LOS ANGELES – Workers from the California Club, one of downtown LA’s oldest private clubs, moved closer to a work stoppage as the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO approved this past Friday a strike authorization request from the club’s cooks, servers, janitors and housekeepers.

Club employees, who serve LA’s elite investment bankers, attorneys and developers, say they refuse to accept another wage freeze, as the Club management is insisting, while they see corporate profits soar and the economy rebound for the rich.

“This is just another example of the rich squeezing the poor,” said Felipe Sanchez, a California Club cook of 15 years. “The club says it cannot afford to pay us wages on par with the Jonathan Club. But last year the Club renovated its second floor, knocking down walls and replacing carpet. The rich can afford to invest in fine art and expensive rugs, but not us.” 

On its Web site, the Club boasts “fine antiques, handcrafted furniture and rich imported fabrics bespeak the substance, grace and elegance of the Clubhouse.”

In recent years workers have been sympathetic to the Club’s claims that a sour economy had left the urban country club with less cash on hand. In 2009, workers agreed to a wage freeze and in 2010 made changes to their healthcare benefits to contain costs.

Now workers say it’s time to for California Club’s 1 percent to recognize the workers’ sacrifice.

“We deserve to earn a living wage,” Gustavo Sanchez, a cook of 24 years. “All over the news, corporate profits are higher than ever, but the working people are expected to keep suffering. We have families to feed. We demand better.”

The California Club workers’ union contract expired in September 2011. 

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