City Training for Building Guards Urged

In a move billed as improving public safety in high-rise buildings during a terrorist attack, earthquake or major fire, two Los Angeles city councilmen will introduce a motion today to standardize the training of private security guards and require building owners to improve the guards’ working conditions.

The proposal by council President Eric Garcetti and Councilman Jack Weiss, aimed at high-occupancy and high-rise structures, was unveiled at a news conference Thursday outside City Hall. Building owners were conspicuously absent.

In attendance, however, were members of the Service Employees International Union, which for several years has tried unsuccessfully to organize the guards.

“We would love for this to be done voluntarily, but the city wants to protect people who live here,” Garcetti said. “In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to do this.”

The proposal, which will probably undergo several months of council and committee hearings, requires the Los Angeles Fire Department to create a program to train guards in such skills as basic first-aid and evacuation and planning. Building owners would be required to have a city-trained guard on duty at certain times.

The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a workforce-oriented nonprofit organization that supports the plan, recently completed a study that found job turnover for guards to be extremely high. The study also found that in some buildings there is virtually no retention of experienced employees.

Last year the council authorized a voluntary training program for building owners. The Building Owners and Management Assn. for Greater Los Angeles also instituted its own voluntary program.

Barbara Harris, president of the group, said she was unaware that another motion was being offered.

“We don’t feel that there is any evidence that our security guards aren’t well-trained,” she said. “We did take a position that our buildings are safe, because we believe it to be true. And any statement on the part of the union that the buildings are not safe because the guards have not been trained is just not right.”

Most security guards are not employed by building owners, but rather by one of several firms that contract with the owners.