No Business as Usual : County Strike Inconveniences a Wide Range of Residents

The bride arrived at the Los Angeles County Courthouse in a white sequinned gown. The groom wore pleated beige pants and a pressed white shirt. But when the Whittier couple walked inside, hand-in-hand, their smiles faded.

“Marriage License Closed Today,” the sign read.

So many clerks for the Los Angeles County registrar had joined a one-day strike that the office, which performs a constant stream of marriages, had shut down.

“He asked me to get married this morning and I said, ‘Yes! Yes!’ ” said a crestfallen Norma Ponce, 23, seeking the hand of her fiance, Jose Alcantara, 31. “I guess we will have to go and find a chapel now.”

On Tuesday, Los Angeles residents accustomed to complaining about bureaucracy switched gears and complained that there wasn’t enough of it, as several thousand county employees walked off their jobs in a one-day strike over a contract dispute with the Board of Supervisors.

Marriage licenses and welfare applications, jailhouse booking slips and library cards--the much-scorned paperwork that is the lifeblood of government offices--took on new meaning when they were not readily available. There was, it seemed, one thing worse than red tape, and that was red-tapelessness.

Lines of welfare applicants snaked around crowded county offices as welfare workers briefly joined ranks with the unemployed they serve. Suburban mothers with loads of books and children in tow found themselves facing closed libraries. Ailing residents dependent on the county medical system were unable to get prescriptions.

In Castaic, striking workers at the county animal shelter forced the shelter to put off calls involving stray and barking dogs, but the shelter continued to make emergency calls for dead, sick or trapped animals.

At the Department of Public Social Services’ Rancho Dominguez office serving Torrance, San Pedro, Compton and Whittier, so many workers failed to show up that no cashiers were available to process applications and issue checks for general relief applicants. Emergency checks were issued to some families with dependent children, but others were told to return Wednesday.

“I’ve been here since early this a.m. and I’ve stood in about three lines and before I could reach the window, they all closed,” said Peter Mabrie, a homeless man from Long Beach. “Finally, about 12:30, I got the paperwork and they told me I have to wait till tomorrow because the computers are shut down.”

At the welfare office on Beverly Boulevard near downtown, there was little sympathy for strikers among the more than 100 recipients waiting in line. Some had arrived at 5 a.m. and were still in line at noon.

“How we would like the jobs that they have and the pay they get!” said Jose Amaya, an unemployed electronics worker from El Salvador. “I would do what they do for their pay.”

Amaya said he had been waiting for three hours to enter the welfare office. “Who suffers is the public,” he said.

At Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar, a hand-lettered sign warned: “Pharmacist Sick-Out ToDay. No Rx’s Can Be Filled Here Today.” A conveyor belt, normally packed with bags containing the 500 prescriptions filled there daily, carried one lone brown bag.

Gary O’Neal’s quest for medicine began Tuesday morning when he boarded an RTD bus and made the two-hour trek from Fountain Valley to County-USC Medical Center. Doctors recently discovered a tumor behind his right eye that must be removed.

But at the pharmacy window, he was told that only discharged patients--and not outpatients such as he--were being served. They handed him a list of 82 drug stores around the county that could fill his prescription, leaving O’Neal to scan the fine print with his only good eye, pondering which bus and which pharmacy he would turn to.

At the county public library in West Hollywood, a handwritten note on the library’s door simply said: “Closed Nov. 12.”

“I’m a little inconvenienced,” said Diane Yearwood, a West Hollywood resident who wanted to renew a book. “But they are the nicest people. I just don’t want to lose our little library.”

By noon, about 100 of 250 employees with the registrar-recorder throughout the county were gone. In the downtown office, a security guard shouted to a line of about 100 people that only applications for documents would be accepted Tuesday.

For Jose Luis de la Mora of San Francisco, the guard’s announcement upset plans to collect the last of many documents--his daughter’s birth certificate--he needed to apply for a work permit with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“I flew down from San Francisco,” he said. “I have to be back at work tomorrow. Now my work permit is going to be delayed for who knows how long,” said De la Mora. “I had gotten every other document. And then the workers go on strike.”

Times staff writers David A. Avila, Richard Colvin, Donnette Dunbar, Faye Fiore, Jesse Katz, Amy Pyle, Hugo Martin and Sebastian Rotella contributed to this story.