City Set for LAX Labor Protesters

Bracing for a labor protest scheduled for Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport, the city plans to deploy additional police officers to monitor the demonstration and ensure airport operations are not disrupted, officials said Friday.

As many as 400 members of the Engineers and Architects Assn. are expected to join the protest, timed to coincide with the end of the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

“It’s a traffic battleground without protesters,” said Geoffrey Garfield, a spokesman for the union, which represents 8,000 city workers. “You can imagine how it will be with all the looky-loos slowing their cars to see what’s happening.”

The protest is scheduled from 4 to 7 p.m. on the arrival level of Terminal 1, the first terminal on the often backed-up lower loop at LAX. In talks with the Los Angeles Police Department, the union agreed to confine its demonstration to a sidewalk area that would not block doorways into Terminal 1, but the union rejected a police request to move the protest to a more remote area near Terminal 2.

The union, whose members include 700 employees and administrators at the Los Angeles airports department, saw its contract expire in June 2004 and is demanding the same contract given in September to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18.

That union, which represents Department of Water and Power workers, was given pay raises of 3.25% each year for five years, with the possibility of as much as 6% each year, if inflation rises.

The city offered the Engineers and Architects Assn. a contract that provided for no raise last year, a 2% increase retroactive to July 1 of this year and 2.25% on Jan. 1 of 2006 and 2007. The union represents many workers who do jobs that are similar to those electrical workers do at DWP.

Garfield said the pickets would march in a circle carrying signs that read: “Equal Pay for Equal Work.”

Despite assurances that the protesters would obey the law, the Los Angeles airports department has developed a contingency plan to ensure things do not get out of hand, according to a memo from Lydia Kennard, the department executive director, made public Friday.

“Our Airport Police Division has assembled a detail to monitor the demonstration and ensure that traffic flow and passenger services are not disrupted,” Kennard wrote to the Board of Airport Commissioners.

She said that the airport officers, who work for the separate LAX police force, would turn to the LAPD for backup “in the unlikely event the demonstration does not remain orderly.”

Although the union has not announced any planned job actions, its members did vote Sunday to authorize such actions, including a strike.

“We are reviewing our strike plan to ensure that we are fully prepared to respond effectively to any concerted job action and continue to provide the critical services needed to operate our airports,” Kennard wrote.

City employees represented by the engineers and architects group who are expected to participate Sunday include LAX communications and computer technicians and runway supervisors.

Also planning to attend are LAPD criminalists, crime lab technicians and polygraph examiners, as well as engineers, administrators and accountants at other city departments.

An airport spokesman declined to say whether LAX police would arrest protesters who break the law. “We hope everybody’s behavior doesn’t get to that point,” Thomas Winfrey said.

As of late Friday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had not approached the union to try to head off the demonstration. The protest is the first direct labor challenge to the new mayor, a former union organizer.

Villaraigosa has said the city cannot afford to award the DWP contract to other employees. He backed the City Council’s approval of the DWP contract but has noted that its lucrative terms were negotiated by the previous administration.

Meanwhile, the union and its executive director, Robert G. Aquino, stepped up efforts Friday to enlist the help of the county Federation of Labor, the local association of labor unions.

In a letter, Aquino called on Martin Ludlow, the federation’s executive secretary-treasurer and a close ally of Villaraigosa’s, to support the union’s cause. “I know you supported IBEW 18 in their effort, as I did, and now hope I can also count on your support for our effort,” Aquino wrote.

“I would like to schedule a press conference within the next 10 days for the purpose of you and me jointly notifying all parties of our solidarity on this union issue and the backing of the L.A. County Federation of Labor’s support for our just cause,” he added.

Ludlow did not respond Friday to the letter.

He said Wednesday that he cannot intervene in the contract dispute because city ethics laws prohibit him as a former city councilman from lobbying City Hall for one year after leaving office.

Union officials said other federation leaders could be enlisted to put pressure on City Hall, while Ludlow could simply exercise his 1st Amendment right to speak out.

“We’re not looking for a lobbyist,” Aquino said. “We’re looking for a labor leader.”