Drywallers Want $7.6 Million From O.C. in Rights Damages

Drywall workers said Friday they want $7.6 million in damages from Orange County, alleging their civil rights were violated by sheriff’s deputies who arrested more than 100 of them last summer during a demonstration at a construction site in Mission Viejo.

The striking workers were arrested in July for running onto a construction site and intimidating strikebreakers amid a bitter strike for a union and higher wages. It was the biggest mass arrest in recent memory in Orange County.

Originally, about 150 strikers--all Mexican immigrants--were charged with felony trespassing and conspiracy to kidnap and held in jail on $50,000 bail each. Two weeks later the charges had been reduced or dropped altogether and most of the men were released from jail.

A spokesman for the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, which represents the drywallers, said the group intends to file a claim with Orange County supervisors Monday, the first step before filing a lawsuit.

In filing the claim, the drywall workers are expected to say the Sheriff’s Department was used as a political instrument to try and break their strike.

After more than five months of picketing construction sites around Southern California, the strikers in November forced drywall subcontractors to recognize the union.

It was the largest organizing drive in the nation, and made all the more unusual because many of the strikers were illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Drywall workers install the large sheets of gypsum that form the inner walls of buildings. They went on strike in June after employers slashed their wages.

In their claim, the men are demanding $75,000 each for pain and suffering and additional, punitive damages.

“They’re giving the supervisors the opportunity to settle it,” said Jay Lindsey, a spokesman for the Latino activist group Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, which is also supporting the proposed suit. “Then they sue.”

The Sheriff’s Department said Friday that its policy is to decline comment on pending litigation. County lawyers also declined comment because they had not seen the claim.

The Center for Human Rights specializes in class-action immigration rights lawsuits. It has three cases pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. Two of the cases would allow as many as 600,000 illegal immigrants to file for amnesty and legal residence past the federal government’s deadline, which has expired.

On that hot morning last July, police and witnesses said, about 100 strikers broke down a fence and rushed onto the Mission Viejo construction site, smashing drywall and seizing several replacement workers.

Incidents of minor violence were fairly common on both sides during the five-month strike.

When sheriff’s deputies stopped some of the strikers’ trucks a few miles from the site and began making arrests, the strikers’ numbers grew threateningly larger. Finally, nearly 150 strikers then at the scene demanded to be arrested. The replacement workers were released unharmed.

Charges against about 70 of the men were later dropped for lack of evidence and charges against most of the rest were reduced. Another 70 or so pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace, in which charges were handled much as traffic tickets. At least 11 pleaded guilty to more serious charges, including assault. They were placed on probation.

County prosecutors said they dropped or reduced the charges in some instances to save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But while the strikers were in jail, the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service began deportation proceedings against dozens of them. The INS said theywere in the country illegally. Many were deported.

The strikers’ claim against the county alleges the Sheriff’s Department and other county officials “used their law enforcement authority to crash a union organizing drive . . . .”

It also alleges the department “filed false and baseless criminal charges” against the strikers to “intimidate them, detain them on high bails, or otherwise penalize” them for trying to organize a union.

The claim alleges Sheriff Brad Gates and the department had been harassing the strikers even before the July arrest.