A dozen airport hotel workers started a seven-day, water-only fast Dec. 6 to support the recently enacted LAX hotel "living wage" law as local hotel operators launched their own petition drive for a referendum to overturn the city's new ordinance.

The law --- which was overwhelmingly passed by the city council and signed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last month and is supposed to take effect Dec. 30 ---raises the minimum wage for 3,500 employees at 13 hotels to $10.64 an hour without health insurance and $9.39 an hour with health insurance.

Last Wednesday, during the early evening, workers together with elected officials, religious leaders and other supporters marched along the Century corridor to the Westin Hotel, where they will camp outside for a week until breaking their fast on Dec. 12, Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day.

Madeline Janis, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, reported that the fast was "one of the most dramatic social justice actions in our recent history." She said hotel workers hoped to draw attention to the current "poverty wages" in the hotel industry and the impact on working families and communities surrounding the Los Angeles International Airport.

A kick-off press conference on Nov. 30 also featured former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Edwards called the fasters "courageous" for their willingness to stand up for dignity and self-respect. Moreover, he said L.A.'s new living wage law was a national model for how to increase the sagging ranks of the middle class.

"What this fast is about and what the living wage ordinance is about is not only lifting families out of poverty, it's also for our entire country a model for how we grow and strengthen the middle class in America," he said. "What's at stake for workers who are working hard is they deserve the chance to make a decent living for themselves and their families.

"We have 50 million service economy workers in America, and we're probably going to have 10, 15 million more over the course of the next decade," he pointed out. "We have a choice as a nation, and that choice is do we want those workers to live in poverty? Or do we want them to have the independence and dignity and self-respect of being able to support themselves, of being able to send their children to college so that they can have a better life? That's what this is about."

Andy Stern of SEIU, which has been involved in organizing hotel workers across the country, said this was a confusing economic moment in history. On one hand, the economy is growing with company profits rising and worker productivity up. But at the same time, the U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that for the fifth straight year low-income American workers didn't get a raise.

"It's an absolute tragedy and travesty that these workers now need to go on a hunger strike so they're able to share in the success of what are very prosperous companies," Stern said. "We shouldn't have to make sure in America that all share in the success of our hard work --- not just the shareholders and the executives.

"These hotel workers' fight is our fight on behalf of the 1.9 members of our union," he added. "We will be here as long as it takes until there's justice for the Century Blvd. workers in terms of their living wage."

Maria Elena Durazo, the first woman to head the largest labor federation in the nation, reported that hotel workers near LAX earn 20 percent less than their counterparts in other parts of Los Angeles County --- even though airport hotels have the highest occupancy rates in the Southland.

"And yet these workers barely live above the federal poverty line," she said. "They cannot afford health insurance for their children. But they have decided to stand up for justice. That fast that these housekeepers and dishwashers and cooks are going to do means that this is a very important issue for their children."

Durazo scolded the hotel owners, Chamber of Commerce and business community of Los Angeles for opposing paying workers a living wage. She said the hotel workers were de facto representatives of Los Angeles, who greeted millions of guests and visitors to Southern California.

"It's shameful to deny them a living wage," she said. "We hope that there is some way that these businesses can reconsider their opposition and join us in an effort to create stronger families, healthier communities and rebuild the Los Angeles middle class.

"Because if they don't," the labor leader stressed, "this fight is not going to stop. It's going to continue."

A housekeeper at the Radisson LAX Hotel, Josefa Galindo, said she and others were fasting in memory of fellow worker Margarita Uriostegui, a steadfast supporter of the living wage campaign and a 36-year-old single mother who died before realizing her dream of sending her three boys to college.

"Margarita struggled for justice for her co-workers and herself," Galindo said in Spanish. "I have three kids also. My dream is to give them an education at the university. But with the wages they pay us, it is very difficult because even the rent is too high.

"This fast for seven days we do to continue our struggle and to introduce you to our reality," she explained. "A living wage will help me realize my dreams for my children."