The contingent – including nurses, janitors, security guards, school employees and fast-food workers — made its way to a McDonald’s on South La Brea Avenue on Monday to admonish the company for taking advantage of California’s “broken property tax law” and to rally support for Proposition 15.
Bob Schoonover, president of one of the city’s major civilian employee unions, SEIU 721, said they oppose the furloughs, which have already been included in the budget.
Julia Wallace, a SEIU Drop the Cops organizer explained: “Cops are not workers, and they are certainly not members of our union. We need to expel them, and we need to be fighting for our lives. As Black people, as Black women, as immigrants, as trans people, queer people, we need to be fighting for our lives and organizing ourselves as the working class.” Wallace is a rank-and-file member of SEIU Local 721.
The furloughs are illegal under labor contracts and will be fought vigorously, said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU Local 721, a union representing city employees.
“We know the furloughs are illegal under our labor contracts, and we will vigorously fight to defend our frontline heroes,” said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU Local 721, one of the unions that represent city employees.
“Calling city workers heroes one day and then taking money out of their household budgets the next day is not right,” [SEIU 721 President Bob Schoonover] said, and he called on the city to exhaust its other options “before taking money out of the pockets of LA’s working families.”
Bob Schoonover, president of Service Employees International Union Local 721, called the furloughs “illegal” under existing salary agreements and irresponsible in the middle of a pandemic. “The last thing L.A. city needs is more working families struggling to keep a roof over their heads or food on their table,” he said.
A memorial commemorating the more than 5,700 people who have died of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County stood on the steps of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown L.A. on Monday.
Thousands of people who have been lost to COVID-19 were remembered Monday with a vigil in downtown Los Angeles.
For years, SEIU 721 members like myself have been sounding the alarm that the KPMG experiment was a waste of time that undermined its own stated goals. — David Warpness, La Quinta