Police Labor Unit Is a Different Sort of Strike Force

Sgt. Tommy Thomson and Detective Steve Smith don’t like to belabor the point, but as members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s labor relations unit, they just can’t help it.

“We don’t take sides with management or the unions,” Thomson said.

“We’re nobody’s pawn,” Smith said.

The two men were proudly reciting the credo of their little-known, 15-member unit, whose assignment is to build and maintain good working relationships with company executives and leaders of the city’s 380 union locals, making sure both sides obey the law in a job action.

The unit, the largest of its kind in California, is also responsible for investigating crimes that may occur during a strike, such as sabotage of a company’s equipment or a hit-and-run accident in which a picket is injured. However, other special units, such as the robbery-homicide division, handle any murders, kidnapings and bombings that might occur in a strike.

Thomson’s and Smith’s neutrality paid off last week in phone calls from the management of Universal Studio Tours and from Teamsters Local 399, alerting them to the strike that began Monday, when 120 tram drivers and mechanics walked off the job. Until the strike ends, the two men and at least two others in the unit will be in charge of keeping order on the picket lines.

“When one group lets us know about something, like a walkout or getting a restraining order against pickets, we don’t tell the other,” Smith said. “But it helps us plan ahead, which we need to do with all the labor activity in the city.”

Since the detail was established in 1969, labor relations officers have made an average of 40 arrests a year, a low number that Capt. Charles A. Labrow said indicates how well the unit succeeds at keeping most strikes from exploding into violence.

The unit monitors an average of 80 strikes annually, Labrow said. At least four other work actions were taking place in the city last week, making it difficult for Labrow to decide where to place his men. He assigned at least four officers to monitor strike lines at Universal Studios because “with 18,000 to 24,000 visitors a day, I felt there was a great deal of potential for disruption.”

The other work actions last week ranged from a four-person picket line at a cabinet shop in Pacoima to a job action against a downtown bank by janitors trying to organize workers. The janitors allegedly attempted to disrupt business at the bank by spilling thousands of pennies on the floor shortly before closing, a tactic Labrow said was illegal. He said his men spent some time last week videotaping the “penny caper” in preparation for filing a complaint with the city attorney’s office.

Thomson, 52, a tall, loquacious man, and Smith, 48, his quieter partner, have written just one citation so far in the Universal Studios strike. It went to the driver of a pickup truck who entered a crosswalk on Lankershim Boulevard while pickets were walking across the street.

The driver began yelling “Get out of the way!” and “I scab all the time.” The pickets yelled back, knocked their signs against the truck, and within moments the driver had pulled over, ready to fight.

The four police officers pulled the irate man away from the pickets and told him that pickets have the right of way as long as they obey traffic signals and do not block traffic. “If we hadn’t been there keeping an eye on things, it could have turned into a donnybrook,” Labrow said. “Uniformed officers from North Hollywood Division would have had to be pulled off patrol to calm things down.”

Officers on the detail are more familiar with labor laws than most patrol officers, Labrow said. The department looks for seasoned, patient officers whose personalities enable them to deal with emotional situations.

Rumor control is a key part of their job, Thomson said. When a striker was killed near picket lines at the Santa Fe railroad yard downtown, word raced along the picket lines, infuriating workers, he said.

Pickets believed the man had been intentionally killed by a truck driver sympathetic to management and that the driver had fled to Mexico. Actually, without the driver’s knowledge, the man had leaped onto the passing truck to disconnect the brake cables and fell to his death. The driver cooperated with police when he was stopped on his way to Lancaster, Thomson said.

Officers from the labor detail called a meeting with strikers to explain the truth about the death and succeeded in warding off retaliatory action, Thomson said.

Sheriff’s Unit

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a similar, five-member unit and some of its fficers also are monitoring the Universal Studios strike. In fact, the 420-acre park lies within the county. The Los Angeles Police Department is involved because the surrounding streets, where pickets are walking, fall within city jurisdiction, Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Preston said.

Officers of both departments wear jackets and ties rather than uniforms because they often meet with executives and union organizers, Preston said. “The other reason is that uniformed officers are seen as agents of management, which antagonizes things out on the lines,” he said.

Joan Bullard, a spokeswoman for Universal Studios Tour, and Bill Harden, a business agent with the Teamsters local, said the agencies had been doing “a great job” on keeping order during the current strike.

Thomson and Smith said they are confident that they have the Universal strike under control. But neither would predict how long they thought the walkout would last.

One strike three years ago lasted 52 days, and members of the city labor detail didn’t get a day off until it was over, Smith said. On the other hand, the 1987 Directors Guild of America strike only lasted 22 minutes, Thomson said.