Angry County MDs Strike; Nurses Obey Court, Return : Pharmacists Also Stage a Walkout

As striking Los Angeles County nurses reluctantly began returning to work this morning under court order, angry doctors, wearing green scrub clothes and stethoscopes, walked out of the giant Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and set up picket lines outside.

The troubled county health system was also hit by a walkout of pharmacists that shut down the pharmacy for indigent patients at County-USC and forced supervisors to operate the pharmacies in other county hospitals.

In addition all routine laboratory work was suspended today at the county’s Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South-Central Los Angeles when 26 of the facility’s 38 lab technicians failed to report to work in an apparently related walkout.

Union representatives for the thousands of nurses who had walked off their jobs Tuesday were served early this morning with the court order forcing the nurses to return to work. The court order was handed to union officials at an early morning bargaining session requested by county management. Bargaining resumed shortly before midnight on Thursday but nurses had vowed to continue the walkout during the talks.

Decision to Comply

Backing away from an earlier statement that such an order would be ignored, nurses and union representatives decided to comply and at the same time issued a defiant broadside:

“The striking registered nurses of L.A. County have brought the county to its knees,” said a statement issued by the nurse’s bargaining committee of the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, Local 660. “Because of our power, the county has obtained a court injunction which has temporarily ordered us back to work. We will continue our fight. . . . “

A hearing for a preliminary injunction against the strike is set for Feb. 10.

A spokesman for the 1,445-bed County-USC Medical Center said 65 of the 557 residents and interns scheduled to work this morning failed to report.

Mark Segal, director of the Joint Council of Interns and Residents, which represents the doctors, estimated “80% to 90% of the residents are participating in the work stoppage but everybody is periodically going into the hospital to check on their patients.”

About 60 doctors picketed and chanted outside the hospital as drivers of passing cars honked their horns.

Residents are doctors who have graduated from medical school and are receiving four years of training in a hospital under the supervision of senior physicians. Interns are first-year residents. The senior physicians actually have responsibility for the patients.

Dispute Described

The dispute involving resident physicians centers on a move by the county last summer to contract with USC to pay and manage the latest group of first-year residents hired at County-USC Medical Center. The county wants the right in a new contract to continue the practice of “contracting out” for physician care. But the doctors argue that the practice will kill their union and downgrade patient care, as a result.

Residents at Martin Luther King Jr./ Drew Medical Center and at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance voted Thursday night not to join in the strike.

One resident in internal medicine at Harbor said the doctors there did not support the work action because the residents at County-USC did not give five days’ notice.

However, the residents at Harbor decided at their meeting that they too will strike at some future date if the “unsafe and deplorable” conditions at Harbor continue.