Labor Board Expected to Drop Its Endorsement of Riordan

Backing away from a controversial move that bitterly divided their ranks, Los Angeles County’s top labor leaders are expected today to withdraw their surprise endorsement of Mayor Richard Riordan’s bid for a second term.

Instead, the executive board of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is planning at its meeting this morning to take a neutral stance in the mayoral contest between Riordan and state Sen. Tom Hayden. Although maneuvering may continue up to the last minute, sources familiar with the board said the withdrawal of the endorsement, which was approved last month, now seems all but certain.

That would free the federation’s 320 individual unions to do as they please in the contest, which would probably blunt organized labor’s influence in the April 8 election.

The move would not place the county’s labor organizations squarely in Hayden’s camp, but the reversal nevertheless represents a major political victory for the senator’s campaign. Hayden was bitterly disappointed not to win the labor board’s endorsement, and attributed his loss to labor bosses splitting from their more activist members.

Hayden had expected to win the labor endorsement, and most political observers had assumed it would naturally go to the senator, given his longtime support for workers. In addition, Hayden is a liberal Democrat running against a multimillionaire lawyer and venture capitalist with strong ties to business.

But Riordan enjoys support among many organized building and trades workers, who see his support for projects such as an expanded Los Angeles International Airport and a new sports arena as job-growth opportunities for them. Support from those labor groups helped Riordan nudge out Hayden for the endorsement when the labor federation met last month.

*

From the start, however, that action was controversial. Some union leaders, particularly those representing city workers and the garment industry, were angered by the vote.

Hayden backer Steve Nutter, Western regional director of the garment industry union UNITE, said Wednesday that his union “welcomes this decision--this compromise--because it’ll enable UNITE to do what it’s wanted to do all along, which is support Tom Hayden. He has a proven record of standing up for the working person in our community. He cares about our environment. He believes in our community’s having control over our future.”

But Riordan backer Richard Slawson, executive director of the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, was disappointed by the board’s switch. Slawson, who said he heard “rumors” that the executive board planned to back away from the initial endorsement of Riordan, said the construction industry unions would go ahead with plans to campaign for the mayor.

“He’s been a fair mayor in our opinion, and he’s been helpful in the issues that have affected the craft employees that we represent with the city of Los Angeles,” Slawson said.

While calling Hayden “a good friend of organized labor,” Slawson went on to laud Riordan’s support over the past year for raising California’s minimum wage and for maintaining a “prevailing wage” for construction employees on public works projects.

Privately, labor leaders said the endorsement switch was engineered largely by locals of the Service Employees International Union, whose overall membership is believed to be second only to the construction unions’ in Los Angeles.

The SEIU locals, which generally back Hayden, represent city and county employees along with private-sector health care and low-paid service workers. They have clashed with Riordan over such issues as his proposals to privatize city jobs and his reservations over a proposed “living wage” ordinance, which unions and Hayden strongly back.

Miguel Contreras, the head of the county labor federation, has publicly taken a neutral stance on the endorsement. But union officials say that behind the scenes Contreras initially supported the endorsement of Riordan.

Contreras and the mayor have a cordial personal relationship, and have known each other for about 10 years. They faced each other over the bargaining table in the 1980s when Contreras represented employees at a downtown restaurant, the Pantry, which Riordan owns.

Contreras, asked about the executive board’s expected reversal today, said discussions still were underway among labor leaders.

“There’s been no agreement reached,” he said. “Anything could happen.”

He confirmed, however, that “a request was made” by some labor leaders to reverse the initial endorsement of Riordan.

And, in a City Hall news conference Tuesday, Contreras and other labor leaders expressed their unhappiness that Riordan has not supported a “living wage” ordinance to their liking. Adoption of a requirement that city contractors pay their employees a “living wage” is one of organized labor’s chief goals in the coming weeks. Riordan has said he supports the idea of workers receiving such a wage, but he has questioned the wisdom of having government dictate that notion--an idea he recently equated to socialism.

*

Wednesday, Maria Elena Durazo, whose union represents hotel workers in the city, warned officials that “you cannot ask for and get labor’s endorsement and then turn around” and fail to support the proposed living wage ordinance. She and other union officials delivered letters to Riordan and the City Council urging them to back the ordinance without watering it down.

In their letter to Riordan, the officials warned him that they believed his position on the proposal was “completely inconsistent with your past statements and actions.”

Julio Ramirez, Riordan’s campaign manager, said he could not predict what the labor leaders will do. “We have no idea what’s going to happen . . . but the fact that the Riordan campaign got two-thirds of the labor board vote last month is a miracle,” Ramirez said.

Hayden also declined to speculate on whether the labor leaders will withdraw their Riordan endorsement, but said the episode illustrated some of the differences between him and the mayor on issues involving working people. “The difference between us is that I take the side of the living wage coalition, which is the soul of labor, and he continues to oppose justice for the working poor,” Hayden said.

Union officials said privately that the switch to a neutral stance was largely intended as a face-saving move. They said it was becoming increasingly evident that the endorsement of Riordan was likely to be defeated in a broader vote scheduled Monday involving delegates of all the county federation’s 320 union locals.

Rather than have the recommendation by top county labor leaders be rejected in the broader vote Monday, these officials said, the decision was made to take an “open endorsement” or “no endorsement” stance.