More Than 1,500 Workers Walk Out, but L.A. Copes

More than 1,500 Los Angeles city employees walked off their jobs Tuesday, launching the first significant strike of municipal workers in a generation but failing to disrupt daily life across the city.

The Engineers and Architects Assn., whose more than 7,500 members have been working without a contract since 2004, said 3,000 had joined picket lines outside city offices. But Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at an afternoon news conference that 1,000 workers were picketing and an additional 600 stayed home.

The EAA represents accountants, chemists, forensic scientists and other technical professionals making from $36,000 to $126,000 annually, with an average of $74,500, according to the city.

The quality of the job action defied the predictions of the city and the union.

The union -- which had suggested its strike would close airport runways, send sewage into the bay and cause huge traffic tie-ups -- slowed city business in several departments but didn’t have a huge effect. A plan for a 4:30 p.m. march to City Hall, designed to cause rush-hour delays, was shelved in favor of a mild protest during which members repeatedly crossed Figueroa Street to slow traffic. “We didn’t nail every target,” conceded Robert Aquino, the union’s executive director.

And city officials, who had pledged as recently as a week ago that the strike would not hurt public services, were forced to concede that the strike had an effect on operations at the harbor, Los Angeles International Airport and the Department of Building and Safety.

Work at the port was delayed more than three hours during a dispute with longshoremen who were honoring the strike. At the airport, some work was delayed on the construction of a new runway. At the Building and Safety Department, there were few employees able to check plans. The city delayed its usual tests on the water quality in Santa Monica Bay. Truck drivers making deliveries on behalf of companies such as UPS and Office Depot turned around when they were confronted with picket lines outside the Piper Tech building just east of Union Station.

It also was a good day to park illegally downtown. Though members of other city unions reported to work, earning the thanks of the mayor, about 100 central city traffic officers -- who are represented by Service Employees International Union Local 347 -- refused to cross the picket line, said Julie Butcher, the local’s leader.

“All of our departments are functioning and operating safely and providing services necessary to get the job done,” Villaraigosa said.

It was Villaraigosa, early in his second summer in office, who emerged as the central figure of the strike. On picket lines, the former union organizer was denounced with chants of “One-term mayor” and “Equal pay for equal work. L.A. mayor don’t be a jerk.”

Union leaders and rank-and-file strikers alike blamed the mayor for offering what they believe are inadequate wage increases. Those increases, which were imposed on the union last week by the City Council, cover the period from July 2004 through June 2007. The offer includes retroactive raises of 2% in 2005 and 2006, and a 2.25% boost in January 2007. It includes no raise for 2004.

Around the city, workers pointed out that Villaraigosa had refused to block more generous raises for Department of Water and Power workers and police officers. Several striking EAA members noted that the union had contributed more than $100,000 to an independent expenditure campaign that helped elect Villaraigosa mayor.

“Zero percent [for the first year] is a slap in the face,” said Lily Sokolovsky, an electrical engineer who has worked for the city for 26 years and joined the picket line outside a city office building in Van Nuys. She makes $78,000 a year.

Some union claims could not be verified. Aquino told reporters Tuesday that the Building and Safety Department was closed. In fact, the department was open and serving customers, though only three of 25 stations were staffed in the Van Nuys office.

Aquino told reporters and strikers outside City Hall that the mayor is “a scab” for showing up for work during the strike, and threatened to extend the walkout, originally scheduled for two days, if the city does not reopen contract negotiations. “This is the appetizer,” said Aquino. “If the city still wants to take the attitude of, ‘We’re not going to talk to EAA,’ we’ll put on a main course.”

Villaraigosa said the city was prepared for a longer strike and would not renegotiate the imposed raises.

There was plenty of activity Tuesday to occupy city officials.

At the Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest, seven shipping terminals were shut down for more than three hours when workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union honored the picket lines. Of the port’s nearly 800 employees, 227 are EAA members.

Up to 100 longshoremen refused to enter the dock sites, said EAA picket organizer Dennis Hagner.

Shortly after the work stoppage began at 7 a.m., the Pacific Maritime Assn., which employs dockside labor for the port’s shipping companies, called in an arbitrator to determine whether the job action was legal under the longshoremen’s contract. Around 11 a.m., the arbitrator ruled that the dockworkers assembled at the Evergreen America Corp. container terminal would have to return to work. The order was soon passed to longshoremen at other terminals. The maritime association expects to deduct about four hours’ pay from the workers who participated.

At the city’s huge Hyperion sewage treatment plant south of LAX, dozens of pickets in black EAA T-shirts stood outside the main gate. “I feel betrayed,” said Curtis Cash, a water biologist. “All of our jobs are critical to the environment and human health concerns.”

Cash supervises a team of biologists and analysts who test water quality at 36 shoreline spots from San Pedro to Malibu, but they were on strike. Without the tests, Cash said: “You have no way of knowing how clean any particular beach might be.”

The state was notified that the tests may be postponed until Thursday.

For travelers at LAX, the only sign of the strike Tuesday was a small group of EAA pickets on the arrival level just east of Terminal 1.

But on the west side of the sprawling airport, out of sight to travelers, the striking EAA workers were having an effect, particularly on a crucial project to move the airport’s southernmost runway.

Jake Adams, a program manager for the city airport agency, said most of the Teamsters union members who drive the dump trucks that haul broken up sections of Runway 25 Left to a concrete recycling plant at the western end of the airport honored the picket line and did not report for work. Operators of cranes and bulldozers did the same.

Meanwhile, architectural interior designer Beatriz Glanz had hoped to zip in and out of downtown Tuesday to get construction plans stamped at the Department of Building and Safety. When she arrived at the office on Figueroa Street, she ran into the only worker who provides the stamps. That worker, walking a picket line, waved to Glanz.

“She said, ‘Hi, Beatriz. Who will stamp the plans? I can’t. I’m on strike.’ ”

So Glanz made a mad dash to nearby City Hall hoping to get the necessary approvals -- enduring boos and jeers from workers as she approached the entrance. Finally, Glanz made it to the building and safety counter on the seventh floor. The place was empty except for one worker who couldn’t answer Glanz’s questions. She left dazed and frustrated. She would have to return another day from her office in Beverly Hills. “I agree with their right,” she said of the strikers, “but this is going to cost thousands of dollars” in delays.

The Planning Department reported that 176 of its 295 workers were on strike.

In the Department of Animal Services, not one of 44 registered veterinary technicians came to work at the city’s six shelters, but officials said that all three of its veterinarians were available and that other employees with training as animal care technicians were available to help.

Outside the entrance to City Hall, the picket lines were decidedly white-collar. At least two pickets wore ties. “I’m sympathetic and supporting our troops,” said Will Newman, a city accountant who was dressed in a white shirt and khaki slacks and said he had never been involved in a strike until Tuesday.

Another striker was Garen Yegparian, 44, an office engineering tech who does computations on building formulas. It was his first time on strike. Asked if he was prepared to strike for more than two days, Yegparian said, “I don’t know, I have bills to pay.”

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Times staff writers Steve Hymon, Jim Newton, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Stuart Silverstein and Nancy Wride contributed to this report.