The Brief

Labor activity has surged in Los Angeles this year, with everyone from screenwriters to boba shop workers and school bus drivers racking up victories.

But it’s another story in Koreatown, where grocery store workers at the Hannam Chain supermarket have been locked in a year-long-plus battle with their powerful employer over unionization.

The supermarket’s owner, Kee Whan Ha, is one of Koreatown’s most politically-connected developers and civic leaders. Ha famously took up arms to defend the supermarket on Olympic Boulevard during the unrest of 1992.

Today he’s facing a coalition of employees — Korean and Latino immigrants who’ve overcome the language barriers among them to fight for better wages and workplace conditions that they say were particularly egregious during the pandemic.

“They don't care about us,” Hannam cashier Sun Ki Sim said of the company, which includes six locations. “They only care about the money.”

If Sim and other workers could have it their way, the Hannam Koreatown location could become the first Korean grocery in the country to unionize.

But the workers’ dream of a union anytime soon looks to be dimming.

A final vote is pending

Earlier this month, the National Labor Relations Board counted 65 votes in a union election. More employees voted against a union than for it — by a margin of almost 2 to 1. A final tally is pending, as both sides challenge ballots.

Union supporters claim Hannam ran an aggressive anti-union campaign. Ha did not respond to a request for an interview sent through his lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg, who also did not give comment for this story. A manager for the store declined comment, referring questions to the lawyer.

The L.A. office of the labor board is giving both parties until Wednesday to provide their positions on the challenges, according to an NLRB spokesperson.

Union supporters say they're not standing down

Union supporters at Hannam still hold out hope the final vote will go their way, but if it doesn’t, they’re not giving up on a union.

“Even though the progress is very, very slow, I have to keep here and then stand here,” Sim said.

Sun Ki Sim is a cashier at Hannam who supports unionization.

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Sim, who has worked at the store for four and a half years, said she realized workers needed a union during the pandemic when they were not given help with protective equipment or social distancing. As more co-workers caught COVID, Sim had a panic attack and called in sick. She said upon her return, a manager chastised her for missing work.

The message from management, Sim said, was “we have to protect the company. So you have to be here.”

Another employee, Antonia Gonzalez, said that over more than five years of working at Hannam, she would complain of sanitation problems such as a cockroach infestation in the kitchen where she worked. Management, she said, threatened to shut down the kitchen and eliminate jobs if health inspectors ever learned about the bugs.

Instead, the kitchen jobs were outsourced, and Hernandez said she was made a cashier six months ago.

How early momentum was dashed

Union organizers describe early momentum for the unionization effort, buoyed by support from labor-backing politicians like L.A. city council members Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez.

But any majority support was broken down by pressure tactics from Hannam and its lawyers over the last year, said José Roberto Hernández, president of the California Restaurant & Retail Workers Union, which has been organizing the Hannam workers.

“They just hire an anti-union law firm with anti-union dissuaders, so that they can start dividing the workforce, scaring some of the workers, promoting some of the other workers, bribing some of the other workers with $1 wage increase here and there,” Hernández said.

Hannam cashier Antonia Gonzalez said regardless of what the outcome of the union election is, she and other workers will keep advocating for worker rights.

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Both sides have been sparring vigorously over the last year which has protracted the union battle. The union election at Hannam actually took place Aug. 3 in a tent outside the store — nearly three months ago. But the labor board impounded the ballots, as it investigated the grocer’s charge that union organizers had used gift cards and pressure by supervisors to build support among workers.

The labor relations board dismissed the complaint, citing “insufficient evidence," and held the vote count earlier this month, during which 22 ballots were challenged.

Efforts to organize Korean BBQ and boba 

Before hitting an impasse with Hannam, California Restaurant & Retail Workers Union, or CRRWU, had notched major victories at other high-profile businesses founded by Asian Americans.

In 2021, workers at the famed Genwa chain, which has three locations in L.A., voted to form a union in what is seen as a first in the country for Korean BBQ restaurants. A contract ratified last year provides overtime pay and retirement accounts to employees, the union said.

