Recession Reverses California Airport’s Growth

The greatest inconvenience awaits those who head to the taxi stand: sometimes there are no cabs. One has to be called.

“Truthfully, I love this,” Annette Long said as she prepared to check her bags for a recent flight, thrilled to be missing the freeway traffic and crowds she encounters flying out of Los Angeles International Airport. “It’s so easy.”

But what makes traveling so pleasant for passengers like Ms. Long also underscores the problem facing this regional airport, which, like the Inland Empire region that it serves, is still reeling from the devastating impact of the recession.

As airports show slow but steady signs of recovery, with passenger traffic nearing pre-recession levels nationally, the passenger traffic at Ontario has plummeted 40 percent since its 2007 peak of 6.9 million, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures. The decline, fed by a confluence of economic misfortune, a change in airline business practices and local political turf wars, is projected to continue through the end of the year. It has left Ontario with traffic levels around four million, about what they were in the mid-1980s, a decade before construction of two modern terminals that were supposed to make this airport a linchpin of the region’s economic growth.

But like the housing booms and busts that have driven the economic prospects of the area over the last 25 years, the airport’s plight has left some to wonder if such ideas were too speculative.

Ontario’s experience mirrors that of other smaller airports in large markets — like Islip and Newburgh in New York — which expanded to handle added traffic only to see airlines pull back. The Inland Empire, which includes San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, continues to be one of the fastest-growing regions in California, with more than four million residents, but the lure is affordable housing, not high-paying jobs. The region is projected to have a double-digit unemployment rate through 2015. And last week, a judge cleared the way for the city of San Bernardino to declare bankruptcy.

“With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been overreaching when they expanded,” said Sampath Rajagopala, a professor of data sciences and operations at the University of Southern California’s business school. “Airlines can never operate at a profit if they rely on consumer business. They need business passengers. Yes, there are a lot of people living there, but they are a lot more price-sensitive.”

It is not just the economy that has crippled the Ontario airport. There has been a change in the way airlines operate, analysts say, prizing profitability now more than market share, which has driven airlines away from smaller airports to larger ones nearby.

Southwest Airlines, the main tenant at Ontario, began there in 1985 with five daily flights to Phoenix. It once flew 64 flights a day from Ontario in the late ’90s, but is now down to 35 flights a day. An additional reduction of 12 percent has been announced for January. At the same time, it has expanded service at Los Angeles International.

Brad Hawkins, a Southwest spokesman, said that cost “is by far the most important determinant in how we operate.” The company’s service to Ontario, he said, “is where it should be.”

This has left Ontario with a conundrum: declining flights mean that airports must charge airlines higher fees per passenger to recoup expenses, and Ontario’s fee of $11.12 per passenger was close to the $12.18 that Los Angeles International charged in the 2012-13 fiscal year, according to airport officials who set the fees.

San Onofre Nuclear Plant in California to Close

The owners of the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California, which has been shut since January 2012, said on Friday that they would close it permanently because of uncertainty over when it could be reopened.

The two reactors at San Onofre had not run since a small amount of radioactive steam escaped from new tubes damaged by vibration and friction. Coming months after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan, the event prompted a wave of public opposition and set off a legal and regulatory battle that included Southern California Edison, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which manufactured the parts that leaked.

Those parts, called steam generators, cost more than $600 million. In the end, uncertainty over the plant’s fate “was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs,” said Theodore F. Craver Jr., chief executive of the utility’s parent company, Edison International.

The decision delighted nuclear opponents. “I approach today with a good deal of joy,” said S. David Freeman, who shut down construction on several reactors when he ran the Tennessee Valley Authority, and who ran the Sacramento Municipal Utility District after it retired the Rancho Seco nuclear plant two decades ago.

“I think this is a step in the right direction, another move toward the renewable revolution that is under way in the state of California,” Mr. Freeman said, adding that closing the reactors opens up the market to use the renewable power that will follow. For now, though, the replacement power source is natural gas.

