The Other (Poor) LA

When Republicans paraded blacks and Latinos across their convention stage in late July, they may have been trying to mimick the diversity of Philadelphia. If Democrats want to put on a demographically correct convention, four straight days of minority appearances wouldn't be enough to accurately represent the real LA.

A procession of 4.1 million hungry and bedraggled Los Angelinos -- mostly Latinos, Asians, and blacks -- would have to file through the convention hall to accurately reflect LA's demographics, according to a study released on Friday by the welfare and workers' rights organization, LA Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE).

An estimated 43 percent of LA county residents live under the poverty level set by LAANE in its study. About 1.1 million of them live in households with at least one working family member. That explains why LAANE dubbed LA "Capital of the Working Poor."

Using $33,300 per year as its poverty threshold for a family of four, the study determined that the number of working poor Los Angelinos has increased 34 percent since 1990. LAANE set its poverty threshhold twice as high as the official Federal Poverty Level ($16,700 in 1998) to more accurately reflect the cost of living in LA, said Jessica Goodheart, LAANE's research director.

"The government doesn't even use its own Federal Poverty Level," Ms. Goodheart noted. "Several welfare programs set their income eligibility requirements 180-250 percent higher than the Federal Poverty Level."

Even the US Bureau of Labor's conservative analysis indicates that the ranks of LA's working poor have swollen, from 16 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 1998.

The study attributes much of the working poor's growth to LA's massive de-industrialization. In the early '80s, LA's tire and auto plant industry collapsed. Then in 1990, following the end of the Cold War, LA's aerospace industry faltered, eliminating half its jobs.

Now the fastest growing sector of the economy is service, which offers mostly low-wage occupations. "Relentless expansion of the retail and restaurant industries led to the largest increase in working poor jobs of any sector," the study reports.

The study also blames opposition to organized labor for the growth of LA's working poor. Organized laborers earn 20 percent more per year than their non-union counterparts, according to the study. Complaints to the National Labor Relations Board, such as the one filed by employees of Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel citing 22 incidents of intimidation and threats against union organizers, are not uncommon in LA.

"Loews employee's wages, which started at $7 per hour and were usually subject to an annual $.15 cent raise, had been frozen for about a year when the workers began to organize," said David Koff, a spokesperson for the local Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International. "It was only after we tried to unionize the workers that the hotel raised the starting wage by $2.50 to $9.50."

LA's Living Wage Ordinance, which the city council passed in 1997 over Republican mayor Richard Riordan's veto, was intended to tackle working poverty by requiring local, taxpayer-supported businesses to pay workers at least $7.72 per hour as a starting wage and to issue them limited health insurance benefits. In lieu of health insurance, workers may accept a starting wage of $8.97 per hour.

But the annual salary of a worker earning the living wage is about $15,000 per year, even less than the Federal poverty level. "The living wage has helped, but not that much. Workers are barely getting out of poverty, " a spokesperson for Jackie Goldberg, a city council member instrumental in the passage of the ordinance, admitted.

Ms. Goldberg is pushing for an increase in the living wage and an extension of the associated health care benefits to the workers' dependents. However, part of the solution may lie in simply informing the working poor of the program or benefits available to them, Ms. Goodheart admitted.