4,400 County Nurses Poised for Strike as Pact Proves Elusive : Labor: Massively reduced trauma and emergency care seen. A separate walkout scheduled today by other hospital workers clouds the issue.

Los Angeles County nurses were poised to strike Monday night, barring a last-minute agreement on a new contract, as county lawyers prepared to seek a court order to force the nurses back to work in the event of a walk-out.

The union representing 4,400 nurses who staff six county hospitals and 47 neighborhood clinics set a strike to begin at 11 p.m. Monday if no settlement was reached. While negotiations continued all day Monday, neither side was optimistic.

“At this point, it just doesn’t look good,” said Dan Savage of Local 660, Service Employees International Union. Hundreds of picket signs were prepared in anticipation of a strike.

The situation is clouded by the possibility of a separate walkout by other hospital workers scheduled for today. Local 660 represents about 4,000 lab technicians and clerical workers and rehabilitation specialists at county medical facilities.

But immediate concern is focused on the nurses because of their involvement in direct patient care. Jim Ellman, the county’s chief negotiator, added, “The nurses’ bargaining team has taken on a position of arrogance.”

Such a strike would carry the specter of massively curtailed emergency and trauma services and overcrowded emergency rooms at private hospitals, which would receive patients diverted from public facilities throughout the county. A similar scene occurred when the nurses struck for three days in January, 1988; in that dispute, a Superior Court judge ordered the nurses back to work.

Irving Cohen, assistant director of administration and finance for the County Department of Health Services, said that the impact of a strike probably would not be seen until 7 a.m. today. He said that management can order nurses who worked the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift Monday to stay another eight hours if the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift fails to report.

Cohen said that county lawyers were prepared to seek a court order, as they did in 1988, directing the nurses to return to work.

“We hope to have a restaining order within one day,” he said.

Cohen said the county the has no immediate plans to transfer patients already admitted to the public hospitals to private hospitals for care. County health officials, confident that if a strike occurs it will not last long, suggested they can care for patients now in hospitals with management nurses and private nurses under contract to county and with interns and residents picking up some of the nurses’ workload for a few days. But ambulances will be asked to take incoming patients to the emergency rooms of other non-county hospitals.

Patients who show up on their own “in obvious emergency need,” will be treated at the county facilities, Cohen said. If a nurses’ strike leaves the hospital severely understaffed, signs will be posted at hospital entrances directing patients to private hospitals.

David Langness, spokesman for Hospital Council of Southern California, said private hospitals have been gearing up for several weeks to help the county facilities.

“We will be taking transfers and emergency room admissions,” Langness said. “If the strike is prolonged, we will consider taking other patients as well.”

County officials on Monday went directly to the nurses to explain the county’s offer. Cohen contended that union officials have “misrepresented the facts” to nurses. “They’re trying to use nurses to give the union leverage in negotiations with other county workers.”

Cohen said that the county has offered a three-year contract providing a salary increase of 18% plus 2% in fringe benefits. Veteran county nurses typically earn $41,376 a year, plus bonuses for such things as working the night shift and in the emergency room.

Union leader Savage said the nurses are seeking 15% to 17% over two years, with at least a 10% raise effective Friday, Nov. 1.

A memo written by county health director Robert Gates and distributed at county hospitals Friday said that nurses have been awarded salary increases amounting to 31.75% over the last year four years, making the current salaries equivalent to those in the private sector.

However, Savage contended that the county is comparing the pay of veteran county nurses with junior private sector nurses and even so, “the county nurses are 7% to 9% below parity.”

The most recent survey by the Hospital Council of Southern California found a 6.5% disparity between nurses’ salaries in private hospitals and those in government hospitals, which encompass county facilities plus federal Veterans Affairs hospitals.

Staff nurses with an average of two years experience made $38,958 a year at private hospitals compared to $36,421 earned by nurses at government hospitals, according to the survey completed in December, 1990.

Savage also contended that the wage and benefits package the county has offered is not enough to attract nurses to fill what the union says are 1,000 nursing vacancies at county hospitals.

County officials removed one stumbling block by agreeing to drop a charge to nurses for parking.

Still a major sticking point are health benefits. The county has agreed to increase its contribution to the nurses’ health insurance, but the union wants a higher county contribution to all Local 660 employees. The county has refused.

The nurses are among 40,000 county workers--about half of the county workforce--whose contract expired Oct. 1. “Even if the nurses settle, the rest of the hospital workers we represent will be out Tuesday,” union leader Savage said.

Other employees working without contracts are librarians, court clerks, custodians and social workers who supervise welfare recipients.

Staff writers Claire Spiegel and Irene Wielawski contributed to this report.