The nuclear industry has had a difficult year as it tries to compete with cheaper, abundant natural gas. San Onofre’s two reactors are the third and fourth reactors to be retired so far this year in the United States.

“It’s no secret that power markets have been radically changed by the development of shale gas,” said John Reed, an investment banker who specializes in nuclear reactors. “That changes the economics of any other power supply option, including nuclear.”

Dominion shut its reactor in Wisconsin in May because of unfavorable economics, and Duke said in February that it would not restart Crystal River 3 because mechanical problems were too expensive to fix.

The loss of San Onofre has already pushed up electricity prices in Southern California, to about $4.15 a megawatt-hour higher than prices in Northern California. Those higher prices are an inducement to developers to build new generation, either natural gas or renewable energy, according to Marie Rinkoski Spangler, an electricity analyst at the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration.

Ms. Rinkoski Spangler said that since June 2012, California has added slightly more generating capacity than it will lose with the retirement of the reactors, in the wrong places.

“Geography really matters,” she said. “The generation itself is not enough, because of where San Onofre sat” near Los Angeles and San Diego.

At the California Independent System Operator, the company that runs the power grid in most of the state, Steve Berberich, the chief executive, said that most of the replacement power had come from natural gas, and that if California’s goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt-hour, “you’re moving in the wrong direction.”

But in the longer term, he said, retiring San Onofre would encourage the replacement of older power plants with newer ones that would produce more electricity with the same amount of fuel. And the newer ones could increase and decrease their output faster, he said, making them useful to balance a system with a lot of wind and solar generation, which is highly variable.

San Onofre 2 and 3 entered commercial operation in August 1983 and April 1984. A third reactor was mothballed in 1992.

Many nuclear plants around the country have won permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to run 20 years beyond their initial 40-year licenses, but in a conference call with reporters, Mr. Craver of Edison International said that the prospects for license renewal were uncertain, following the three meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011, and the demand by regulators for a re-evaluation of San Onofre’s vulnerability to earthquake.

Edison had been seeking to restart one of the units at 70 percent power, a level it thought the steam generators could tolerate, but when plant opponents persuaded a panel of three administrative law judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that this would require a public hearing, the company concluded that the proceedings could stretch to the end of next year or longer. Operation and maintenance expense at the plants, which employ 1,500 people are roughly equal whether it is running or not, he said, and if the plant could not reopen by December, retiring it would be cheaper.

The company has $2.7 billion saved up for decommissioning, which is about 90 percent of what is required, he said. Edison shares ownership with San Diego Gas & Electric, which owns 20 percent, and the city of Riverside, which owns 1.79 percent.

Edison has about $2.1 billion invested in the plant, the fuel and related assets. Division of costs between Edison’s shareholders and ratepayers, its insurers and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which supplied the heat exchangers, has not been determined.

As for the plant’s workers, the closure will be felt in the area. “When 1,100 people lose their jobs, there will certainly be an impact,” said Bob Baker, the mayor of the nearby city of San Clemente. “San Onofre changed San Clemente when it opened, and it’s going to change San Clemente now that it’s closing.”

Sheppard Mullin Snags Two Partners in California

Sheppard Mullin snagged another two lateral partners Monday, bringing their total up to six for the year.

David Randall, an IP partner who does both patent litigation and prosecution, joined the Los Angeles office of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton from Dickstein Shapiro. Robert Guite, a litigation partner whose practice ranges from class actions and products liability to unfair competition and ERISA suits, comes to Sheppard Mullin's San Francisco office from Squire Sanders. Both Randall and Guite said they will bring all their clients with them.

Randall is the third lateral IP partner to join Sheppard Mullin in California this year, and he fits squarely with the goals for the practice, said Stephen Korniczky, who co-chairs the practice. The group has grown from about 60 attorneys in 2010 to more than 95 today, but the litigation side of the practice has centered on defending companies that are accused of patent infringement. Randall's arrival will strengthen plaintiffs-side work, Korniczky said.

