Council Vows to Block Privatization : Jobs: Eight members tell union rally they would oppose mayor’s attempts to shift municipal services to private sector.

A majority of Los Angeles City Council members promised a rally of union workers Saturday that they would block attempts by Mayor Richard Riordan to privatize thousands of municipal employees’ jobs.

As an overflow crowd at Bethany Baptist Church cheered and clapped, eight City Council members vowed solidarity with garbage collectors, custodial workers, parking control officers and others who say their jobs are threatened by Riordan’s proposal to study the feasibility of turning some city services over to private enterprise.

City Council members Mark Ridley-Thomas, Mike Hernandez, Nate Holden, Rita Walters, Ruth Galanter, Zev Yaroslavsky, Jackie Goldberg and Richard Alarcon all spoke in support of the employees.

“There are eight of us here and I hope there are still eight of us there when the vote comes down in the City Council,” said Galanter, who was wearing a black T-shirt bearing the logo of the Service Employees International Union Local 347, which represents 6,500 city workers in ongoing contract negotiations.

The city’s latest offer to the union called for no salary increase but a guarantee that no city employees would lose their jobs as a result of privatization, according to city sources.

Ridley-Thomas acknowledged that Riordan faces a budget shortfall, but warned the mayor: “Don’t balance the budget on the backs of working people in the city of Los Angeles.”

Specific privatization proposals have not been released, but Riordan has told council members that he is considering six municipal services as pilot projects for private industry: garbage collection, parking enforcement, golf course maintenance, custodial work, data processing and management of workers’ compensation claims.

David Novak, the mayor’s director of communications, said the rally and the council members’ support of the unions will not stop Riordan from studying the potential for contracting some city services to private industry.

“The mayor is not an ideologue of privatization,” Novak said. “But the mayor is an ideologue of increasing efficiency and competition. What the mayor is trying to do is allow for the flexibility to have the most efficient services provided at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers.”

The rally of more than 500 people began with speeches, spirituals and a march from a shopping center parking lot to the church. The event took on the aura of a 1960s civil rights demonstration as speaker after speaker invoked the name of Martin Luther King Jr.

Saturday was the 65th birthday anniversary of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968 while supporting a strike by sanitation workers. The keynote speaker at the rally was the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who had been working with King in Memphis.

The service employees union was joined by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and various community groups in setting up the rally that began at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.

About 85% of city workers in the service sectors being studied by Riordan are members of minority groups and speakers criticized privatization as an example of the last-hired, first-fired syndrome. They also called the proposal a step back from affirmative action.

Kenneth Brooks, 36, who has worked on a city garbage crew for two years, was among the marchers. Brooks is black, grew up in Los Angeles and he and his wife are raising three children, ages 12, 8 and 4. Brooks said that it takes all the salary from his $17.50-an-hour city job and his wife’s position as a bank secretary to make ends meet.

Noting that city workers have not had a raise in about two years, Yaroslavsky said: “What’s the thanks we’re going to give to our workers for making that sacrifice? We’re going to kick them out the door? Hell, no, we’re not going to kick them out the door.”

Times staff writers Marc Lacey and James Rainey contributed to this story.