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"City on the Edge," a video produced by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11, has produced an uproar because the union mailed hundreds of copies to convention planners around the country. The video's message is that the low-wage, union-busting tactics of hotel employers are contributing to a socially polarized city. The outraged, if predictable, response by the employers and Mayor Bradley's office only confirms the main point of the video: that L.A.'s business and government elite has little concern for low-wage workers, and is instead fixated on image and the bottom line.
The union's video is an artful tactic to solve a real-life problem. The powerful management interests representing the Los Angeles Hotel Employers Assn. (including the Westin Bonaventure, Biltmore, Los Angeles Hilton, Sheraton Town House and Century Plaza) have stonewalled the union in negotiations, allowed their contract to expire on April 15, demanded a two-year wage freeze from their workers (the majority of whom are Latino and Asian, many of them women, who labor for less than $7 an hour), demanded that employees...