Labor Day Rally Backs Truck Strike

More than 2,000 people and scores of political leaders gathered at a Labor Day celebration in downtown Los Angeles on Monday to herald the resurgence of organized labor and support delivery drivers on strike at Southern California’s largest tortilla company.

“I have a message for everyone here and for everyone all the way back to the East Coast: Working people are not going to take it anymore,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez Thompson, who spoke at the rally. “We have to fight every day to give our families a better tomorrow.”

The celebration, held at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, was organized by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. For almost two hours, the crowd heard from a host of speakers after a pancake breakfast that was served to union members by more than 20 political leaders, who donned blue aprons and staffed the college cafeteria.

Among them were Democrats Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters and Esteban Torres, state Sens. Richard Polanco and Tom Hayden, as well as Henry Cisneros, U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, who is campaigning in the West for President Clinton.

In a jab at a range of conservative initiatives, Cisneros told the gathering that those “who seek to divide us” by denying key benefits to immigrants, requiring English-only laws, and ending affirmative action are “just plain wrong.”

“You just can’t pit the poor against the rich. We need a strong middle class,” Cisneros said. “There will be no prosperity for the country unless there is prosperity for wage earners.”

While the rally afforded Cisneros and others a chance to campaign for Clinton, union representatives devoted much of their attention to the drivers who went on strike at the East Los Angeles factory of Gruma USA. Gruma, which is based in Mexico, makes tortillas under the Mission and Guerrero labels.

Local 63 of the Teamsters union is representing about 160 drivers who are seeking higher pay, better benefits and a pension plan. The drivers say they often take home no more than $200 to $300 for a 60- to 70-hour work week.

Gruma contends that its drivers are among the highest paid in the industry, earning on average $785 for a 48- to 55-hour week.

In a show of support for the month-old strike, Cisneros, Waters, Davis, Hayden as well as other state and local leaders signed a pledge to boycott Gruma products.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the county federation of labor, said the turnout of 2,000 to 3,000 people for his year’s Labor Day celebration was the largest he has seen in sometime.

Contreras attributes the increase to more union activity across the county over the last several years. He cited the three-year effort to organize 250 workers at the New Otani hotel in downtown Los Angeles and efforts to secure contracts for an estimated 20,000 workers at Kaiser-Permanente and the Southern California Gas Co.