Fasting Union Leader Asks City Council to Influence USC

A four-year fight by USC cafeteria workers and janitors to win a written guarantee of job security took a dramatic turn Tuesday, when the hunger-striking leader of the workers’ union made a tearful plea for help before the Los Angeles City Council.

“I am Maria Elena Durazo, and I am on the ninth day of a water-only fast,” said the president of Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union before breaking into a quiet sob in the City Council chamber.

Durazo invoked the memory of one of her mentors, the late United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, and said her fast is “little compared to the daily sacrifices made by workers at USC and throughout Los Angeles.”

After her remarks, four council members decided to support Durazo’s hunger strike by skipping lunch and making an impromptu call on Steven B. Sample, president of USC, which is the city’s largest private employer. Council members Laura Chick, Jackie Goldberg, Mike Hernandez and Joel Wachs headed straight for campus during their lunch hour, but their bold gesture hit a snag: They found that Sample was not in his office.

The USC labor dispute stems from the union’s demand that the university pledge in writing that it will not hire an outside contractor to perform the jobs now handled by 360 union employees.

When the workers’ contract expired in 1995, USC and the union agreed on nearly all terms of a renewal. But a new contract has not been signed because the university and the union cannot agree on a pledge against subcontracting services.

Philip J. Chiaramonte, USC’s associate vice president for auxiliary services, said the university has no plans to replace the union workers with subcontractors and has a history of generosity toward its staff. He said, for instance, that when fast-food franchises were allowed on campus, the university demanded they be staffed with USC employees, 50 of whom are Local 11 members.

Chiaramonte said the university refuses to pledge not to contract services only because it needs to have all options open in the event of a future financial crisis. “Flexibility is what the university needs. We need to make sure we are able to provide our students with the best education at the best possible price,” he said.

That argument has never moved Durazo, who called USC “an enormously wealthy corporation.” For several years, the union has led protests at university commencement exercises, and directly lobbied the school’s trustees. Durazo has been living in a trailer in a church parking lot abutting the campus since May 10, where she earlier received visits from state Assembly members and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, in whose district the university is located.

The City Council has no control over USC, a private university, but Goldberg said members can use “moral persuasion” to call on the school to reach an agreement with the workers. Goldberg said one solution might be for the university to agree to require any subcontractors it might retain in the future to hire existing university workers at the same pay and benefit levels.

Wachs said the cost of accommodating the workers’ demands is nothing like the money spent on athletics at schools like USC. “If you look at some of what they pay some of these football and basketball coaches and compare that to what they pay the people who clean the auditoriums, it’s ridiculous. A lot of this is about values,” he said.

Alex Rivera, a waiter in the president’s dining room who stopped by Durazo’s trailer on his way to work, said he has worked at USC for 32 years, but wants a job security guarantee anyway. “We don’t know what can happen in the future, we need some insurance.” He said he has not raised the issue with Sample “out of respect,” but will “talk to him about it if he asks me what I think,” he said.