Randall's expertise in both patent prosecution and litigation is unusual, Korniczky said, as most IP attorneys tend to specialize in one or the other. The breadth of experience serves Randall well, Korniczky added.

"The two skills sets are very complementary," he said. "If you know how to defend patents in litigation, you know how to write them so that they will withstand litigation."

Revenue from Sheppard Mullin's IP practice shot up more than 70 percent in 2011 and more than 22 percent in 2012, Korniczky said. With the bulk of the practice's growth coming on the West Coast so far, Sheppard Mullin now hopes to add IP lawyers in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., he added.

To fuel future growth, Korniczky has set his sights on one pool of lawyers in particular. Earlier in their careers, Korniczky and Randall both worked at Los Angeles-based Lyon & Lyon, a now-defunct law firm that specialized in IP. The firm's lawyers have dispersed since its dissolution, and Korniczky wants to harness that talent once more. He said he is in daily conversation with former Lyon & Lyon lawyers about joining Sheppard Mullin.

Randall said his shared roots with Korniczky and several other Lyon & Lyon lawyers who are now at Sheppard Mullin influenced his decision.

"The fact that they have put together a strong team of people I know, that was an important factor," he said.

Randall added that Sheppard Mullin's outposts in Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul were also a draw. Randall, who prosecutes patents globally, did not have any Asian offices to draw from while at Dickstein Shapiro.

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Sheppard Mullin Snags Two Partners in California

Sheppard Mullin snagged another two lateral partners Monday, bringing their total up to six for the year.

David Randall, an IP partner who does both patent litigation and prosecution, joined the Los Angeles office of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton from Dickstein Shapiro. Robert Guite, a litigation partner whose practice ranges from class actions and products liability to unfair competition and ERISA suits, comes to Sheppard Mullin's San Francisco office from Squire Sanders. Both Randall and Guite said they will bring all their clients with them.

Randall is the third lateral IP partner to join Sheppard Mullin in California this year, and he fits squarely with the goals for the practice, said Stephen Korniczky, who co-chairs the practice. The group has grown from about 60 attorneys in 2010 to more than 95 today, but the litigation side of the practice has centered on defending companies that are accused of patent infringement. Randall's arrival will strengthen plaintiffs-side work, Korniczky said.

Randall's expertise in both patent prosecution and litigation is unusual, Korniczky said, as most IP attorneys tend to specialize in one or the other. The breadth of experience serves Randall well, Korniczky added.

"The two skills sets are very complementary," he said. "If you know how to defend patents in litigation, you know how to write them so that they will withstand litigation."

Revenue from Sheppard Mullin's IP practice shot up more than 70 percent in 2011 and more than 22 percent in 2012, Korniczky said. With the bulk of the practice's growth coming on the West Coast so far, Sheppard Mullin now hopes to add IP lawyers in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., he added.

To fuel future growth, Korniczky has set his sights on one pool of lawyers in particular. Earlier in their careers, Korniczky and Randall both worked at Los Angeles-based Lyon & Lyon, a now-defunct law firm that specialized in IP. The firm's lawyers have dispersed since its dissolution, and Korniczky wants to harness that talent once more. He said he is in daily conversation with former Lyon & Lyon lawyers about joining Sheppard Mullin.

Randall said his shared roots with Korniczky and several other Lyon & Lyon lawyers who are now at Sheppard Mullin influenced his decision.

"The fact that they have put together a strong team of people I know, that was an important factor," he said.

Randall added that Sheppard Mullin's outposts in Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul were also a draw. Randall, who prosecutes patents globally, did not have any Asian offices to draw from while at Dickstein Shapiro.

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Corner Office: California Pizza Kitchen’s Chief, on 6 Steps to Leadership

Q. What was the first time you were somebody’s boss?

A. We’d have to go all the way back to when I was head of a bunch of umpires in Little League. We were all teenagers.

Q. Was that easy for you?

A. I’ve always taken control of situations. If you were to ask me why that is, I’m not really sure. I think it’s because I just want what I want and I feel like someone has to take the lead. I’ve always done that. I’ve been captain of every sports team I’ve ever been on. And as I’ve moved into new roles, failure has never been an option for me. It’s like I always have this person on my shoulder sort of invoking the fear factor, that I can’t fail.

