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Friends,
We knew as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit that it would impact low-income working people of color first and worst. All the way back in March, LAANE shifted to fighting for working families in the context of a global health crisis. Nine months later, Angelenos are still feeling the pressure of mass layoffs, an economic crisis, and struggling to stay in their homes, put food on the table, and meet other basic needs.
There’s still much to be done, but we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished this year. In coalition with many other labor, faith, and social justice organizations, we’ve won: two weeks of supplemental paid sick leave; permanent, retroactive right of recall and worker retention for hospitality and building services workers; a moratorium on evictions; anti-tenant-harassment protections; four months of healthcare for laid off concessions workers at the airport; and much more. We also worked to successfully quash a proposal to delay long-scheduled minimum wage increases.
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Fair Workweek LA was proud to stand with UFCW Local 770 in their fight to pass emergency measures at the city and county level requiring social distancing in grocery and drug stores, access to sanitary materials and PPE for essential retail workers, and scheduling protections to allow workers the flexibility to care for sick family members. With the leadership of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, we fought for and won a process for establishing public health councils, which will give workers in the restaurant, garment manufacturing, warehouse, and meatpacking industries more tools to keep their workplaces safe. We also won anti-retaliation protection for workers who report public health violations at their workplaces.
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The RePower LA campaign worked with City Council President Nury Martinez and LADWP to implement a utility grant assistance program to provide relief to families burdened by utility debt due to COVID-19. Because of this program, 77,337 LADWP ratepayers received a $500 grant, for a total of $38.6 million in CARES funds. The RePower team also assisted over 150 ratepayers in successfully applying for LADWP’s Shared Solar program. Alongside our partners at IBEW Local 18 and SCOPE, we won a $500,000 grant from the CA Workforce Development Board for the High Road Training Partnership in Low Carbon Economy Workforce.
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In Long Beach, we passed critical COVID-related worker protection policies (supplemental paid sick days, worker retention and right of recall for hospitality and janitorial workers) in addition to elevating our civic engagement efforts which included our 9th Annual People's State of the City along with digital engagement workshops on the Long Beach city budget and critical issues on the ballot. We rounded out the year with a field operation for Proposition 15 with more than 300 volunteer shifts, and had 11,000+ conversations. We're ready to take this momentum into 2021 to ensure Long Beach is working for everyone.
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Reclaim Our Schools LA, our coalition with UTLA, ACCE, and Students Deserve LA, coordinated a series of highly successful digital town halls focused on reopening schools and building a base of parents and families in support of Community Schools. We also joined the Demand Safe Schools coalition to call on decision makers to ensure a safe and equitable school reopening and support our communities through transformational Common Good demands. (To learn more about those Common Good Demands, you can read the chapter LAANE Education Campaign Director Rudy Gonzalves and Research & Policy Analyst Edgar Ortiz wrote in Strike for the Common Good, a book about teachers’ strikes published earlier this year!)
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LAANE’s Ports team worked in partnership with the Teamsters Port Division to help misclassified port drivers reclaim their rights as employees so they could access needed safety net benefits and workplace COVID protections. We also worked alongside our environmental partners to win a strong Advanced Clean Truck rule that will require 40% of all heavy duty trucks sold in California to be zero-emissions and lay the groundwork for upcoming policies that protect drivers, the environment, and frontline communities.
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The County approved the first round of the Safe, Clean Water Program, funded by Measure W, which LAANE helped pass. This round will fund a $294M investment in stormwater projects, creating over 1,200 construction jobs. About 75% of these funds are covered by construction careers policies that increase job quality and job access. LAANE’s Water campaign team also helped pass a new Regional Recycled Water Program, which will produce enough water for 1.7 million people, and thousands of jobs in construction and operations.
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Amazon is a corporate giant, growing bigger and more powerful every day. Across the country, Amazon has bad working conditions, abysmal community engagement practices and an increasing presence in our daily lives. LAANE, alongside the L.A. County Federation of Labor, the Partnership for Working Families, the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, and the Teamsters, created a coalition to hold Amazon accountable. LAANE also joined Athena, a national coalition to hold Amazon accountable.
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BUILDING A CITY OF JUSTICE
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LAANE's development team, in spite of the pandemic, delivered the most successful City of Justice Awards ever, raising over $1 million at an entirely virtual event. We again extend our deep gratitude to the 2020 Honorees who made this incredible milestone possible: Abigail E. Disney, Tiffany Haddish, and Peter Palandjian.
If you would like to make a year-end donation to help us continue all the work above and more in 2021, please visit our online donation page.
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Thank you for being a partner, a supporter, and a friend who makes our work possible. Safe Holidays and Happy New Year from LAANE!
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