March Toward an Uncertain Future

As union leaders marched through downtown Los Angeles this week, they passed two buildings that tell the story of the rise and fall of the California labor movement--and hint at a hard road ahead for a comeback.

The march Monday, really more a walk, was composed of delegates to the convention of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. They trudged through the late afternoon’s heat and smog, from the convention headquarters to the high-rise office building of the Southern California Gas Co., showing their support for two unions involved in a dispute with the utility.

The marchers were leaders of unions representing just 13% of the state’s work force, a remnant of the mighty band of 40 years ago, when almost 40% of the state’s workers belonged to unions.

I was in the middle of the marchers, interviewing Art Pulaski, the incoming head of the federation, and his second in command, Tom Rankin. Pulaski asked me to walk with them because it was the only time they had that afternoon.

Roaring commuter buses and the shouts of “Hey hey, ho ho, union busters got to go,” made it hard to hear the two men. The pace of the march interfered with note-taking. “Faster,” someone in back of me shouted when I paused to write down Pulaski’s views on how labor could return to its glory days.

As we walked, I looked at the old Pacific Mutual Life Insurance

Co. building and then at the Biltmore Hotel next door, and thought about how each of them had played a part in L.A.’s labor past.

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I remember visiting the Pacific Mutual building years ago when I first came to Los Angeles.

I was friendly with the company’s boss, Asa Call, once the most powerful man in the California Republican Party. He was still influential when I met him, a commanding, flinty but charming man who was treated with utmost respect by the president, Richard Nixon, and the governor, Ronald Reagan. No longer responsible for day-to-day company affairs, Call had plenty of time to entertain and educate me with his recollections of California politics.

Call was a real conservative and no friend to the unions. But, oddly enough, a drama that unfolded in Call’s office was responsible for the unions’ greatest California triumph.

In 1958, Republican Sen. William F. Knowland was determined to run for governor on a “right-to-work” platform, advocating a law that would have severely weakened unions’ ability to organize. When he visited Call to ask for his support, the veteran party titan was appalled. He warned Knowland that enraged union members would mobilize against him and the Democrats would win in a landslide. But the stubborn Knowland wouldn’t listen. Always loyal to the party, Call dutifully raised money for Knowland, and then watched him go down in a landslide.

Call was still unhappy about Knowland’s stubbornness when he told me about it years later. I told him I sympathized with him, having worked for Knowland on his family newspaper, the Oakland Tribune.

The Democrats, led by Gov. Pat Brown, seized control of Sacramento. Unions were supreme, with one of their top men, Jack Henning, calling the shots for labor in the highest echelons of the new Democratic administration.

Two years later, another chapter in the labor story was played out in the Biltmore, John F. Kennedy’s headquarters at the Democratic National Convention. Up in room 8315, Robert Kennedy sent his troops around town and through the Sports Arena convention hall, rounding up the last few votes needed to give his brother the presidential nomination. Even though Kennedy narrowly lost the state in the fall, Californians, including labor, were major players in the effort and assumed a big role in his administration.

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Art Pulaski was a boy when all that happened. His experience has been in tougher times. He joined a union while working as a supermarket stock boy and became a full-time union organizer in the mid-’70s, just in time for the decline of such basic American industries as steel and manufacturing. For the last 11 years, he has headed the labor council in San Mateo County, where workers have been hurt by downsizing.

He knows labor was scared when Bill Knowland campaigned for governor on a right-to-work ticket, but America was a worker’s paradise then compared to today.

The nation was in the middle of its long post-World War II boom, and California, rich in aerospace plants, was leading the way. The unions’ expanding membership gave them tremendous power in election campaigns. The strike was still a powerful weapon.

The transformation of the economy has changed all that. “People are hurting,” Pulaski said as we walked down Olive Street. “People are working more and more for less and less.” But fear and anger remain labor’s great weapons.

I left Pulaski at the gas company and headed back toward the Hyatt Regency, convention headquarters. A homeless man sat in the doorway of an abandoned steakhouse, a favorite Olive Street haunt in the old days. Stores were boarded up nearby. Space was available in the Pacific Mutual building, and the company itself had moved to Orange County.

This used to be one of California’s power streets, economic as well as political. Buses and cars brought many thousands of workers to this area each day to work in now-departed banks and corporate headquarters. The restaurants that served them are pretty much gone, as are the shops and department stores. Thousands of jobs have vanished.

The labor federation couldn’t have picked a better place for its march. Once-great Olive Street now reflects L.A.’s economic troubles, a constant reminder to this week’s marchers of the length and difficulty of their comeback trail.