600 Santa Barbara County Workers Stage Strike

Members of Santa Barbara County’s largest employee union picketed courthouses, health-care centers and other major county facilities on the first day of a strike Monday.

About 600 members of the Santa Barbara County Employees Assn., which includes secretaries, public works employees, clerks and health-care employees, did not show up for work Monday. Association members, who have worked without a contract since June, said no new negotiations are scheduled.

Represents Workers

The association, which is affiliated with Service Employees International Union, Local 620, represents about 1,800 of the county’s 3,000 workers.

There were “no major disruptions” as a result of the strike, said Anne Linn, administrative analyst for the county. The Santa Maria and Lompoc county clerk’s offices were forced to close Monday, and two health clinics closed, Linn said. But people were “rerouted to the other offices and clinics that were open,” she said.

However, Walter Hamilton, general manager of the employees association, contended that the strike caused “long lines” at community health clinics that were manned by “skeleton crews.” In addition, he said, delivery trucks honored picket lines at the County Jail, so “food supplies were disrupted,” and the county dump was only operating at “40% efficiency . . . costing the county thousands of dollars a day.”

Not Interrupted

Several deputy district attorneys refused to cross picket lines at the courthouse, said Hilary Dozer, president of the local deputy district attorney’s association. But no court proceedings were interrupted, Dozer said, because supervising attorneys in the office handled the cases.

Both sides in the labor dispute agreed on a 4% pay raise offered by the county. The major issue in the impasse is the union’s demand for increased compensation to help cover health insurance premium increases for workers’ dependents. That compensation would represent another 1% increase, union officials said.