Facing outrage over a controversial leaked audio recording, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera resigned Monday night, and the organization’s remaining leaders demanded Tuesday that the three City Council members involved in the scandal submit their resignations as well.
“Racism in any form has no place in the House of Labor. It is unconscionable that those elected to fight for our communities of color would engage in repulsive and vile anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Asian and anti-Oaxacan remarks that pit our working communities against each other. These sentiments will not be tolerated by our organization or those who we represent,” the chair of the federation’s executive board Thom Davis, said in a statement.
A leaked recording of L.A. City Council members and a labor official includes racist remarks. Council President Nury Martinez apologizes; Councilmember Kevin de León expresses regret.
“The Executive Board of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor also calls on those elected officials who were present to follow President Herrera’s example by immediately resigning as well,” Davis said after a meeting Monday night.
The federation, which represents 800,000 workers across 300 unions, has been at the epicenter of the crisis rocking Los Angeles’ political leadership over the past two days.
Herrera — along with Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo — participated in an October 2021 closed-door conversation at the federation’s offices where Martinez said a white councilmember handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and described Councilmember Mike Bonin’s son as “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.”
Other racist and derogatory remarks were made during the conversation, which largely focused on the city’s once-every-decade redistricting process and preserving and maintaining Latino political power.
The conversation remained private for roughly a year before exploding into public view Sunday after being reported on by The Times. The leaked audio was originally posted on Reddit.
The labor federation described the leaked audio as part of a “serious security and privacy breach” at its offices involving “illegal” recordings of “many private and confidential conversations in private offices and conference rooms,” in a Sunday email to affiliates, according to text provided to The Times.
The federation has not publicly addressed the source of the recordings apart from initially attacking The Times for publishing the contents of the leaks.
L.A. councilmembers’ leaked audio reveal racist conversations on Mike Bonin’s son, Oaxacans in Koreatown, George Gascón and Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Herrera’s resignation comes after snowballing demands that Martinez, De León and Cedillo step down from the City Council and that Herrera leave his own post at the head of one of the nation’s most powerful and influential labor organizations. Martinez, who had been City Council president, announced that she was resigning her leadership post Monday morning and said Tuesday that she was taking a leave of absence from the council.
Support for Herrera’s withdrawal had spread broadly across the labor movement Monday, including the leaders of eight SEIU California unions with Los Angeles-area members, United Teachers Los Angeles, Unite Here Local 11 and the California Nurses Assn.
Shortly before Monday night’s meeting, Herrera’s home local, Teamsters Local 396, had joined multiple Teamsters locals in calling for Herrera to quit his federation post.
“We are a movement of large organizations and deeply ingrained processes,” Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Labor Federation, which is separate from the local federation, said in a tweet Monday night. “But, we ultimately prioritize working class solidarity across all racial groups above all else. It’s now time for our labor movement to come together and start the hard work to heal.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler put out a statement Sunday saying that “we will gather all the facts, but the hateful speech reported in that meeting is inexcusable.”
Audio of Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo speaking with labor leader Ron Herrera quickly became a new and incendiary issue in the Nov. 8 election.
“Until we have accountability, we cannot begin the healing process,” Gonzalez Fletcher wrote. “We have much work ahead of us to ensure the labor movement is a place where ALL workers can all come together in solidarity in our shared struggle.”
Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.
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