County Nurses Call Strike; Sharp Cut in Services Seen

Los Angeles County nurses declared a strike Monday night, raising the prospect of massively curtailed emergency and trauma services and overcrowded emergency rooms at private hospitals as patients are diverted from public facilities throughout the county.

Saying the county had failed to adequately address salary and staffing deficiencies, nurses immediately after the strike announcement began setting up picket lines at all six county hospitals to discourage their colleagues from reporting for the 11 p.m. shift.

In addition to the 4,500 nurses represented by Local 660, Service Employees International Union, some of the county’s 10,000 unionized clerical and laboratory workers also were expected to stay out today in a show of solidarity and to demonstrate their own dissatisfaction with contract proposals.

Bob McCloskey, Local 660’s chief negotiator for the nurses, said the county has not taken seriously enough the severe nurse shortage at the public hospitals. McCloskey said 1,059 budgeted nursing positions are not filled and that, while the county has hired 600 new nurses in the last 18 months, 200 have left.

“The nurses are not trying to hurt patients,” McCloskey said Monday night. “They are fighting for better patient care. Long term, this (the strike) will improve patient care by improving staffing.”

Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer, said if county health services are severely disrupted by the strike, “we’ll be in court by midday” today seeking a court order to direct the nurses back to work. Dixon said the county, in order to obtain a court order, must show the strike jeopardizes public health and safety.

“Our first duty is to the health and safety of the community,” he said. “If their action jeopardizes it, we will seek a temporary restraining order and, I believe, get it.”

There were massive disruptions when the nurses struck for three days in January, 1988, before a Superior Court judge ordered them back to work.

The nurses’ strike is compounded 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.

Dixon accused Local 660 leaders of using the nurses’ contract to negotiate better wages and benefits for other county employees whose contracts expired Oct. 1.

“In a year in which we are settling with most employees for no salary increase this year,” he said, “we were offering the nurses a 5.5% immediate increase followed 11 months later by a another 7% increase.”

“If each of our nurses knew how good a package it was, they would not have struck,” Dixon said.

Dixon said that the county broke off talks at 6 p.m. Monday after union officials refused to budge on their demand for 10% pay raise this year and 7% next year and that the county extend increased health benefits to all Local 660 members in the county work force.

Dixon contended that Local 660 leaders told county negotiators that unless the county offered better health benefits to all Local 660 members in the county work force, “it wouldn’t matter what we paid nurses, they would strike. I think it is union leadership misusing employees.”

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

At 11 p.m., nurses wearing T-shirts saying, “Nurses Survive To Keep Patients Alive,” were on picket lines at County-USC Medical Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Gloria Henry, a nurse with 20 years at County-USC, crossed the picket line, she said, because “I care about my patients.” But the decision was clearly difficult: “I don’t know,” she added. “Maybe I’ll come back out again. But I probably won’t because I want to stay with my patients.”

Emergency room nurse David Picella, however, joined the pickets. “I work in an emergency department where the equipment is broken,” he said. “It is extremely frustrating. I have seen a patient wait in the emergency department for 50--that’s five-oh--hours. That’s why I am striking.”

Cohen said the county has no immediate plans to transfer patients already admitted to the public hospitals to private hospitals for care. County health officials, confident that a strike will not last long, said they can care for patients now in hospitals with management nurses and private nurses under contract 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 the nurses’ strike leaves the hospital severely understaffed, signs will be posted at hospital entrances directing patients to private hospitals.

David Langness, spokesman for the 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.”

As an alternative to its offer of a raise of at least 12.5% over two years, the county has offered a three-year contract providing a salary increase of 18% plus 2% in fringe benefits, Cohen said. Veteran county nurses typically earn $41,376 a year, plus bonuses for such things as working the night shift and in the emergency room.

Local 660 leader Dan Savage said the nurses are seeking 17% over two years, with at least a 10% raise effective Friday.

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 include county facilities and federal Veterans Affairs hospitals.

Time staff writer Claire Spiegel contributed to this report.