Adding to the ongoing strike by Hollywood actors, writers, and the city’s hotel workers, Los Angeles city workers went on strike for an entire day, halting multiple daily operations of the country’s second-largest city.
SEIU Local 721, which represents over 95,000 workers in Southern California, attempted to shut down Los Angeles on Tuesday, leading more than 11,000 city employees, including sanitation workers and Los Angeles International Airport employees, in a strike.
The strike caused delays in trash collection, parking enforcement, and homeless encampment cleanups, in addition to the closure of public pools and animal shelters. Also, travelers were advised to plan for extra time when traveling to or from the airport.
The union’s executive director and president David Green said, “We’re going to shut down the city of Los Angeles.” Green added, “The message we’re sending is that our workers are just fed up. They’ve reached a breaking point. And we need these folks in the city to come back to the table for the good of the city.”
The local union claimed that city leadership was to blame for the strike, and that the city’s “bad faith bargaining” spurred their decision. Green cited examples, claiming that the city sent representatives who lacked proper authority to bargaining talks and also failed to fill vacancies in the city’s workforce.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass disagreed with Green’s assertions and stated, “We have been bargaining in good faith with SEIU 721 since January.”
Local news reports said that the single-day strike is the first of this kind for SEIU Local 721 in four decades.