Amid Picnics, Unions Rally to Keep Flame

Along with the sunshine, cookouts and music that marked Monday across the Los Angeles Basin, a bit of old-fashioned Labor Day was on display in Wilmington.

Several hundred union members and their families marched down Avalon Boulevard for the annual Labor Day parade and headed for Banning Park for speeches and picnicking.

They were celebrating their daily toil and protesting everything from school vouchers to corporate greed.

There were electricians, teamsters, longshoremen and pile drivers; teachers, janitors, carwash workers and film and TV people.

“I was a nonunion electrician for a long time and I was overworked and underpaid,” said Jorge Ruiz Sr., who has attended the Labor Day event ever since he joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers five years ago. “I’m here to show my support for organized labor.”

Union banners were held high, diesel truck horns proudly blasted and causes passionately promoted.

The workers wanted to protect what they had or get something worth protecting.

They said they wanted to honor a movement that may not have the power or membership it once had, but still has some juice to it.

This was Brent Swift’s first time at the gathering. His group, the Film and Television Action Committee, was formed about a year ago to call attention to the flight of entertainment production jobs to Canada.

“Within two years, unless we do something about this, this will be Flint, Mich.,” Swift warned. He said state government officials have to take action to offset the Canadian wage subsidies luring entertainment production across the border.

“I know people living in their cars because they’re trying to hang on,” said Swift, a production designer.

Bill and Gloria Martinez’s organizing days are behind them. Retired union members, they watched the parade before heading to a blues festival.

“No way we could have retired as early as we did,” without union benefits, Bill Martinez said.

He worked at a refinery, where he said someone with a high school degree and 10 years of experience can now make at least $60,000 a year. Gloria Martinez was a telephone operator, born into a union family in Wilmington.

Bill Martinez, 59, remembers that “Everything was centered around the union hall,” when he was growing up in Los Angeles. “You went to the union hall constantly.”

No more.

Ruiz estimated there were about 100 people from his union at the park--out of a regional membership of 7,000. “Too little” he lamented, holding up his “I Love My Union” button.

But unions are still important, Bill Martinez said.

“The janitors, the carwash workers--these people have a need for representation. Their kind of businesses are going through what we did 30 and 40 years ago.”