Q. Where do you think that comes from?

A. Our family came to America from the Netherlands when I was young, and I had to work that much harder in any situation. I had to learn English. I had to try that much harder to be a normal kid. I went to a pretty affluent high school where the kids’ parents were doctors and lawyers, and I’m a cop’s kid. Also, I’ve always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and in an organization.

Q. Tell me about some leadership lessons you’ve learned.

A. I worked at a poultry processing plant during college. I worked my way up, and became general manager of the plant when I was 21, overseeing 500 people. I had done pretty much every role in the operation. That was a big advantage — knowing and living what people do every day. That allows me to understand people and help them grow. I like to say that leadership is about getting people to exceed their own expectations. You can’t do that unless you understand what they do and how they do it, having lived some of it yourself.

Q. How do you feel your leadership style has evolved?

A. One thing I’ve learned over time is a lot more patience and tolerance. I used to always want things yesterday and would be very anxious about moving things along faster. But now I understand that tomorrow’s another day and that things will move along. I think more about whether something really matters and how it will make a difference, versus thinking that everything matters and everything makes a difference. It’s also much clearer to me now what the leadership qualities are that are most important to me.

Q. Can you elaborate?

A. I call them the six steps of leadership, surrounded by courage. Courage is an interesting one because any leadership role is about stepping out and having the courage to be different, because you have to be different to be a leader.

The first step is to be the very best that you can be, because you can’t lead anybody if you can’t lead yourself. So you have to be honest with yourself about your good qualities, your bad qualities and the things you need to work on.

The second thing is to dream, and dream big. What’s the world of possibilities for yourself and for your organization? You have to be able to say, “Here’s where I want to get to.” It’s not that you’ll ever necessarily get there, but if you don’t dream, you’ll never even get started.

The third is to lead with your heart first. Let people see that you’re human and that there’s a human side. Show people that you have compassion. It doesn’t mean that you don’t set expectations and standards. But if you lead with your heart, people figure out whether you’re genuine, whether you’re real.

The fourth thing can be the hardest for young leaders: to trust the people you lead. It’s about letting go, and allowing people to grow into leadership roles. At the end of the day, it’s O.K. if they make a mistake or if they fall down. Because as leaders, it’s your job to pick them back up.

The fifth is do the right thing, always. It’s easy to say. But the way I like to describe it is that if the rules say one thing, particularly as it relates to people, and you genuinely believe in that person, sometimes it takes courage to do the right thing and give that person a second chance. Because we’ve all made mistakes and somebody picked us up.

The sixth is that it’s ultimately about serving the people you lead. It’s about putting the cause before yourself, and a willingness to see it through. I developed this list over time because it’s the way I live each day. My job is to lead and to make a difference. I’m a catalyst for change, to create an environment where people can grow and prosper.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What questions do you ask?

A. I’ll ask unpredictable questions like, “What do you like to do for fun?” That gives you an insight into what people do with their time and what they value. But more than anything else, I hire for attitude. Skills can be learned. I’ll take attitude any day over a good skill set.

Q. How do you get insights into their attitude?

A. I’ll ask questions like: “What’s important to you? Why is it important?” Or I’ll push the résumé to the side and say: “Let’s just have a conversation about you. Tell me about yourself.” You learn a lot. If they start with where they were born, then that person is probably what I call a checklist manager who needs to be told what to do, compared to somebody who just says, “this is the type of person I am, and here’s what’s important to me.”

