Release shortly after the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles, City on the Edge criticized the low-wage policies of the tourism industry and challenged political leaders to embrace equitable development. Featuring interviews with historian Mike Davis, business leaders, city officials, and workers, the film offers a glimpse of LA contending with deep social and economic divides.
This video and others are available to researchers at the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections:
SEIU local 399 hosted Guatemalan labor leader Rodolfo Robles during a visit to Los Angeles.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Central American nations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala experienced civil war, government-sponsored death squads, and genocide. Many who fled the violence settled in Los Angeles were they joined other immigrant workers in low-wage service sector jobs, and became part of the unionization drives of the 1990s. Immigrants workers then mobilized their unions in support of the peace process by welcoming visiting delegations and lobbying federal officials. This flyer documents the visit of Guatemalan union leader Rodolfo Robles to SEIU Local 399 in the early 1990s. His union, representing Coca Cola workers, played a leading role in the opposition to military dictatorship by urban workers. Learn more about Justice for Janitors.
A clipping of a 1990 article describing a Justice for Janitors training held in from of the Los Angeles Police Department. Janitors were preparing to use non-violent civil disobedience in their strike on Bradford Building Services in November of that year. Translated from Spanish by Juan Torres.
“Cleaning workers to go on strike” La Opinion, October 19, 1990
By Miguel Molina
La Opinion reports on janitors’ preparation for a 1990 strike
Image caption: Janitors stage an arrest drill to prepare for what will occur as a result of their civil disobedience campaign. To the right, Hispanic women janitors from the same group show signs with slogans. (Picture by Leticia García-Irigoyen/ La Opinion)
Yesterday the committee that organizes cleaning workers announced that on November a strike against the Bradford Company in the buildings in which they provide their service located in the center of Los Angeles and in Glendale.
The union offered courses of civil disobedience to its members in preparation for the strike.
More than 50 cleaning workers participated in this course in front Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) building, located in Parker Center. LAPD Chief, Daryl Gates, was invited to the training but he did not attend.
“This it to show the police that we are not alone and that we are preparing,” warned Jose Orozco, janitor in the campaign against Bradford.
Jono Shaffer, spokesman for the union, assured that the janitors “in Century City learned that it is necessary to prepare ourselves and adopt an attitude of non-violence.”
Peaceful resistance has a long history in this country, said Shaffer. “We have to keep calm in a demonstration or strike and always remember that they are the ones who have to provoke.”
The union assures that during the strike in Century City “we suffered daily provocations by the police that culminated in the police assault on June 15, when dozens of janitors and supporters were chased and beaten.”
The union believes that now LAPD “will not consent to the pressures of the powerful proprietors and their interest.”
Another spokesman for the union, Bill Regen, assures that both parties are trying to overcome the Century City incident.
“The training course helped established a better relationship with LAPD,” said Regen, although he did not explained how. “We established a relationship of trust. Both parties are working to assure that (incidents like the one that occurred in Century City) will not occur again. We are fighting against the corporations, not against the police.”
During the civil disobedience training–which realistically was more of a strike and shut down of the building’s doors training– half a dozen plain clothes police looked on with a smile at the janitors.
Marina Jaco, a Century City strike veteran, said to her janitor partners that civil disobedience is important.
“The owners of the building did not take us seriously when we started to organize,” Jaco said. “They also did not respond when we announced we were going on strike, but they realize that we were willing to win when they saw us sitting outside the doors of their building. Our aggressiveness allows us to succeed on the Century City strike, and I think this will carry to victory in the campaign against Bradford.”
The union accuses Bradford Company for intimidating any efforts to organize workers into a union.
The National Labor Relations Board has received seven complains against Bradford’s illegal intimidation practices, threats, and lay off of workers who have attempted to organize a union.
Most of the workers from Bradford Company are immigrants from Mexico and Central American, who have been compelled to work without pay for weeks, supposedly to train them.
Bradford did not comment on the workers the accusations.
Immigrant rights advocates protested the close relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 1990.
