Service Employees International Union

Pets To Be Left Unsupervised Overnight At L.A. Animal Shelters?

Updated at the bottom: The head of Animal Services is putting the idea off until at least next month. First posted at 9:08 a.m. Pets staying the night at L.A.'s city animal shelters might be left home alone. A proposal to nix graveyard-shift "night care" at the shelters has some labor leaders and ... More >>

Wendy Greuel Adds Another Public Sector Union, Picking Up Firefighters Endorsement

Update below: Eric Garcetti wins UTLA endorsement. L.A.'s public-sector employee unions continue to line up behind Wendy Greuel in the race for mayor.Greuel already has the backing of the L.A. Police Protective League and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18, which repr ... More >>

Los Angeles Considers Slashing Pensions, Doubling Tax on Property Sales

As the L.A. City Council engaged in closed-door talks this week about how to reduce the exploding costs of paying retired workers to do nothing, at least one union said hell no. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 721 put its foot down, saying that workers have already done their ... More >>

Judge Michael Nash: I'm Opening the Secret Courts in Los Angeles so Child Dependency Screwups Get Sunshine and Fewer Kids Die

God Bless Our Lost AngelsLance Helms, almost forgotten. But not by Judge Michael Nash.​Presiding Judge Michael Nash in L.A. County Dependency Court has seen horrific child sexual predators who rape their toddlers and sickos who starve their foster children -- and social workers and judges who ... More >>

Private Security Officers Guarding L.A. County Buildings Say They're Under-Trained and Under-Paid, Placing the Public at Risk

​The security provided by private companies to protect Los Angeles County buildings is a joke. At least that's the picture painted by contract security officers who participated in a recent study conducted by labor leaders. Their training, they say, is deficient, equipment is sparse, and it ofte ... More >>

SEIU Backs Proposition 19 Pot Legalization In Great Score For Legalizers

Yes for pot. ​Take your mouth off the bong and cheer, you legal pot advocates, because this is a good score: One of the state's biggest and most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union, has endorsed Proposition 19, the November ballot initiative that would legalize pot and i ... More >>

LAX Janitors Threaten Strike, Possibly During July 4 Holiday

Some LAX janitors mull a strike​ You know what would be really great during July 4 holiday weekend if you traveling through LAX? Dirty terminals.

City Employees Ratify Budget Pact

After a week of balloting, an umbrella coalition of city employee unions representing 22,000 members has just announced those members have ratified an agreement recently struck with the city's Chief Administrative Officer. Under its terms, employees belonging to the Coalition of L.A. City Unions wil ... More >>

Union Seeks to Block City's Early Retirement Pact

Bob Aquino must feel a little besieged these days. Not only has the Los Angeles city employees union he heads been the target of membership raids by a rival union, but now his members find themselves on the municipal chopping block as the first municipal employees facing layoff notices. The story h ... More >>

SEIU: Force for Change or Purple People Eater?

At a time when organized labor should be poised to charge into a new activist era with the President they helped elect last November, service-sector unions appear instead to be headed into civil war. After the garment and hotel workers unions merged in 2005 to create UNITE HERE, the two factions a ... More >>

SEIU Drops the Other Shoe -- And Has It Thrown Back

Last Friday the Service Employees International Union announced that its executive board had voted to merge three of its California branches of long-term health-care workers into one mega-local. This would add 90,000-members from SEIU state locals 6434 and 521, to the union's 150,000-member United H ... More >>

SEIU's Brush With Blagogate & Other Sorrows

It seems like only yesterday that Andy Stern, who heads the giant Service Employees International Union (nearly two-million members), shocked the labor movement when, in July, 2004, he told the Washington Post's David Broder that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off with ... More >>

The Unfolding Mess at SEIU Local 6434

Tyrone Freeman seems to be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg at the Service Employees International Union these days. Freeman, if you remember, was the target of an LA Times investigation early this month that found the SEIU Local 6434 president had used hundreds of thousands of dollars in un ... More >>

Flat Line, Bottom Line

Is a hospital chain cutting corners for profit?

Who Goes There?

L.A. security guards seek more security

Trouble in the Big Purple Trucks

How SEIU's mobile phone bank and L.A. politicians may have landed on the wrong side of campaign law.

Making Those Red States Blue

Unions look to battleground states — and the South

Terms of the Divorce

California unions try to maintain cohesion even as their movement comes unstuck

Not So Fast

Herb Wesson’s cakewalk turns into a challenge

Breaking Free

Now or never for American labor

End of Solidarity

The breakup of the union movement takes on a life of its own

Kicking the Buckets

Aerospace janitors strike

Laboring to Stay Together

The odds on the AFL-CIO’s dissolution

Beggars’ Banquets

One labor struggle ends, another begins

In Miguel’s Shoes

Ludlow leaves the council to run L.A. labor

Losing Labor’s Power

What happens to the L.A. labor movement (and local politics) if it splits in two?

Breach of Security

L.A.’s biggest property owners break with their own history and oppose security guards union

Long Arm of SEIU

Dean’s November

The outsider now has the inside track in the race for the White House

Letters

Union Triage

The fight for hospital workers involves two unions against each other – and a health-care giant

Recipe for a Recall-Free California

Make it easier to pass a state budget

The Senior Squeeze

Budget crisis prompts union-organizing effort

The Part-Time Machine

Sometimes it’s enough to save full-time jobs

Tale of Two Strikes

Why the SEIU caved and the UTU hung tough

Battle for Prosperity

County’s labor issues are as fundamental as they are hard to resolve

Waving the Waiver

It’s nonsense to send people with colds to ER

Flying Right

Anti-union strafing to end at LAX

The Red Sea

How the janitors won their strike

Janitor Power

The new womens’ movement

Street vs. Suite

Why L.A.’s janitors will win their strike

Health Care for Saints

Now the state must find money to pay for health plans for people who care for the elderly and disabled

Trashing Cheap

Janitors make progress on health insurance, but many still go without

The New Unionism Finds a Home

Once the nation’s most anti-union big city, L.A. has now become America’s most dynamic labor town

A Gray Area

Governor Stands in the Way of Decent Wages For Health-Care Workers

Holding Pattern

For contract workers at LAX, living wage is grounded

The Wreck of the Business Tax

The Riordan Express went off the rails. Does it matter?

Caretakers Take Charge

75,000 workers (in 75,000 work sites!) form a union

Inside Agitators

The City's Most Effective Activists

Rumble on Rodeo

Beverly Hills meets the new labor movement