A lot of interviewing, quite frankly, is based on experience, gut, what makes sense, and what’s in their eyes. What are they feeling? How will they react? You know there will be tension, and there will be politics if you’re not careful. So will this person create that kind of environment or will they be part of the environment and help build a partnership? I’m a believer in partnerships, that we’re in it together. So you have to find people who will be collaborative. It doesn’t mean they can’t be strong leaders, Type A personalities. But will they act as a partner? I think you can get at that with the right kind of questions, and asking about their experiences in certain situations.

Case Study: Family Farm in California Confronts Reports of Arsenic in Its Rice

THE CHALLENGE In mid-September, Consumer Reports published the results of independent lab tests that found inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, in rice and many rice products. This came on the heels of a study by Dartmouth, released in February, that showed inorganic arsenic in brown rice syrup. Tim Schultz, 51, part of the third generation of Lundberg Farms’s family owners, said the company’s response was evolving. Because there is no federal safe standard for inorganic arsenic in food, Lundberg has struggled to make sense of the information for its customers, who greeted the news with panic.

THE BACKGROUND The farm was founded by Albert Lundberg, a Nebraska wheat and corn farmer who came to California in 1937 to escape the Dust Bowl. He, his wife, Frances, and their four sons grew rice and sold it to the local co-op until the late 1960s, when they became part of the nascent organic farming movement. They built a small rice mill and began selling organic short-grain brown rice.

The farm grew steadily — an average of 11 percent a year — and never needed outside investment. In the 1980s, sales grew much faster than land could be acquired, so the company decided to contract with other growers. Its leaders chose family farms that shared their view of sustainable farming, which Mr. Schultz said was to “leave the land better than you found it.”

In the early 1990s, leadership of the farm moved from the second generation to the third, with the grandchildren of Albert and Frances (and in some cases their spouses, like Mr. Schultz) taking over. Two fourth-generation Lundbergs recently became involved.

Seventy percent of the farm’s sales are organic products and the other 30 percent are “eco-farmed,” meaning no fumigants are used and the company limits the use of herbicides and pesticides, Mr. Schultz said. But that did not insulate the company against the arsenic findings.

Although the government regulates the amount of inorganic arsenic in drinking water, there are no standards for food. “The jury is still out on what levels may cause health problems,” Mr. Schultz said, “but the federal standard for drinking water is 10 parts per billion. Tests on our rice show 95 parts per billion.” Consumer Reports’ tests found levels in rice ranging from about 24 to 214 parts per billion.

With its customers looking for answers, the company worried about how and what to communicate. “One of our biggest challenges is that this is a very technical issue,” Mr. Schultz said. “It’s not a 30-second conversation.”

THE OPTIONS The family’s first response was to play defense. Because many studies have documented the health benefits of eating rice, especially brown rice, Mr. Schultz said, “We were thinking, if this was really causing problems in the population, wouldn’t it have shown up in data somewhere before this?”

Dismissing the new information, however, was not consistent with the business’s culture or the family’s belief system. “We are a company that is always open to new information and ideas — like growing organic,” Mr. Schultz said. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve been successful.”

The farm’s leaders also considered not addressing the issue at all, because the studies and tests were not targeted specifically at Lundberg Family Farms. Mr. Schultz said they discussed letting the industry take the lead and following in the steps of research organizations and industry groups like the USA Rice Federation. “This was a bigger issue than us, so we thought maybe we shouldn’t try to handle this as an individual company,” he said.

But in March, the company posted a video on its Web site in which its chief executive, Grant Lundberg, acknowledged the news and talked about the family’s efforts to keep its products safe and healthy. The decision to post the video was not easy. “Some family members were concerned that we were making this the focal point, rather than stressing all the good things about rice,” Mr. Schultz said. “But we thought this was a way to show that we really do care.”

The farm’s leaders also began intensively studying arsenic and its relationship to rice. They were quickly overwhelmed, however, by the volume of information, much of it contradictory. “We put all the papers and information we were reading online in real time for consumers so they could read what we were reading,” Mr. Schultz said. That proved to be a mistake — too much information and not enough analysis. Not every consumer wants that level of detail, he said: “Many of them just want to know, ‘Will eating rice kill me?’ ”

Former AUSA Returns to Head Northern District of California Civil Division

A veteran of the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco has returned to federal government as the new chief of civil litigation.

