"Even when [family members] arrive hungry and ready to stop and grab a bite to eat, we drive north on Sepulveda rather than venture too long on Century. Right now, Century Boulevard is the place to drive through quickly --- it is a thoroughfare on the way to somewhere else."
---Karen Mary Davalos, associate professor at Loyola Marymount University and Westchester resident
"I have no insurance. I have four kids, and I have to take them to TJ [Tijuana] when they get sick."
---Moises Tamayo, banquet worker at LAX hotel
"Low-paying jobs are keeping families dependent and incapable of building better futures. When individual families suffer, struggle and do not succeed, the whole community suffers, struggles and does not succeed."
---Father Perry Leiker, pastor of St. Joseph Church, Hawthorne

These are a few of the personal testimonies heard March 23 by the Century Corridor Commission on Jobs, Tourism and Communities from residents, hotel workers and customers, clergy, social service providers, students and others about the long-neglected area around the Los Angeles International Airport.

On April 25, a Blue Ribbon commission --- which included a former Los Angeles City Council member, college trustee, public hearth educator, Sierra Club official and the pastor emeritus of the First AME Church --- released their report on the situation, "Opportunity For All: Creating Shared Prosperity in the Gateway to Los Angeles."

The next day it was presented to the City Council's Commerce and Tourism Committee, which by unanimous vote directed its staff to draft ordinances that would extend L.A.'s living wage and worker retention laws to the 3,500 employees of the 13 hotels along Century Blvd between LAX and the 405 Freeway.

Recently, The Tidings interviewed Ruth Galanter, who chaired the Blue Ribbon commission and just finished a year as distinguished scholar in Los Angeles Urban Research at Loyola Marymount University. A former L.A. City Councilmember who represented the West Side area for 15 years, Galanter discussed the disturbing report and the commission's recommendations.

Poverty pay
The commission discovered that the Century corridor has the largest concentration of hotel rooms in Los Angeles County. While hotel occupancy rates are the highest in the county, however, room rates are among the lowest.

Hotel wages for workers in these hotels are well below industry standard: 20 percent less than wages in downtown hotels and almost 30 percent less in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood hotels. An airport hotel worker's average monthly salary is less than $1,700. (Hotel operators declined an invitation to participate in the March 23 Century Corridor Commission hearing.)

Many of these low-paid workers live in Lennox, Hawthorne and Inglewood, nearby communities where almost one in four persons' income is below the federal government's extreme poverty line. Lack of affordable health insurance is a "major obstacle" for these men and women and their families, who must pay up to $290 a month for employer-provided coverage; for a full-time housekeeper, that represents almost one-fourth of after-tax income.

There is also little job security for these workers, who can face sudden layoffs when hotels are sold. When the Radison LAX was bought in 2000, more than 240 employees were laid off.

The commission also found that attempts by airport hotel workers to improve their conditions through collective bargaining have been met with "harassment and intimidation" from hotel operators.

But it was two other findings that really surprised and enraged members of the commission, according to Galanter.

"None of us knew that when hotels add to your banquet bill a service charge or gratuity, it's not a tip going to servers," she said, shaking her head. "So the workers are being ripped off; the customers are being ripped off. Turns out the hotels don't give it to the workers. They just keep it."

Commissioners also learned how hotel workers are increasingly facing hazardous working conditions, from toxic cleaning agents to unsafe workloads. Having to change more and more bedding --- a factor raised in Barbara Ehrenreich's best seller "Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" --- is a major problem.

"A maid told us about the enormous amount of bedding she now has to change every day, including three sheets and nine pillows for every king-sized bed," Galanter reported. "She described the strain on her back from having to turn or make up these super-thick mattresses. Just lifting the corners to pull a sheet up is hard work."

Nothing to do
The airport hotels, with their 7,000-plus rooms, however, also have their own problems. Nobody wants to go to Century Boulevard because there's nothing to do, the commission heard over and over. Both visitors and residents described the area around LAX as "seedy."

Recommendations from the commission ranged from getting the City of Los Angeles to use all its considerable leverage to upgrade the look of the Century corridor and improve conditions for workers to persuading hotels to create job training and career ladders for employees, raising wages and benefits, and reducing workloads.

"I think the most important thing is to find a way to let these workers organize their lives," Galanter stressed. "The hotels really ought to stay neutral on the union issue. If you have a union, you negotiate once, and it's done. And then the union has the responsibility for basically doing all these things to keep the hotel running.

"Although the hotels didn't participate in our hearing, it did get the attention of the hotel industry. What they'll do now that their attention has been caught, I don't know. But I'm trying to be optimistic."

The worst scenario would be for the 13 hotels to dig in their collective heels and tell their workers if they aren't happy to seek employment elsewhere, according to Galanter, a self-described "student radical" in the 1960s at the University of Michigan. But in that case, she believes the commission's darkest concern could become a reality.

"Together these findings indicate that the Century Corridor, its hospitality industry and the built environment, isn't working for anyone," it states. "The low pay and lack of health insurance at the hotels helps to perpetuate poverty in the surrounding communities while children in local schools can't get the help they need from parents working multiple jobs, leading to problems for the next generation."