AFL-CIO Urges Raises for County Workers

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney came to Los Angeles Tuesday to tell the county Board of Supervisors that it needs to give county employees a long-awaited pay raise because union workers have gone without one during the county’s fiscal crisis over the last few years.

Sweeney, the nation’s top labor leader, met personally with each supervisor, adding a powerful voice to the chorus of calls for raises for workers who have gone as long as five years without one.

Although those meetings were held in private, Sweeney held a news conference to say the AFL-CIO will not stand idly by and see more than 80,000 of its unionized county workers go without a raise for another year, even if the Board of Supervisors cries poverty.

“It’s high time the employees here got a raise,” Sweeney said. Of the supervisors, he added: “They can’t keep making excuses. I’m here because this is just such a horrible situation of injustice.”

Several of the major county unions’ contracts expire in the fall, and others are already up, with some employees working without a contract for as long as a year. But despite exhortations from leaders of the Service Employees International Union, Local 660--the county’s largest labor union--the supervisors last month adopted the county’s annual budget, agreeing to spend $12.6 billion without including any money for employee raises.