For months, we’ve sounded the alarm on key issues impacting our members at LAWA facilities, including the chronic understaffing that’s impacting staff retention and the urgent need to staff up.
Make no mistake, we’ve even taken this fight directly to the LAWA Board of Airport Commissioners to deliver our message, where LAWA’s CEO Justin Erbacci openly acknowledged that the “only way to move the needle [on hiring] is to sit down with the unions.”
After our SEIU Local 721 President David Green requested a meeting with LAWA CEO Justin Erbacci, we’re finally moving the needle.
Yesterday, our SEIU Local 721 President David Green, and several of our Executive Board Members and LAWA member leaders met with LAWA CEO Justin Erbacci to address hiring and understaffing, in addition to highlighting the need to strengthen our joint labor-management (JLM) committee to tackle workplace health and safety issues.
We made it very clear that while we face understaffing in landscaping, security, and janitorial and custodial work, the answer is to hire within. The long-term solution must be recruiting and retaining good union workers, not contracting out.
We believe that our message resonated with CEO Erbacci. Erbacci expressed a commitment to work with us to tackle LAWA’s understaffing crisis and the burnout that many of our members face.
We’re holding the CEO’s feet to the fire by having a follow-up meeting with him in July to continue on these next steps:
- a follow through on our JLM discussion
- developing a staffing up plan that prioritizes hiring within not contracting out
- the sharing of data on vacancies and total budgeted positions across LAWA departments for the fiscal years 2018 to 2023
- addressing the health and safety concerns as a result of short-staffing in the Fleet Department
There’s no doubt that our members know best how figure out the understaffing issues with the CEO and management, along with the other workplace issues.
Please stay tuned for more breaking news and be prepared to take action to bring the workplace changes that we need and deserve.