LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s five-year Master Project Labor Agreement invests nearly $12 billion in transit and other infrastructure projects over the next ten years including $2.4 billion to build the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project, a rail line that runs through the heart of LA’s Black community. Our involvement in the historic campaign resulted in stronger federal civil rights language and disadvantage worker criteria, as well as strategies for a diversity implementation agreement, which helped to increase the number of Black workers on the Crenshaw/ LAX line from 0 to 20% in 2015.
This labor and community partnership provides the greatest opportunity to create a representative workforce in the transit development sector.
As Raise the Wage and Anti-Wage Theft Coalition steering committee members, we successfully ensured the largest minimum wage increase and wage theft policy in the nation, impacting more than 800,000 low-wage workers in the city of Los Angeles in 2015.
As Raise the Wage and Anti-Wage Theft Coalition steering committee members, we successfully ensured the largest minimum wage increase and wage theft policy in the nation, impacting more than 800,000 low-wage workers in the city of Los Angeles in 2015.
The policy establishes authority at the city level to criminalize employers who commit wage theft and expands enforcement power by deputizing worker organizations to co-enforce the policy with city investigators.
The policy win also established the LABWC’s critical role in ecnomic justice campaigns in Los Angeles, bringing resources, staff, and volunteers to help with the effort.
However, because of a historic perception of disconnect between workplace rights and civil rights, we were unable to secure enforcement of the anti-discrimination policies we had hoped to achieve.
We continue our work to monitoring and strengthen implementation of LA Metro and City of LA policies and agreements through our core programs of compliance monitoring, workforce development, and leadership development programs
As the first Black Worker Center in California, the LA BWC helped to launch the National Black Worker Center Project and five new centers across the country, including in Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, Boston and DC. We provide technical assistance to the National Black Worker Center and efforts in the South to establish Black worker centers there.
Building and strengthening the Black worker center movement is one of our key priorities.
Los Angeles has an extraordinary opportunity to address this climate of lawlessness with innovative tools that build upon worker organizing and partnerships between community-based organizations and municipal and county enforcement agencies.
Our main focus in the coming years will be an anti-discrimination campaign that builds upon our successes last year with minimum wage/wage theft and continues to expand workplace protections to include civil rights compliance process at the city level. These protections are particularly salient for Black workers.