County Workers Local Is Seized, Officers Ousted : Labor: Top union leaders take control of Service Employees branch after determining that a power struggle has led to a breakdown in democratic procedures.

Top officials of the Service Employees International Union have seized control of its local representing 40,000 Los Angeles County employees, saying that a power struggle within the local union has revealed “a complete breakdown in democratic procedures.”

All officers of Local 660--the Los Angeles County Employees Assn.--have been removed from office under the takeover process that began at midnight Sunday, Ray Abernathy, a spokesman for the international at its Washington headquarters, said Monday.

Abernathy said the County Employees Assn. will remain under the control of a trustee elected by the international until reforms are implemented, probably by the first of the year. The key reform proposed by the international is the election of local officers by a vote of the membership, rather than by a vote of the local’s board of directors.

The County Employees Assn.’s problems stem from a dispute that began in March when 11 of the 21 members of the local’s board voted to install longtime union activist Ron Azlin as general manager.

The board vote ousted Gilbert Cedillo, an acting general manager who had led the local earlier in the year during its “rolling thunder” walkouts--a campaign that blocked proposed cutbacks in workers’ health benefits.

Angered by the board’s action, Cedillo’s supporters held a membership meeting at which he was elected general manager by a vote of 3,643 to 952.

In the resultant confusion, county officials said they were not sure who was in charge at the employees association, which represents social workers, clerical staff, registered nurses and many other county employees.

Steve Weingarten, a spokesman for the local, has admitted that most union business was “pretty much operating on automatic pilot.”

The Cedillo and Azlin camps took their causes to the international.

“We began to get phone calls--hundreds of phone calls--from both sides,” Abernathy said. Responding to the complaints, the international sent Jarvis Williams, president of the union’s local in Chicago, to Los Angeles to hear the arguments.

Azlin said the County Employees Assn.’s bylaws clearly give the board of directors the power to select the general manager.

Cedillo’s backers contended that the local’s bylaws permit the membership to overrule the board.

The board, Cedillo said, had “ignored the democratic process. . . . There’s no way for the members to have a meaningful say in the affairs of the union.”

Williams agreed, concluding that the local had been “experiencing political turmoil, which has overwhelmed it and rendered it virtually immobile, undemocratic and unable to grapple with the particularly difficult issues it must face to protect and promote the interests of its membership.”

John Sweeney, president of the international, concurred with Williams, citing the employees association’s “outdated and unworkable constitutional structure, which allows the membership virtually no input in the local’s decision-making process.”

Williams, noting “a complete breakdown in democratic procedures within the local,” recommended that the international impose a trusteeship on the Los Angeles local.

Members of the local will vote in November on proposed amendments to their constitution, including direct election of all local union officers, regular membership meetings and authority for the membership to amend the local’s constitution.

If the amendments are approved, new officers will be elected and the trusteeship will end, probably around Jan. 1, Abernathy said. He said that if the amendments are rejected, another hearing will be held Dec. 26 to determine the future of the trusteeship.

Neither Cedillo nor Azlin could be reached for comment.