Social Workers Walk Off Job; Staffing Cut Up to 90% : Labor: Action presages planned strike today of 40,000 county employees seeking pay raises and better benefits.

Los Angeles County social workers walked off their jobs Monday, raising tensions in already overcrowded welfare offices, as the county’s biggest employer braced for a one-day strike today by 40,000 employees, ranging from clerks and court reporters to librarians and election workers.

The walkout by 3,421 eligibility workers and clerical staff reduced staffing by as much as 90% at welfare offices. Many welfare recipients were forced to wait as long as six hours for assistance, and supervisors turned away hundreds of needy people.

“What we’re doing is asking clients who do not have an emergency to come back another day,” said Carol Matsui of the Department of Public Social Services.

Half of the 840 clerks in the Children’s Services Department also stayed off the job Monday, but there were no reports of significant disruption of services to abused and neglected children.

Local 660 of Service Employees International Union hoped to turn up the heat on the County Board of Supervisors by staging a one-day strike today by half of the county’s work force of 85,000 in an effort to win pay raises and better benefits. Union leaders rented 30 buses to bring strikers to a planned demonstration at the supervisors’ meeting today.

It was not known whether the striking workers would be joined by county nurses, who staged a two-day walkout at six hospitals and 47 neighborhood clinics last week before a judge ordered them back to work.

Negotiators for both sides reported progress on a new contract for 4,500 nurses. But Gilbert Cedillo, general manager of Local 660, said that individual nurses threatened to walk off the job again if no agreement had been reached by 11 p.m. Monday.

“We’re not telling them to go on strike,” Cedillo said. “We believe that it is an individual decision that each nurse has to make.”

Mary Jung, county assistant chief administrative officer, warned: “If nurses go out, we will be back in court” seeking fines against the union leaders.

Local 660 represents social workers, librarians, court reporters, airport managers, public works employees, some coroner’s staff, supervising security officers and about 300 workers scheduled to help conduct today’s election in a number of smaller cities and school districts.

Richard Siler, assistant registrar-recorder, said his office has prepared contingency plans to prevent any disruption of the election, including using staff from other county departments. “We don’t really see any problem,” he said.

Welfare offices could face additional turmoil because about a thousand of the county’s 66,000 general relief recipients are scheduled to pick up their checks today.

County library officials prepared to be hard hit by a strike, printing up signs reading, “Library Closed Due to Work Stoppage.”

None of the union’s 21 bargaining units other than nurses are being offered pay raises the remainder of the fiscal year.

Many of the employees have been offered a 2.25% raise, effective next July 1, but their wage demands have not been made public.

Union officials complain that workers are essentially being asked to take a pay cut because they will be paying increased health insurance costs out of their own pockets. The unions want the county pick up a larger share of their health insurance costs.

Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer, has said that the county has offered a substantial pay raise for nurses--5.5% immediately and 7% next year--because of difficulty in recruiting nurses. But Dixon has said that “because of the recession, we’re able to recruit and retain the quantity and quality of (other) workers we need without a salary increase.”

Employees who fail to report to work are docked a day’s pay. But a union leader exhorting employees to strike today said: “What’s a day’s pay to $1,700 more a year” in increased health costs?

Chief county negotiator Jim Ellman said: “If we were to implement what the union has proposed in terms of fringe benefits, it would cost about $50 million” a year.

The strike at welfare offices drew mixed reactions from the public.

At some offices, there was little sympathy for striking county employees from recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children recipients who suffered a 4.4% cut in their stipend because of state budget reductions.

“They don’t do their job that good anyway,” griped Neicey Johns, 30, as she stood halfway back in a line of about 150 people at the Beverly Boulevard office near Echo Park. “They talk to you crazy. They don’t treat you with no respect and then act as if the money is coming out of their own pocket.”

Strikers said they were concerned that their walkout could cause a hardship to some clients, but they were hopeful most would understand that their plights are not entirely different.

“Not all the clients understand because they have their own personal emergencies,” said Janice Netterville, a striking eligibility worker at the Grand Avenue office near USC. “But this is our personal emergency. If someone doesn’t take a stand, we could very well end up being our clients.”

Union spokesman Steve Weingarten claimed that “we’ve managed to completely shut down three facilities.” But welfare officials insisted that none of their offices were closed.

County officials are concerned that if they grant too large a raise, the state Legislature might look unfavorably on county funding because state employees are being asked to take a 5% pay cut. Union leaders, however, say the county’s spending of millions of dollars on office redecorating and bonuses to top bureaucrats shows that it can afford pay raises.