Over 11,000 Los Angeles city workers plan to go on strike Tuesday, attempting to grind America’s second-largest metropolitan area to a halt.

The striking workers want to ‘shut down’ Los Angeles for 24 hours.

The city employees will participate in a one-day strike, “including sanitation workers, Los Angeles International Airport employees and street services,” The Washington Post reports.

SEIU Local 721, a union representing nearly 100,000 Southern California city and county workers, represents the striking workers.

“We’re going to shut down the city of Los Angeles,” said David Green, SEIU Local 721 executive director and president.

“The message we’re sending is that our workers are just fed up. They’ve reached a breaking point. And we need these folks in the city to come back to the table for the good of the city,” he continued.

Picket lines reportedly will begin at work sites around Los Angeles Tuesday morning.

A rally is scheduled to take place at City Hall.

“City workers are vital to the function of services for millions of Angelenos every day and to our local economy. They deserve fair contracts and we have been bargaining in good faith with SEIU 721 since January. The City will always be available to make progress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

FOX 11 has more:

The city workers’ strike will coincide with the strikes of hotel workers, Hollywood actors, and screenwriters.

The Washington Post reports:

It’s the first strike of its kind for Local 721 in more than 40 years, and comes as hundreds of thousands of workers across various sectors recently have organized strikes, or narrowly avoided them.

A historic double strike by actors and writers effectively shut down Hollywood beginning last month, with as many as 170,000 actors and 12,500 writers on picket lines. Thousands of hotel housekeepers, receptionists and cooks in Los Angeles held a strike for three days in early July over wages and benefits — and have intermittently resumed striking since.

Beyond Los Angeles, United Parcel Service employees, represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, teetered on the brink of a potentially devastating nationwide strike before a deal with the company was reached late last month. Autoworkers, baristas and more have gone on strike, too — or threatened to. As many as 322,000 U.S. workers have gone on strike so far this year.

Tuesday’s strike in Los Angeles comes after “bad faith bargaining” by city administrators, Green said, adding that the city has failed to address issues such as workers’ resources and major vacancies in crucial roles. He said city officials sent administrators to the bargaining table who don’t have the authorization needed to approve decisions.

CNN Business told Los Angeles residents to prepare for city-wide disruptions:

Los Angeles city departments are bracing for the impact of Tuesday’s work stoppage and attempting to mitigate disruptions to city operations.

For example, LAX has warned passengers to allow extra time to travel to and from the airport on Tuesday. “LAX is working diligently with our airport partners to ensure that our operations will continue as close to normal as possible and to mitigate the impacts of the work action on our guests,” Dae Levine, a Los Angeles World Airports spokesperson, told CNN.

The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest port in the United States by container volume and the focal point of many of the country’s supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, told CNN that port operations would continue. However, 300 employees at the port are represented by SEIU 721.

 

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