3 Supervisors Vow to Fight Court’s Strike Ruling

The conservative majority of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday angrily denounced a state Supreme Court decision giving public employees the right to strike and vowed to back a statewide initiative to reverse the ruling if the Legislature fails to do so.

Labeling the decision “ridiculous,” “dangerous” and “irrational,” Supervisors Mike Antonovich, Pete Schabarum and Deane Dana joined forces in support of the motion to condemn Monday’s landmark ruling, which arose out of a 1976 county sanitation workers strike. They also asked county lawyers to explore a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Opposing them were Supervisors Ed Edelman and Kenneth Hahn, Democrats who usually take a more liberal stance than the nonpartisan board majority, who are Republicans.

In its ruling, the state Supreme Court erased 25 years of California case law and held that the freedom of public employees to strike is “a basic civil liberty.”

The court’s decision gave conservative supervisors an opportunity to attack Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two of the associate justices--Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso--who will face voters in a confirmation election next year.

Charge by Schabarum

Schabarum charged that the right-to-strike decision, endorsed by the three justices, “is nothing other than a desperate attempt to secure public employee support” for the justices’ campaigns.

Claiming that the court was drafting rather than interpreting law, Antonovich said the ruling is a “slap in the face to the democratic processes and will make government beholden to the labor bosses who are not elected by the voters.”

The board, with conservatives supporting the action, successfully pushed a 1982 ballot measure to ban county employee strikes. But the measure was struck down by a lower court. Last year, the board tried to put a revised version of the measure on the ballot but was told by a lower court that it could not. The court said the board had failed to negotiate the proposal--which would have effectively amended existing labor contracts--with unions.

On Tuesday the conservatives warned of “chaos” and a “shutdown” of government services if the state Supreme Court’s decision is allowed to stand. Antonovich raised the specter of county hospital emergency rooms and other “vital human services” being idled by strikers.

Edelman and Hahn, however, said their colleagues were overreacting.

Edelman said there have been few county work stoppages in recent years in defiance of the prohibition of strikes and pointed out that the state Supreme Court decision does not cover employees whose absence would pose an imminent public health or safety threat, such as police officers and firefighters.

“We’re not going to have a shutting down of government,” Edelman said. “No group goes out on strike for the heck of it.”

Strikes are the “ultimate weapon of labor,” Hahn said, adding that workers are often confronted by “arrogant” management officials who oppose “anything that promotes the welfare of the laborer.”

Phil Giarrizzo, general manager of Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, the county’s largest employee union, said the decision will restore “some equity” to the bargaining table. The local is negotiating a new contract.

“This board has had the attitude of take it or leave it,” Giarrizzo said. “Now, it’s clear public employees have the right to withhold services.”

Edelman said the problem lies with Sacramento lawmakers who have “ducked the issue all these years” by relying on courts to settle the issue, rather than enacting a statute that would either allow or ban employee strikes.

The conservatives rejected Edelman’s suggestion that the board back state legislation to replace public employees’ right to strike with binding third-party arbitration of labor disputes.

Antonovich, who is chairman of the state Republican Party, said an initiative reversing the right to strike could be timed to appear on the same November, 1986, ballot as the confirmation vote on the Supreme Court justices. Conservative Republicans have been gearing up for a major campaign to dump Bird and other justices they claim have a liberal bias.