Alex Tse, until recently a deputy city attorney for San Francisco, steps into the role long held by Joann Swanson, who retired September 28 after three decades in the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Tse joined the city attorney's office in 2007 and served as chief of neighborhood and resident safety. In 2010 he led a legal action to stop a guerilla marketing campaign on behalf of the online gaming company Zynga Inc. that left thousands of fake $25,000 bills glued to city sidewalks.

He previously spent 12 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and served as Swanson's deputy from 2001 to 2006. After graduating from UC-Hastings law school, Tse worked as an associate at the firm then known as Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges and then at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who got to know Tse when both were line attorneys in the office, said she is "delighted" with his return.

"If I had to lose my civil chief, who has done such a tremendous job, I feel fortunate that Alex was available to come back," Haag said.

Tse did not return a call seeking comment.

Ironically, a recent civil win for Swanson's division came in litigation against Tse's former office over postal delivery service to the city's single-room-occupancy hotels.

The San Francisco city attorney's office and tenants' rights groups sued the postal service to require delivery to individual mailboxes in the hotels, which serve as residences to many poor and disabled people. A federal judge dismissed the action last year.

Haag called the Northern District of California a popular venue for claims against the federal government and said Tse's caseload would be "interesting and varied."

She added: "The Civil Division here doesn't always get the attention that the Criminal Division does, but folks in our Civil Division do incredibly important work."

High Gas Prices in California Have Drivers Scrambling

Some gas stations around the Los Angeles area were forced to shut off their pumps because of rationing by suppliers, and they displayed makeshift signs explaining that the shortages were not their fault. Drivers formed long lines at stations that did have gas, with some stations raising prices to more than $5 a gallon for regular gasoline.

“What are they doing to us?” said Marilyn Tucker, a FedEx employee, as she stopped pumping at a central Los Angeles gas station at $37, well before the tank of her sedan was full. “It’s just ridiculous.”

Prices had been rising for several days, making California the most expensive state for gasoline. On Friday, Californians paid an average of $4.49 a gallon for regular — 70 cents above the national average. Nationally, gas prices have risen less than half a penny a gallon over the last week, with prices now easing in many states.

Supplies of refined petroleum products on the West Coast are now at their lowest levels since 2008, while national inventories are about normal.

The immediate cause of the California price rise was a power failure at Exxon Mobil’s Torrance, Calif., refinery on Monday that shut down some production units at the 150,000-barrel-a-day facility. The company on Friday said the refinery had resumed normal operations. Supplies on the West Coast had already been tight because of an Aug. 6 fire at Chevron’s 245,000-barrel-a-day Richmond, Calif., refinery, which has still not been restored to full production.

California typically has substantially higher gasoline prices than most of the country because of its tough environmental regulations and high taxes. Gasoline supplies are traditionally tight this time of year as refiners do maintenance work to switch from summer to fall gasoline blends mandated by the California pollution-reduction regulations. But this year, energy experts say, the local gasoline market is particularly chaotic because of the refinery shutdowns.

Refining experts said the rationing and exceedingly high prices would probably last a couple of weeks at the most. Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, said California customers might get some relief in the next few days because traders were suddenly lowering the prices of their bulk sales almost as fast as they were raising them over the last few days. He said the wholesale price for gasoline on the West Coast dropped 50 cents on Friday from a high of $4.25 a gallon.

“The prices are incredibly erratic,” Mr. Kloza said. “It’s gone from incredibly excessive pricing to just plain excessive.”

In Southern California, Costco Wholesale outlets and other unbranded stations were particularly hard hit by the shortages because refineries normally supply their branded customers first because they pay a higher premium for locking in guaranteed supplies. Valero Energy, along with other refiners, temporarily halted spot sales of gasoline to some of its California customers.

