Barry Saks

Fast food workers in Los Angeles County went out on a one-day strike on Thursday, August 29, as part of a national effort organized by the Service Employees International Union in more than 50 cities, to raise their pay to $15 an hour. In the late morning in Los Angeles near the corner of Western Ave. and Santa Monica Blvd., more than two hundred strikers and their supporters rallied near the corner of Western Ave. and Romaine Street. After the rally, the crowd marched on the sidewalk north on Western and then through the streets of Hollywood, sometimes bringing their protests inside some fast food restaurants on their route.
One striker from Long Beach was Arlene Alvarez. Alvarez, who has worked for Taco Bell for seven years, said she makes $8.44 with no health benefits and works between 35 and 40 hours each week. She said she was there because she wanted to raise the minimum wage. She said the medical insurance she has is Medi-Cal. She did not believe her employer would retaliate against her for going out on strike.
Alvarez brought her coworker Vincent Rolon to the rally and the march. Rolon, who is also a college student, said it was difficult making only $8 an hour and said after two weeks he brings home about $500 after taxes.
Besides Rolon, Alvarez brought her 13-year-old sister, Gina Castillo and her 20-year-old boyfriend, German Ramirez, who is 24 and a union carpenter.
The marchers, mostly people of color, carried signs and wore tee shirts, which read, “Fight for 15.” One sign read, “8 ain’t enough.” Many signs were in Spanish.
A chant before the rally was “What do we want? 15. When do you want it? Now.”
The Rev. William D. Smart, chairman of the Los Angeles Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Los Angeles, started and emceed the rally.
Labor attorney Sandra Fluke said she thought Martin Luther King’s dream “would like workers who are working full-time being able to afford to provide for their families.” She also said she did not believe dream would look “like corporations like McDonald’s and Burger King shirking their responsibility and forcing workers to rely on public assistance and on the public.”
Another speaker was Congresswoman Judy Chu. Chu said, “There is no reason that in a country where CEOs get paid millions and millions of dollars that they should not be able to pay their workers just a little bit per hour more.”

About 60 people, mostly supporters of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community, held a candlelight vigil, on Saturday, Aug. 17 outside the Long Beach Hilton to protest the treatment of the hotel’s workers.
Sprinkled among the crowd were some hotel workers and UNITE HERE Local 11 staff wearing red tee-shirts.
Erinn Carter, who works for the union, said, “This event is to honor four years that the workers at this hotel have been fighting for respect and dignity. We have Measure N, which is such an amazing victory for everyone here in Long Beach… We want to remind people that the fight is not over. The Hilton Long Beach is an example….We will be out here until the management of this hotel does right by its employees.”
Father Will Connor, who provided a prayer during the vigil and is Pastor Emeritus of Saint Joseph’s Church of Long Beach, said, “I am here to fight for the rights of hotel workers: the right to a living wage, decent working conditions, and collective bargaining.”
Near the end of the vigil, the crowd, holding their candles in multicolored paper cups, stood along the sidewalk facing the automobile traffic for the passing cars to see them.
An email, which the coalition had sent out a couple of days before the vigil, said, in part, “Workers at the Long Beach Hilton are still calling on the community to boycott their hotel. While workers are making a living wage, issues of retaliation are prevalent. This hotel has already faced prosecution for unlawful surveillance, illegal coercion, and dozens of wrongful disciplines (original emphasis).”
Before the vigil, the hotel management said that Brian Murphy, the hotel’s general manager, would be available no sooner than on Monday, Aug. 19 to provide a response.