As L.A. City Hall staffers consider unionizing, competing unions seek to woo them

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Julia Wick, with help from Dakota Smith and county reporter Jaclyn Cosgrove.

Los Angeles has been at the white-hot center of the nation’s “hot labor summer,” with prominent strikes stretching from Hollywood to the hotel industry. Those same actions have seen emphatic backing from City Hall, where organized labor holds tremendous influence.

But in recent weeks, the very staffers who’ve been taking photos of their bosses on picket lines, drafting language about L.A. being a union town and shepherding pro-labor resolutions through the council system have also been exploring their own worker power.

A long-gestating effort to unionize council staffers rapidly escalated in recent weeks, with two unions — Engineers and Architects Assn. and Service Employees International Union Local 721 — now vying to try to represent the nascent group.

EAA, as it is known, has a membership that includes more than 5,000 public sector workers in 40-plus city departments, such as city planners, accountants and analysts, according to its website.

SEIU 721 represents more than 7,000 city employees — including gardeners, mechanics, custodians and trash truck drivers — and recently staged a one-day city worker strike that interrupted an array of government operations. (KNX’s Craig Fiegener first reported on the SEIU 721 unionization effort last week.)

Discussion about a possible staffer union has percolated inside City Hall for decades, with occasional bouts of renewed interest. But this appears to be the most serious drive in recent memory.

The city work force, like the vast majority of the public sector work force across California, is heavily unionized. Staffers for elected officials, however, have long been at-will employees — they can be hired without dealing with civil service requirements, but also lack the protections that a civil service job confers. That’s the norm for staffers to elected officials across the country.

But the City Hall effort is far from an outlier.

“We have seen a dramatic increase in unionization efforts among workers who previously have never been unionized,” said UCLA Labor Center director Kent Wong, connecting the dots between the budding City Hall campaign, a long-stymied effort to organize staffers in the California Legislature and the growing number of unionized nonprofit workers.

Staffers for New York City Council members also unionized in recent years, and unions have also become more prevalent among Democratic political campaign staffers.

“There is a culture within a political office that you have to prove your worth. You have to establish your commitment and your dedication to do this work in order to get ahead,” Wong said. It was a point echoed by city staffers, who described a mission-driven work culture where long hours and round-the-clock availability are the norm for those who serve at the pleasure of their elected bosses.

About 30 staffers from at least five council offices attended a lunchtime meet-and-greet with SEIU Local 721 organizers on Tuesday afternoon, according to several who were present.

“It felt a little bit like a 101 session,” both in terms of describing what a union was for and also in pitching the attendees on why they should go with SEIU, one attendee said.

More than half a dozen staffers from multiple council offices spoke to The Times about the efforts, though none were authorized to speak publicly. They had various reasons for being interested in unionizing, citing night and weekend work without overtime, pay equity and personal safety concerns in charged situations with protesters and constituents.

Several also spoke about a lack of job security in roles where their bosses are up for election every four years, and wanting a potential pathway to other city jobs. (Joining a union would not immediately grant such a pathway — creating one would probably be a complex process with open legal questions, since staffer jobs are outside the civil service system.)

The effort took initial shape in late January, when a number of city staffers first reached out to and began informal discussions with EAA.

According to the union, EAA officially filed paperwork in late April with the city’s Employee Relations Board — a panel that functions a bit like the National Labor Relations Board for the city’s public sector. The influential board issues decisions on labor-management disputes and decides on formal recognition for organizations representing city employees.

The board discussed the paperwork in late June and EAA’s petition was formally posted in City Hall in late August.

Some council aides felt EAA was slow-walking the process or being less than communicative, several said, and SEIU 721 was first contacted about three weeks ago.

“Nobody wants to hear that,” EAA executive director Marleen Fonseca said in response to staffer complaints, noting that the union had had to wait on the city to move forward with their filings. “But EAA is the one that started this momentum, nobody had to light a fire under us.”

The process has picked up considerably since 721 entered the picture, with both sides appearing to give staffers the full-court press.

“Last week was pretty busy because both unions were like, ‘Here’s an info meeting, here’s an info meeting. Here’s a card, here’s a card,’” another staffer said, laughing at the sudden deluge.

That individual planned to sign cards with both unions in the hopes of sending a clear message that staffers want a union, regardless of who’s representing them.