“California requires a specific blend of gasoline that only the refineries on the West Coast make,” said Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero. “So when there is a shortage of that blend, you can’t just send supplies from somewhere else.”

Gasoline prices largely depend on the price of crude oil. Global oil prices have eased somewhat since the beginning of the year, despite turmoil in the Middle East and sanctions on Iran. The easing is attributed to slowing economic activity around the world and increased supplies coming from several countries including Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Across the country, gas prices remain high. The $3.79 average price for a gallon of regular is 39 cents higher than it was a year ago, although the price has come down 3 cents over the last month.

Nationally, Mr. Kloza said, the price of a regular gallon of gasoline should ease to about $3.50 between now and December, which would put prices fairly similar to a year ago.

High gasoline prices have frequently been a political issue, but President Obama may get a break this year because several swing states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire have gasoline prices that are relatively low compared with the national average.

On Friday, in central Los Angeles, motorists expressed a combination of frustration, resignation and anger.

“I’m not happy about it,” said Michael Eisenhower, 52, a television costume designer, as he stared at the digits rising to nearly $40 to fill up his sport utility vehicle. He stopped short of topping off as he complained that his wages were not rising as fast as the price of gas.

“I’ve been putting in a reasonable amount of gas, enough for two days or so,” he said. “It’s my way of budgeting what I have to work with each week.”

Ian Lovett contributed reporting.

Walmart Workers in California Protest

The strikers, who union officials said came from nine Walmarts in the Los Angeles area, said they were mainly protesting what they said was management’s frequent retaliation against employees who spoke up about working conditions.

Several of the workers, who said this was the first-ever strike against Walmart in the United States, also said they were protesting low wages and short hours.

Manuela Rosales, 25, who works in the cellphone department of the Pico Rivera store, said she walked out on Thursday, missing her afternoon shift, because “when we speak out, they cut my hours in retaliation and they have me pull pallets, which is very hard work.” She added, “I’m a single mom and I can’t afford them cutting my hours.”

Ms. Rosales said that about 30 of the 100 or so workers from her store’s morning shift walked out on Thursday.

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, sought to play down the job action, with a company spokesman saying it was a mere rally and not a real strike.

“You can count on less than one hand the number of associates that we are aware of who left their post to participate in the rally,” said Dan Fogleman, the Walmart spokesman. “That’s very few when you consider the more than 12,000 people that we employ in L.A. County.”

The rally outside the Pico Rivera store was boisterous, with workers carrying signs that read, “Stand up, live better,” and “On strike for the freedom to speak out.” The workers, who are not unionized, maintained that they were striking against unfair labor practices, specifically illegal retaliation, a claim that could protect them from being punished for walking out.

The walkout and rally were organized by Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, a group of several thousand Walmart workers that is closely affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Dawn Le, a union spokeswoman, said 71 Walmart workers who were scheduled to work Thursday signed in to show participation in the strike and rally.

The rally attracted several prominent supporters, including Charles Calderon, majority leader of the California State Assembly; the Rev. Eric P. Lee, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

“Nobody is going to stop us from speaking out,” Ms. Durazo said. “Walmart may sell jeans and video games and all that, but the biggest product they sell in this country and this world is poverty.”

Mr. Fogleman said the rally was just the union’s “ latest publicity stunt.”

“Our stores in the community are staffed up and open for business,” he said. “This event is not a factor.”

Mr. Fogleman also denied that this was the first strike against Walmart in the United States, pointing to a 2006 protest by 100 workers at a store in Hialeah Gardens, Fla.

Thursday’s walkout occurred three weeks after several dozen employees at warehouses that serve Walmart walked off the job in California and Illinois to protest what they said were onerous conditions, including toiling in warehouses that they said sometimes heat up to 120 degrees. The California job action included a 50-mile, six-day march by warehouse workers from Ontario, Calif., to Los Angeles City Hall.

Mr. Fogleman said Walmart does not manage those warehouses but takes accusations of workplace problems very seriously. He said Walmart has sent people to those warehouses, and any legitimate problems have been addressed.