`LITTLE PINK HOUSES' AS PICKETS' ANTHEM?

Byline: JULIE BUTCHER Local View

I'M reading John Sandford's ``Broken Prey,'' in which the main cop hero, Lucas Davenport, receives a small iPod. He becomes determined to load it with no more than the best 100 rock 'n' roll songs ever.

Meanwhile, my union, SEIU Local 347, has been working on preparations for our spring offensive, slated to begin on June 30, 2007, when our contract expires. This includes music, of course. You can't have a spring offensive without music. And we've got quite an iTunes collection of picket-line songs going.

Unlike Davenport's, however, SEIU Local 347's list is not limited to 100 songs. ``Picket Line Songs 06-30-07'' starts at 152 songs, and in MP3 format it fills a disc with lively positive sound.

The last thing on earth our union wants to do is go on strike, but if it comes to it, there's got to be a lot of great music on our soundtrack. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, if you can't dance, it's not 347's picket line!

Everyone is encouraged to comment, offer overlooked suggestions, or just give me a hard time. There have been some grumbles about Donna Summers' ``She Works Hard for the Money,'' but little cacophony about Jimmy Cliff's ``Piece of the Pie,'' or ``Rise Above It'' from ``Cool Runnings'' (the Jamaican bobsled movie), or any song about feet or with a strong dance beat.

``Dog Catcher'' and ``Who Let the Dogs Out?'' have yet to generate a yip of antipathy because, after all, Local 347 is the union of L.A.'s animal workers -- in the Department of Animal Services, in the LAPD Equine Unit, and at the Los Angeles Zoo.

So what about ``Little Pink Houses''? What does John Mellencamp's rural folk-rock ditty have to do with big city contract negotiations anyway?

If the main issue of the upcoming talks between the city of Los Angeles and its backbone work force is what it means to have a middle-class job in a big American city in 2007, then it's in, right?

L.A. has the fourth-worst rate of homeownership of any of the largest 25 U.S. cities. Coro fellow Evan Westrup researched a foundation document that shows housing affordability is dropping, and L.A.'s renters now struggle to make the highest rents among the nine largest metropolitan regions in the nation. Only 5 percent of the households in L.A. County earn between $45,000 and $50,000.

Our middle class is nearly gone. Private workers are losing their pensions, paying more for health care, and taking cuts in salary every day. The fight by public workers to keep the good benefits and respectable pay that all of us -- private and public workers alike -- used to count on may represent the last stand of the middle class in Los Angeles. The American dream moving west shouldn't end at the L.A. County line, should it? Just like the subway, we need to carry it all the way to the sea -- snapping our fingers and stamping our feet to the music as we go.