The Brief

This has been a summer of strikes in Los Angeles, with hotel workers, actors, and script writers all walking off the job. And that's not it — UPS workers, including tens of thousands in Southern California, ratified a new contract this month after voting to authorize a strike. Earlier in the year, LAUSD support staff struck for higher pay, closing schools for three days. Teachers joined them on the picket line in solidarity.

To understand this strike wave, LAist spoke with UCLA lecturer and historian Caroline Luce about L.A'.s labor history and what comes next.

This conversation with LAist 89.3's Nick Roman has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Labor upsurge

LAist: How does this year compare with years past?

Caroline Luce: It is certainly a labor upsurge that we haven't seen in recent memory, that's for sure. I don't know that I can find a historical analog in terms of the number of workers out on strike or threatening to strike. But we certainly have seen a wave of organizing in past years.

SAG-AFTRA member James Mathis III picketed outside of the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank on July 21, 2023.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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I'm thinking, in the early 20th century, of the free speech fights around anti-picketing ordinances that were passed in the L.A. City Council. In the 1930s, the explosion of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) rolling through L.A.'s war production facilities. And even in the 70s and 80s, a time of plant closures and shutdowns, a wave of working-class community organizing and forceful pushback to try to retain and keep those good jobs.

But this summer, one of the things I think is most magical is to see all these workers seeing their fates tied together. Strikes tend to work kind of industry by industry, which is to say there'll be a really major upsurge, say in Hollywood, but other workers are mostly supporting. What we're seeing this summer is workers who are identifying their shared experiences and connecting their struggles and uniting in ways that are really, really magical and wonderful to see.

L.A.'s anti-union history

LAist: When you go back in the history of Los Angeles, it was a very anti-union town, at least among the folks on the top and even in the media at the time.

CL: Yes. L.A. had a self-fashioned reputation that was much promoted by business leaders in the city as the "Citadel of the Open Shop." (That's) what they called it. An anti-union town that was friendly for business, where there was an abundance of cheap available labor. And as I alluded to before, they passed laws to ensure that was the case, including an anti-picketing ordinance in 1911 that made it illegal to have a loud or unusual or loud voice in public. So the repression of the labor movement was very real, but that doesn't mean that workers weren't constantly in the past 100 years of L.A'.s history, fighting for improved working conditions in their workplaces. They were just facing brutal repression when they did.

A small building across the street from the Douglas Aircraft Company factory, at 2700 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, circa 1937.

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Herman J Schultheis Collection

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Los Angeles Photographers Collection/LAPL

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One of the key moments that starts to shift things is when war production facilities and heavy mass industry comes to L.A. I'm thinking specifically of aerospace, rubber, and auto manufacturing, and steel. Oil comes first, then rubber, then cars, then all the things you need to make cars in terms of steel, and then aerospace follows.

That really starts to happen in the 1930s, and it gets an economic boost from the federal government when they passed the National Defense Authorization Act in 1940. That bill guaranteed profits for war production facilities so long as they allowed unionization in their plants. And what that meant is that these massive new facilities were brought very quickly into the labor movement. This was led by the C.I.O., the Congress of Industrial Relations, who ran massive organizing drives. The UAW in the auto plants, the Rubber Workers Union in the rubber plants, United Steel Workers in the steel plants.

Morphing into a union town

And in the span of just about five years, L.A. goes from a town that has very, very low union density to a city where nearly one out of every three workers was in a union. So that is really the base of the labor movement in L. A. as we think about it. And it has endured to a certain extent even as those industrial unions declined.

The wave of plant shutdowns meant that strongholds of union density in L.A. faded starting in the late 70s and early 1980s. Between 1976 and 1982, there were six major plants that were shut down resulting in the loss of something like 50,000 jobs and the base of those union support.

But what was interesting is alongside that wave of shutdowns and in fact, inspired in part by the community activism that emerged to stop them, what we see is new unions pushing hard in the service sector, integrating immigrant workers into their unions, letting women lead their unions.

About 300 people picketed at AT&T's Los Angeles Service Center in October, 1988, to protest layoffs by the utility.

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Michael Haering

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And so the resurgence of the labor movement that we see in the 1990s is really led by a whole different kind of workforce. Mostly those who are in service sector jobs, hotel workers and janitors being the two most famous in this ascendance. But in Hollywood, the guilds also enter a new phase of union dominance as we shift into a service sector economy.

What's next for the labor movement?

LAist: So you have the changing service worker unionization effort, and this strong push, especially this summer from the actors and the script writers. Where does all this go from here?

CL: Well, one of the things that endures, even as these service sector unions are becoming increasingly militant, increasingly dense, and increasingly unionized industries, is that this sort of differentiation remains. Which is to say the service sector unions are moving in one direction, whereas building trades, more traditional unionized sectors are kind of separate and doing their own thing.

And one of the magical things I see happening this summer is that workers across sectors are starting to form those bonds of solidarity. I'm thinking about the Teamsters showing up for the hotel workers and going out on the picket line with the writers and the actors. I'm thinking about nurses getting together with the same hospitality workers and writers and teachers. I'm thinking about the tremendous unity that was shown between the school employees and the teachers of UTLA and SEIU Local 99, who stood together and won significant increases for those school workers and are now showing up on the picket lines of the hotel workers and the writers and actors.

Lindsey Normington, a Star Garden Topless Dive Bar dancer, performs in solidarity with striking WGA (Writers Guild of America) employees on the picket line, on June 15, 2023 in Burbank, California. Dancers at the North Hollywood bar have become the only unionized group of strippers in the country.

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Getty Images

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That kind of unity and that kind of cross-sector organizing seems really new and very exciting to me, and could result in some really interesting new coalitions that might emerge to take on other issues. We know housing has been so central — the high cost of housing — to so many of these labor strikes this summer. Not to mention the graduate student strike of last fall and a wave of organizing in the last year or two.

So to see those unions come together suggests that there may be space to tackle these bigger, more existential issues. Climate change would certainly be wonderful. But the high cost of housing may be something where these coalitions can fight for renter protections or local zoning ordinances that might mitigate some of that housing stress.

So we'll have to see. They've gotta win contracts first, right? And the studios have shown an absolute refusal to negotiate in good faith. But what's next for the labor movement, to me, could be a really exciting horizon of other issues that impact workers across these sectors and ways that those coalitions could be used to fight back.

Newfound solidarity

LAist: That kind of solidarity, why is it happening now when it didn't happen before?

CL: I'm a historian, so I don't know if I have a lot of prognostications about why that's happening now versus before, but I do think that there's something to be said for the impact of the pandemic and the multiple overlapping crises that we saw brought to bear in that moment. Certainly the uprisings around George Floyd's murder created some of this momentum.

Young workers who are coming into the workforce and not seeing a lot of prospects for their own futures. Workers of color who are insisting on racial justice and equity being part of how their union does their business.

I think today workers confront so many existential crises that they just have had enough and it's time to fight back. So the "why now" is tough. I'm a historian. I can think in the past. But I certainly think all of us are feeling this increased sense of if we don't fight now, what future do we have?

Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of tons of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.

“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.

LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.

The back-and-forth between jurisdictions

Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.

Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering Lineage to remove flies and mosquitoes from the warehouse.

“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.

Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”

As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.

“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.

Lineage’s part

According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.

“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”

Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.

A ticking clock

The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.

That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.

Lineage meets deadline at last minute

Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening