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Finding Aid for the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association collection, 1970-2007
1754  
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Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Administrative Information
  • Biography
  • Scope and Content
  • Organization and Arrangement
  • Indexing Terms

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association collection
    Date (inclusive): 1970-2007
    Collection number: 1754
    Creator: Clayton, Alan
    Extent: 88 boxes (44.0 linear ft.) 1 oversized box
    Abstract: The Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association is an association that was formed by Latino employees of Los Angeles County in 1969. The primary motivation and goal of this organization has been to provide legal services in order to protect and advocate for the rights of LACCEA members as well as the larger Latino/Chicano community in Los Angeles. Since the organization's inception LACCEA has been involved in a number of efforts aimed at creating greater access to and improved conditions in employment and public services throughout Los Angeles County Departments and institutions. The LACCEA has played a major role in the formation of public policy on behalf of Chicano/Latino communities in Los Angeles County. LACCEA has also made significant contributions to policy-making throughout California. This collection contains a number of documents, reports, charts, graphs, newsletters, clippings and correspondence that deal with the various advocacy efforts of the LACCEA.
    Language: Collection materials are primarily in English. Also contains materials in Spanish.
    Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections.
    Los Angeles, California 90095-1575
    Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact the UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information.

    Administrative Information

    Restrictions on Access

    COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information.

    Restrictions on Use and Reproduction

    Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

    Provenance/Source of Acquisition

    • Gift of Ray Leyva, May 2007.
    • Gift of Lorenzo Sandoval, July 2008.

    Processing Note

    Processed by Norma Eowyn Williamson, 26 March, 2008, and Allee Monheim, February 2009.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association collection (Collection 1754). Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

    UCLA Catalog Record ID

    UCLA Catalog Record ID: 6685130 

    Biography

    The Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association was first formed in 1969 by a group of Mexican-American Los Angeles County employees. The group came together after a Los Angeles County Employment Patterns Report (1968) confirmed that Los Angeles County had participated in discriminatory employment practices against minorities and failed to implement Affirmative Action policies which had been federally mandated since 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1969, an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission report concluded that across the nation Black and Latino people had been excluded from federal employment. The report states, "Minority group members are excluded almost entirely from decision-making positions, and even in those instances where they hold jobs carrying higher status, these jobs usually involve work only with the problems of minority groups and largely tend to limit contact to … minority group members …" (EEOC report 1969, 534). Los Angeles County's failure to address employment discrimination in the late 1960s led to the formation of LACCEA.
    The organization began as a small group of 15 county employees and lawyers who hoped to address employment discrimination in County positions as well as poor housing, education and health services. Those present at the founding of LACCEA envisioned an organization that would be based on the improvement of the social and economic status of all Chicanos and other Latinos in Los Angeles County. During this time many other organizations were also formed around similar goals of economic and social justice, some of which included: WRO (Welfare Rights Organization), PINTOS, MECHA, Commision Femenil, and The Chicano Moratorium. In 1971 the organization was granted non-profit status by the state of California as an employee association but the group also viewed itself as a civil rights organization.
    Over the years the LACCEA has been involved in a number of advocacy efforts that have helped to promote, advocate, and pass legislation that benefits Latino County employees and the Latino community. Many of LACCEA's advocacy efforts have been targeted at various departments in LA County that have failed to recruit, employ, or promote Chicanos and Latinos in particular as well as other underrepresented groups. In 1987 long-time member and Director of Equal Employment Opportunity, Alan Clayton filed a 200 - page complaint with the EEOC against the Department of Health Services for systematic employment discrimination against Latinos in their hiring and promotions practices. This complaint resulted in a settlement in 1992 between LACCEA and the Department of Health Services which required the Department of Health to allocate 2.1 million dollars to the recruitment of Latinos. In 2004 LACCEA filed an additional EEOC complaint and again reached a settlement with the Department of Health Services with the help of Alan Clayton. In 2000 LACCEA also won a Title VI and Title VII discrimination lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
    Another important victory for LACCEA occurred in 1997 with the passage of Senate Bill 1045. The bill, authored by Senator Richard Polanco, made it possible for state and local public agencies to participate in active outreach and recruitment for diversity in employment and public contracting. This bill was especially significant because it created an avenue which allowed for the promotion of workplace diversity without violating Proposition 209 which eliminated Affirmative Action. LACCEA advocated for the passage of Senate Bill 1045 in order to ensure that recruitment and outreach to underrepresented groups would continue.
    Other advocacy efforts have included drafting proposals that have protected resources and programs from being cut and preventing lay-offs in various County Departments. The Schiff Cardenas Juvenile Justice Act is just one example of this work which brought in 850 million dollars for juvenile probation and prevention programs. Also, in 2003, the LACCEA fought to provide exemptions for certified Spanish-speaking staff from layoffs or demotions. LACCEA saw this as an important part of maintaining adequate services for Spanish-speaking people in the Los Angeles area.
    The collection also contains numerous materials on LACCEA's Section 2 administrative Federal Voting Rights complaint first filed in 2003 with the Voting Rights Section of the United States Department of Justice. The complaint was originally filed to contest the legality of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors redistricting plan adopted in 2001. LACCEA and other Los Angeles advocacy groups have argued that the redistricting plan adopted in 2001 has packed Latino voters into one district where two districts should have been drawn. Advocates for the two supervisorial districts have claimed that Board of Supervisors has ignored, and fails to reflect, the demographic changes within the county. In 2006 Latinos comprised roughly 47 percent of the county's population but were represented by only one of the five supervisors. LACCEA, in coalition with other Los Angeles groups, proposed, and continues to fight for, a redistricting plan which would reflect the demographic growth of the Latino community as well as giving more strength to other minority groups in the election of representatives from their communities to the Board of Supervisors.

    Scope and Content

    This collection contains materials that deal primarily with advocacy efforts that the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association has either initiated or supported. Many of these efforts have dealt with issues of employment discrimination, affirmative action and diversity, bilingual employment and spanish-speaking services, as well as redistricting and voting rights. The documents included are primarily research materials for advocacy efforts as well as correspondence and meeting minutes between LACCEA and various individuals, organizations and state leaders. The research materials primarily include Latino and other minority employee data from CWTAPPS [Countywide Timekeeping and Payroll Personnel System] as well as numerous legal briefs and reports relevant to the work of LACCEA. The collection also contains documentation of complaints filed against various County Departments, articles and clippings, and newsletters distributed by LACCEA from 1984 to 2007. Information regarding how the organization developed can be found in these newsletters.

    Organization and Arrangement

    Arranged in the following series:
    1. Advocacy Efforts
    2. Conferences
    3. Meetings
    4. Newsletters
    5. Reports and Charts.

    Indexing Terms

    The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

    Subjects

    Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association