders, are increased job security and an early retirement plan.

Sanitation worker Roosevelt Vernon said he fears that Mayor Richard Riordan’s effort to privatize some city operations would put him and many other workers in the unemployment lines. Riordan has said that none of his privatization efforts would result in layoffs.

“From the citizens, we are greatly appreciated. From this point of view,” Vernon said, gesturing toward City Hall, “we’re not.”