40,000-Member Union Sets Sept. 30 Deadline : County Workers OK Walkout

More than 1,500 members of Los Angeles County’s largest public employee union voted Thursday night to give their leadership the authority to call a strike against the county if a dispute over a new contract is not resolved by midnight Sept. 30.

The authorization could lead to the first major strike against Los Angeles County.

Meeting at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, the members of Service Employees International Union Local 660 authorized local leaders by a 1,529-36 vote to call a strike if talks fail to produce an agreement with the county.

“There’s going to be a settlement, or we won’t work!” shouted Phil Giarrizzo, general manager of the local, to a thunderous ovation.

However, Giarrizzo assured members that he would not use his authority to call a full-scale strike unless members voted again by secret ballot to reject the county’s final contract offer, which has not been made.

Selective Strikes

Giarrizzo said after the vote, however, that he might call selective strikes even without a membership vote on a final offer. These strikes might involve specific types of employees at selected facilities, he said.

Local 660 represents 40,000 of the county’s 71,000 employees and bargains for 24 personnel classifications, including clerical workers, accountants, prosecutors, public defenders, welfare eligibility workers, registered nurses, health inspectors, court reporters, librarians and paramedics.

The strike-authorization vote technically empowers the local to seek permission to strike from the union national board of directors, and to ask the County Federation of Labor and the Teamsters Union not to cross its picket lines.

The vote came nearly three weeks after the union’s two-year contract with the county expired with no settlement on a new wage-and-fringe-benefit package. Both sides have recently conceded that negotiations, which include a state mediator, are moving slowly.

Thursday night’s vote also culminated two weeks of protest activity by Local 660 members in which thousands of employees have engaged in sporadic sickouts or in demonstrations. Those work stoppages are expected to continue.

Supervisors Ridiculed

In a fiery, 45-minute speech in which he repeatedly ridiculed the conservative majority of the Board of Supervisors, Giarrizzo said county employees deserve a higher wage increase than the county is willing to pay. He scoffed at county claims that a fiscal crisis prevents a wage increase that would be acceptable to his members.

Separating Local 660 and the county are union demands for at least a 5% pay increase a year with no cut in fringe benefits won in previous years’ bargaining. The county offer, although in flux, is said by union officials to be hovering around a 2%-to-3% wage hike with demands for some concessions on fringe benefits, such as holidays and sick pay. County management has refused to discuss the nature of its offers.

Reporters and camera crews were allowed into the 1,700-seat auditorium during Giarrizzo’s speech, but were asked to leave during the strike authorization vote immediately afterward. No vote was taken on the county proposals, however.

The deadline corresponds with expiration of contract-extension agreements between the county and its other employee unions. Leaders of several of those unions have recently said they might follow Local 660’s lead and begin work actions of their own unless settlements are reached soon. The 3,850-member Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs has scheduled a strike-sanction vote Saturday.

Although there have been about 50 sickouts or slowdowns of one sort or another since collective bargaining was extended to county employees in 1966, there have been no widespread strikes. Strike authorizations, however, have been voted in past years by Local 660 as well as by other county employee unions.