A flyer announcing a protest rally and march organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in the fall of 1990. Formed in the wake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, CHIRLA drew together organizations and activists from many communities to demand inclusion for immigrants. Reflecting growing progressive coalition in Los Angeles, co-sponsors of this rally included labor unions, religious, civil liberties, and immigrant rights organizations Los Angeles. From the Tom Bradley Papers, Box 1170, folder 9, UCLA Special Collections. Download the Document.
Justice for Janitors pamphlet announcing a return march to Century City.
On June 15, 1990, the LAPD armed with nightsticks attacked group of peaceful demonstrators outside Century City that included women and children. Not intimidated by police brutality, the demonstrators continued to protest until fair working conditions were given.
During a 1990 strike against cleaning contractors in the Century City office complex, Los Angeles police confront and beat janitors and their supporters. The confrontation led to a city inquiry into police officers’ actions, and a settlement between janitors and their employers. This video compilation was produced by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and shared with other locals on VCR tapes before being converted to digital and distributed via YouTube.
In this cartoon from the Justice for Janitors campaign, two workers worry about the cost of healthcare. The superhero Mopman tells them that having good health insurance is like “having extra money in your pockets.” In cartoons and street theater, the character Mopman was part of the union’s strategy to reach rank-and-file janitors.
AFL-CIO pamphlet on the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) passed in 1986.
The AFL-CIO published this information for unions and workers in the wake of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. The law created a process for many undocumented residents to regularize their status, and the pamphlet highlights organized labor’s role in helping “undocumented workers attain legal status and prevent discrimination by employers.” In Los Angeles, the Labor Immigrant Assistance Project (LIAP) supported workers’ amnesty applications, and the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA) served as a general union for immigrant workers without collective bargaining in their workplaces. IRCA also created a new federal prohibition on hiring undocumented workers, something immigrant rights advocates and organized labor in Los Angeles had strongly opposed, but the national AFL-CIO supported. The AFL-CIO abandoned this policy in 2000. View the Document.
Activists with the 1986 Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign hold signs for Proposition V outside the International Ladies Garment Workers union hall on MacArthur Park. The building is now the UCLA James M. Lawson, Jr. Worker Justice Center, home of the UCLA Labor Center.
How can progressive political movements win power in geographically expansive and multiracial cities like Los Angeles? The answer, according to the Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign was “coalition architecture,” an intentional strategy to link the interests of organized labor with the peace movement, the women’s movement, and the African American civil rights movement through the shared goal of creating good jobs for all by redirecting money from military to domestic spending. In 1984 and 1986, the campaign backed citywide ballot initiatives and built a network of supporters at the precinct level to turnout voters. The 1984 Proposition X called on the city to research and report on pension and contract funds that flowed to military contractors. It passed by a comfortable margin. Proposition V in 1986 would have established a commission to advise the city on how to redirect funds away from military contractors. Proposition V faced a well-funded opposition campaign from business interests and lost by a wide margin. Despite the defeat, the campaign built an effective get-out-the-vote operation at the precinct level that would be the basis of future progressive victories.
ILGWU organizer Miguel Machuca (center, wearing a tie) and Somma waterbed factory workers celebrate back-pay awards ordered by the NLRB after the company illegally fired union activists.
In 1984, workers at the Somma waterbed factory in East Los Angeles began organizing fellow workers at neighborhood soccer games and decide to join the ILGWU. Most of the workers were immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many without documentation. Their employer was Angel Echevarria, a prominent figure in the Latino community and in Los Angeles politics. In January 1985, Somma workers voted 117-48 for a union. The company refused to negotiate with the workers and illegally fired more than 20 key union activists.
The ILGWU and the fired Somma workers held continuous pickets outside the factory, joined by other workers on their lunch breaks and by community supporters. They also launched a boycott of Somma waterbeds to bring their employer to the bargaining table. When the company fired another group of organizers, workers walked out on strike and won their jobs back. After a long delay, the NLRB ordered the fired workers rehired with back pay and upheld the union election over the companies objections.
A flyer publicizing a rally in support of striking workers at the Somma mattress factory in Los Angeles, 1985. En Español.
Sources: ILGWU Photographs, Box 3, Folder 9, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at the Cornell University Library. Rosalio Muñoz papers, Box 64, Folder 3, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.