Last month, workers at six L.A. County locations of Boba Guys, based in San Francisco, won their bid to unionize in what is also believed to be a first among boba shops in the U.S.

A screenshot of the Genwa Korean BBQ location in Mid-Wilshire.

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For the last several years, CRRWU has been working with Southern California employees of the Korean air purifier manufacturer Coway.

Worker support for the union is high, organizers say, but they are running into strong resistance from the employer, which is represented by the same law firm that works with Hannam.

Hannam owner is a powerful voice in Koreatown 

Union supporters at Hannam have a notoriously tough adversary in their employer, Kee Whan Ha.

During the civil unrest of 1992, Ha grew angry that the Korean-language broadcaster was not telling listeners to defend their businesses. He recounted to NPR in 2012 how he went to the radio station.

“So I know the owner of that Radio Korea, so I brought my handgun and I put it on the table. I told him that we established Koreatown,” Ha said.

As Koreatown was rebuilt, Ha, a UCLA-trained electrical engineer, went on to become one of its biggest developers and landlords. And he expanded his supermarket chain to five locations in Southern California and one in New Jersey, while becoming politically connected at City Hall.

“We know that we cannot survive ourself,” Ha said in the NPR interview. “We have to have a relationship with other communities, as well as the politics, all these things.”

Ha's profile grew as he led the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Korean Chamber of Commerce. In 2013, the City Council named an intersection in Koreatown after him: "Dr. Kee Whan Ha Square.”

Why the stakes are high

It would be no small thing if Ha’s store were the first Korean grocery in the country to be unionized.

“I think it will encourage other ethnic supermarkets to organize as well,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.

Wong said L.A. is a major hub for markets that cater to Latino and Asian communities.

“And yet their wages and working conditions are far inferior to those that are enjoyed by the unionized major chains, such as the Ralphs and Vons and Albertsons,” Wong said.

Hannam is not the first Koreatown grocery to face a unionization drive. Twenty years ago, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance tried to organize the Assi market but was unsuccessful.

In Southern California’s world of ethnic supermarkets, only employees at El Super locations have collective bargaining agreements through representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Local 770 represents a majority of approximately 600 El Super workers, employed across seven stores. A spokesperson for the chapter said workers were able to secure fair wages and recognition of sick leave and seniority.

Hannam workers and their supporters protest owner Kee Whan Ha (in the blue tie) at the 2023 World Korean Business Convention held in Anaheim this month.

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Despite concerns of retaliation for their organizing, union supporters at Hannam have continued to confront Ha.

Earlier this month, the workers and their supporters went to the 2023 World Korean Business Convention in Anaheim to protest the company’s response to their unionization effort and to face Ha, who was the convention’s chair.

As Ha posed for group photos with other business leaders, Hannam Chain workers and their supporters lined up behind them and held up fliers with Ha’s face printed on them, demanding he meet with workers.

Cashier Sun Ki Sim said if she ever got to sit down with Ha, she would tell him that he “is not the only one who makes this business a success.”

We’ve all had a problem neighbor at one time or another, but what if they howled at the moon?

That’s what West Hollywood is dealing with right now at a so-called “coyote condo,” where a pack has taken over a construction site, leading to complaints from residents.

Now, officials are making the property owner take action.

How we got here

Coyotes often show up in Southern California’s urban areas looking for food, but these ones are sticking around.

The pack is squatting in an unfinished site near the corner of North Spaulding Avenue and Romaine Street.

The area was supposed to become a 22-unit condominium building, according to the city. However, construction stopped in 2024 and permits have since expired.

The roughly 19,500-square-feet lot is fenced off. Coyotes have been seen traversing the bare wood frames, though it’s unclear if they’ve caused any other problems besides being a nuisance.

What’s next

West Hollywood said its Neighborhood and Business Safety Division is in touch with the owner’s representative.

“As with any privately owned property, the owner is responsible for maintaining the site,” the city said in a statement.

Officials are requiring the owner to “promptly” retain a wildlife control operator that specializes in humane wildlife management. That expert is tasked with assessing and recommending next steps, so it’s still unclear how the coyote problem will be dealt with.