Should their unionization drive move forward, another open question is whether the city staffers will be brought into an existing bargaining unit of workers that already have a contract with the city, as EAA was initially seeking to do, or whether they’ll form a new unit and bargain their own specific contract, as SEIU 721 has sought to do. (EAA is now moving forward on both paths, Fonseca said.)

“Every time I file for a class, this frickin’ union files after me. Every single time,” Fonseca said. “I just want them for once to file on their own and I probably wouldn’t intervene.” (This is not the first time there has been friction between the two unions.)

Victor Cuevas, a spokesperson for SEIU 721, said he couldn’t speak to the past, but in this situation, city workers had reached out to his union — not the other way around.

“Workers saw the power after the strike. They want to be a part of that,” Cuevas said. “They came to us.”

SEIU 721 filed Wednesday to intervene in the unionization effort and the union plans to ask for a formal election soon, Cuevas said. The local also submitted paperwork showing interest from 83 of the city’s roughly 370 council aides, according to a public records request filed with the Employee Relations Board.

Immediate next steps will depend on the specific paperwork both unions file. But if both unions file petitions for a new bargaining unit, as each has said it will, then there will probably be an election where staffers can choose between both unions or no representation.

Most of the city’s 15 City Council members declined to comment on staff organizing or did not respond to requests for comment.

Councilmembers Curren Price, Nithya Raman, Tim McOsker and Hugo Soto-Martínez all said, in various ways, that they supported their staffs’ right to organize.

State of play

— BULGARI BREAKDOWN: As expected, the city’s Planning Department on Wednesday killed a developer’s proposal to build a 58-room luxury hotel in Benedict Canyon. Councilperson Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district takes in Benedict Canyon, led the charge in urging the city to nix the Bulgari Resort Los Angeles over environmental concerns.

— BRINGING COMPLAINTS TO THE MAYOR’S DOOR: A protest at Getty House is planned Sunday over poor conditions and crowded cages at the city’s animal shelters. Mayor Karen Bass recently told neighborhood council leaders that she wants to add more funding to the troubled department.

— ASSESSING HILARY RESPONSE: Bass spoke to The Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II about the city’s response to Hurricane Hilary, and how being prepared paid off. Bass credited Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley for raising awareness of Hilary’s threat three days before its arrival. Before the storm hit, the city’s emergency operations center was activated, and Bass signed a declaration of a local emergency.

— PRESERVATION BID: Westside Councilmember Traci Park staved off demolition for Marilyn Monroe‘s former Brentwood home — at least for the time being. The council member successfully initiated proceedings to consider the home for city landmark status, which puts a pause on demolition. She brought the matter to a vote Friday while dressed to resemble Monroe, with her hair styled in the actress’ signature curls.

Councilmember Traci Park dressed up as Marilyn Monroe at City Hall on Friday. Park is seeking to prevent the demolition of Monroe’s Brentwood home.

(Left: Associated Press; right: Julia Wick / Los Angeles Times)

“If you’re going to save the Marilyn Monroe house, you should look the part while you’re doing it,” Park said Friday, while standing behind council chambers cradling a tiny gray kitten against her black dress and pearls. (The kitten, which was up for adoption during Friday’s meeting, appears to have found a home with a city staffer.)

— EVICTION DATA: Data from City Controller Kenneth Mejia shows that many L.A. eviction notices sent earlier this year targeted renters of larger apartment complexes, The Times reported. That’s in line with research showing that large property management firms tend to automate their processes and initiate eviction proceedings at higher rates.

— ROLLER-COASTER OF A MOTION: On the county side of things, Chair Janice Hahn is pulling her motion from Tuesday’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors agenda that, if approved, would have started the process of requiring hotel and theme park workers in unincorporated areas to be paid at least $25 an hour, rising to $30 an hour by 2028, when the Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles.

The move sparked immediate outcry from industry leaders, arguing the county was being hypocritical since it is fighting a bill in Sacramento that would require the county to pay a minimum wage to healthcare workers of $25 an hour. “This motion needs some more work before it is ready for a vote,” Hahn, who represents the 4th District, said in a statement.

— IN MEMORIAM: Former City Hall aide Anton Calleia, who worked in city government for nearly a quarter of a century, died at his Carlsbad home of heart failure on Aug. 31 at age 90.

Quick hits

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s program to combat homelessness did not conduct any Inside Safe operations this week.
  
• On the docket for next week: Rosh Hashanah begins Friday night.