City Union Poised for Strike

Municipal workers were expected to begin their first significant strike in Los Angeles in a generation late Monday, even as a judge barred 200 of the most crucial workers at airports, sewage treatment plants and emergency response facilities from walking off the job.

The Engineers and Architects Assn., which represents more than 7,500 of the city’s approximately 45,000 employees, called on its workers to begin a two-day strike with their shifts today. But because some of those overnight shifts begin at 10 p.m., pickets were expected to go up Monday night.

The union includes accountants, management analysts, civil engineers, sanitary engineers, criminalists in the Los Angeles Police Department, architects, airport operation coordinators and transportation engineers, according to the city’s personnel department. Their average salary is $74,500.

Robert Aquino, the union’s executive director, said the union might extend the strike for more than two days and suggested daily life would be disrupted for Angelenos. “You may be looking at an extended strike,” said Aquino, who called Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a “scab” for saying he intended to cross a picket line to get to work today.

“Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive” this afternoon, Aquino added in an interview Monday.

For most of Monday, the long-running battle between the city and the union, which has worked without a contract since 2004, was a legal one.

In midafternoon, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs issued a temporary restraining order to more than 200 workers represented by the union, saying they must show up for work even though their union is on strike.

The workers include 71 coordinators and operations superintendents who do maintenance and inspections on runways at LAX and the Van Nuys and Ontario airports. Also barred from striking were 37 airport workers responsible for video surveillance, checking employee badges, dispatching airport police and controlling the assignment of gates.

In aggressive sparring with lawyers for the city and the union, Janavs expressed strong concern about security at the airports, mentioning the elevated homeland security threat level of orange and the recent plot uncovered in England to blow up airliners headed for the United States. “What I think is significant is that these airports are operating under heightened security,” she told the attorneys.

Adam Stern, a lawyer representing the union, argued at one point that a strike would mean fewer workers and perhaps fewer customers. “There will be less crowds and less targets for terrorists,” he told the judge.

Janavs’ restraining order also applies to 78 city employees who handle police, fire and other emergency communications and to 14 key employees in the city’s sewage treatment plants.

The union and the city each declared victory. Union officials said the ruling showed that their members were critical to public safety; the union has argued that they should have received raises more in line with those given to police, Fire Department and Department of Water and Power employees. The city, after months of impasse with the union, earlier this month imposed salary terms with a 6.25% raise over three years, a figure in line with contracts signed by other civilian unions.

In a statement, Villaraigosa said he welcomed the judge’s ruling. “The court today sent a clear message: While we will always respect the right of workers to organize, we cannot tolerate any effort to compromise the safety of the people of Los Angeles.”

Despite the ruling, uncertainty prevailed inside both the city government and the union. Adding to the confusion was an announcement that a council of two dozen Teamsters locals in Southern California, Nevada and Hawaii would honor the strike. Union officials suggested that could potentially slow commerce at the Port of Los Angeles.

There were signs that neither side was quite ready for a walkout. During the court proceeding, the city failed to produce critical documents until after the hearing began, drawing a rebuke from the judge for “dilatory tactics” and an “inexcusable oversight.”

At the same hearing, Stern, the union lawyer, suggested the union might not be unified in support of the strike. “Not all people we represent will support the strike to the same degree,” he told Janavs. Outside the courtroom, Aquino, the union executive director, said radio ads the union had made -- which say the walkout would result in closed runways and sewage spills -- included some “hyperbole.”

“I didn’t want a strike at all,” said Aquino, who struck a more conciliatory tone Monday. “The only people who want a strike are people who haven’t been through a strike.”

At the same time, city officials, who have pledged to keep public services up and running, backed away from those claims in court filings seeking the temporary restraining order. Rita Robinson, director of the Bureau of Sanitation, warned in a court declaration of the possible “discharge of inadequately treated sewage.” Another city court filing raised the prospect that LAX could shut down for the duration of the strike.

Kamton Joe, assistant general manager of the city’s Information Technology Agency, said in a court filing that in a strike, technical support personnel who handle law enforcement databases would be off the job, and police officers “would be unable to ascertain the status of persons they encounter, including those with outstanding warrants.”

Even with the temporary restraining order in hand, city officials were uncertain how the strike might affect services. Asked if city services would be disrupted, Deputy City Atty. Hugo Rossitter, who sought the restraining order, answered, “I don’t know.”

Rossitter’s boss, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, said he would not cross the picket lines out of respect for striking workers -- the first city elected official to say so, said his spokesman Nick Velasquez.

“Rocky has a full day of work but he’s not coming into the office,” Velasquez said. “He has a full day of work ahead of him and is going to be working off site. He’s probably going to meetings scheduled in various places, I’m not sure where exactly.”

Velasquez, like other city public information officers, is a member of the Engineers and Architects Assn.; questioned by reporters in court Monday, he said he intended to show up for work.

City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, the highest-ranking council member still in town during the body’s two-week recess, said she and other officials would be briefed on the strike every two hours beginning with an 8 a.m. conference call today.

She added that she believed the strike would have a serious impact only if members from other unions decided not to cross picket lines.

Engineers and Architects Assn. members themselves were wrestling with whether to honor the strike, particularly in light of statements by their own union that they could face rebuke, fines and even expulsion if they did not.

In two dozen interviews around the city in recent days, most workers expressed disappointment that the city had not provided bigger raises and said they planned to skip work today and join picket lines.

Debbie Cabeza, a computer programmer analyst in the Information Technology Agency, said she is fed up after years of pay raises she believes have lagged behind inflation. She has four daughters and is paying college tuition for two of them. The family van is on its last legs, she said, but she can’t afford to replace it. She said the mayor and council staff have had salary increases of 10% -- far above what the union has been offered.

“Maybe the mayor and City Council will have computer problems for two days,” she said. “They will have no one to call.”

Mark Miodovski, a senior management analyst in LAX concessions who is represented by the union but who -- like more than 40% of workers in the union -- does not pay dues, said he would cross a picket line today for the first time in his life.

“Most people here are trying to finagle a way out of trying to cross the picket line. They will at least honor the picket line,” he said of the debate among airport workers. “But we’re very well paid, we have very good benefits. What are we striking for?”

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Times staff writers Jim Newton and Duke Helfand contributed to this report.