The city of West Hollywood follows a coyote coexistence plan, which only recommends lethal action for unprovoked human attacks. Wild animal relocation is also generally illegal under state regulations because moving them can disrupt local ecosystems and spread disease.

However, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife can give written permission to relocate coyotes under certain circumstances. The city says it will update residents on its website as new information becomes available.

In the meantime, don’t feed the coyotes and take caution when you’re in the area. Keep pets on a leash and indoors, if you live close. Coyotes are known to attack small animals. Young children can also get targeted, but it’s less common.

You can learn more about how these urban canines live in our coyote guide.

A state appeals court ruled Monday that Long Beach must rehire an officer it fired four years ago after he was accused of lying in official reports.

The unanimous decision from the three-judge panel upholds a previous ruling from a city employment panel and a lower court. It also brings an end to a roughly five-year legal saga during which the city filed two appeals in an attempt to keep former Long Beach police Officer Dedier Reyes off the force, even at a time when the department has struggled to fill vacancies.

Long Beach City Attorney Dawn McIntosh said she was “disappointed” by Monday’s decision by the appeals court, but said her office does not plan to file any further appeals.

Monday’s ruling means Long Beach owes Reyes more than four years of pay he has missed since his dismissal, and the city must offer him a job with the police department that is on par with his previous position as a patrol officer. Records from Transparent California show Reyes’ base salary was $121,948 in his last full year at the LBPD.

The city fired Reyes in 2022, shortly after he was charged with one count of filing a false police report and one count of perjury for allegedly lying about his observations during a 2018 gun arrest. A jury ultimately acquitted Reyes and his less-experienced partner, Officer David Salcedo.

But the charges, the city’s firing of the two officers and the criminal trial that followed, cast doubt on their credibility. As a result, prosecutors dropped dozens of cases where the two made arrests or would’ve needed to testify to make the case.

Reyes, who was training Salcedo, was accused of lying and perjuring himself when he wrote in a February 2018 police report that he recognized two gang members standing outside a Long Beach taqueria and then saw one go inside and leave a bag containing a gun.

Surveillance video from the taqueria made internal affairs investigators question how Reyes could have seen what was happening inside the restaurant and also showed he arrested the wrong gang member for allegedly carrying the bag with the gun.

Reyes later told internal affairs investigators that he “made a mistake in this police report,” according to an interview transcript from a separate civil lawsuit.

Reyes and Salcedo continued working and weren’t criminally accused for nearly four years after the incident. Then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey reviewed the case and decided it didn’t merit charges, but when George Gascón became the new District Attorney in 2021 — after making police reform central to his campaign — he brought charges against the officers.

After their acquittal on the criminal charges, a city employment panel ruled they must be rehired, but Long Beach sued to try to block that decision.

After reviewing all of the evidence, the three-judge appeals panel sided with Reyes on Monday. They found it plausible that he mistakenly recalled the events leading up to the 2018 arrest and noted that the city “identified no apparent motive” for him to falsify the police report, according to their ruling.

When the city fired Reyes, it noted that he had racked up 14 use-of-force reviews and 11 citizen complaints since 2010, according to court documents. But the department determined that all of those uses of force were within policy and none of the citizen complaints were determined to have merit, the court noted in its ruling.

Long Beach has, however, been sued twice over Reyes’ alleged misconduct, resulting in payouts of $550,000 and $499,800.

After Monday’s ruling, Reyes will have the option of rejoining LBPD.

Salcedo has already been rehired and assigned to work patrol, LBPD Executive Communications Officer Allison Gallagher wrote in an email last October.

Canter's Deli turns 95 this year, and the iconic Jewish deli and coffee shop will sell its hot pastrami sandwich — with coleslaw, pickle and chocolate chip rugelach — for 95 cents.

Is there a catch?

No. But dine-in only, limit one per customer.

I don’t eat meat

Lucky you — a plant-based corned beef substitute is available.

Why it matters

The Fairfax institution has been feeding Angelenos since 1953, serving everyone from the neighborhood's Jewish community to the Supreme-loving skate punks who arrived decades later.

Co-owner Marc Canter, the third-generation owner, put it best: Canter's is the place where "grandkids grow up and bring their grandkids."

Why 95 cents?

Canter says the price is purely symbolic of the anniversary, not the actual cost — they charged 50 cents for the 50th anniversary and 75 cents for the 75th.

The history

Now three generations deep, the family has logged roughly 159 years combined behind the counter: Canter's grandfather, about 50; his father, about 65; and Marc himself, 44 and counting.

The sprawling namesake business started in 1931, when Marc Canter’s grandparents sold corned beef sandwiches off a cart in Jersey City before landing in Boyle Heights on Brooklyn Avenue (now César Chávez Avenue).

Canter said his Aunt Selma struck out on her own in 1948 at age 23 and moved the business to Fairfax. Her parents joined her there in 1953. One current employee has been on staff since 1964 — 62 years and counting.

Despite the neighborhood's changes, Canter's hasn't: No remodels, no menu overhauls. The matzo ball soup, potato pancakes, and cheese blintzes have never left.

"The ancestors are watching from above," Canter said, "so you have to keep [going] to make them proud."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is failing to provide adequate healthcare at a new detention center in California City, according to a report from an independent monitor at the facility, where detainees complained of missing medications and months-long delays to cancer treatment.

The findings appear in a report by Dr. Muthusamy Anandkumar, a court- appointed monitor of the California City Immigration Processing Center, which is about 75 miles east of Bakersfield and run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The federal government purchased the facility earlier this month, but CoreCivic continues to operate it.

A judge appointed the monitor in March as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by seven detainees who allege the conditions in the California City facility are a violation of their due process rights.

“The facility lacks a reliable system to consistently provide adequate health care, placing individuals at serious risk of both immediate and long-term harm,” Anandkumar wrote. “This pattern indicates broader problems in the facility's healthcare delivery system rather than occasional lapses in care.”

The fault, Anandkumar wrote, was not with the individual healthcare workers, but rather an issue of staffing, management and oversight. At times, staff was pulled out of training to cover a shift because of staffing shortages.

“As a result, staff who had not been fully trained were themselves training new staff,” Anandkumar wrote. “Given the number of patients and the seriousness of their medical and mental health needs, these substantial gaps contribute to an unsafe environment.”

Anandkumar found 13 areas of deficiency in CoreCivic’s healthcare program in California City. Among them were inadequate emergency care, dental care and chronic disease management. The monitor also found that the facility did not provide timely access to prescribed medications.

ICE opened the immigration detention center at the site of a closed state prison and began admitting detainees in August. In September, a state disability rights group conducted a two-day inspection of the facility and found that its operators failed to distribute medication for life-threatening conditions and did not schedule timely surgeries for people that needed them.

The findings of that two-day inspection by Disability Rights California mirror many of the conclusions found 10 months later by Anandkumar, including delays in response to acute sick call requests and a failure to distribute prescription medication for conditions requiring consistent management like diabetes, high blood pressure and seizures.

A CoreCivic spokesperson said the facility provides daily access to physical and mental care services, and said emergency medical services are available 24 hours a day, every day.

“When specialty or advanced care is required beyond the services available onsite, facility healthcare staff coordinate with community physicians, hospitals, and specialty providers to facilitate access to medically necessary treatment,” said CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin. “While we work diligently to arrange and support those appointments, the scheduling, availability, and capacity of outside providers are not controlled by the facility.”

Gustin said compliance with detention standards in immigration detention facilities is monitored by an ICE compliance officer.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in the Northern District of California by people held in California City claims detainees do not have appropriate clothing for the chilly desert nights, nor appropriate medical attention for life-threatening conditions. The lawsuit alleges detainees with mobility issues don’t have access to wheelchairs, and in some cases are unable to bathe or dress themselves.

Sokhean Keo, a California City detainee and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against ICE said in a statement distributed by the ACLU that he never received the medication he was prescribed for an infection.

“If there is no change to this system,” Keo said, “sick people are going to die.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.