DWP Union Leaders Call On 10,000 Workers to Strike : Labor: Action protests stalled contract talks and comes a year after last pact expired. Department officials urge employees not to honor the walkout.

About 10,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power workers were to walk off the job this morning, beginning a potentially crippling strike of the city’s massive utility system.

The decision to strike was reached Friday by the unions representing office and blue-collar workers, whose leaders said they were protesting stalled labor talks that have left them without a contract for almost a year. The scheduled walkout came a day after a dispute erupted between Mayor Richard Riordan and some members of the City Council, who accused the mayor of overstepping his authority in trying to settle the DWP contract dispute.

“We had ongoing discussions with the council and the mayor, and they haven’t taken us seriously,” Brian D’Arcy, business manager for Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Tuesday night. “So they’re going to bargain with us on the street.”

DWP General Manager Daniel W. Waters issued a statement urging a return to the bargaining table and asking workers not to honor the strike.

He said the department will ask the courts to require the return of employees “who are essential to safety and health of the public.”

“Despite the work-stoppage action, I encourage all employees to report to work,” Waters said. “We have a legal and moral responsibility to serve our customers with vital water and electric services.”

Waters said that some managers will be able to take over for striking employees but that the walkout’s effect will depend on how many workers stay off the job.

In the days leading up to the strike, the department notified about 600 customers with life-support equipment and 1,000 commercial and industrial customers of the possibility of the work stoppage.

About 8,000 members of the IBEW local were expected to be joined in the walkout by 2,000 members of the Engineers and Architects Assn., an IBEW official said late Tuesday.

One council member called Riordan’s intervention in the negotiations “a serious blunder.” Another termed the episode an example of “ineptitude (and) inexperience” by the mayor’s office.

In a sign of how confused the negotiations had become, the council agreed on a confidential offer to the unions during its closed session on Tuesday--details of which were promptly released by an angry Councilman Joel Wachs, who considered the offer excessive.

“I’m angry,” Wachs said, calling the proposed 9% pay raise over four years “shockingly irresponsible” considering the city’s budget woes.

“There’s no money for any policemen. There’s no money for any firemen. And we’re going to be giving employees, who already are making more than everyone else in the city, a 9% increase? They’re darn lucky to have a job.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with The Times, a union official said the offer was too low anyway.

Stirring the most controversy Tuesday was the two-page letter addressed to union members in which Riordan proposed a performance-based pay system, which is opposed by the union, in which all employees would get modest pay increases but bonuses only for good performance.

The letter was given to D’Arcy during a private meeting Monday between union leaders and Riordan’s staff. The other union representing DWP employees, the Engineers and Architects Assn., was not involved in the meeting.

The letter says that the DWP must remain competitive to survive. It encouraged members to agree to a performance-based pay system to help the department become more efficient. “I ask you, in the context of a freely competitive market, to join me in working to ensure the future for a prosperous and competitive DWP,” Riordan wrote.

It was not the letter’s text that was objectionable, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said, but the fact that it was “unnecessarily provocative” to appeal directly to union members during a tense time in the negotiations.

The mayor’s office had planned to publish the letter in local newspapers on Tuesday but pulled the advertisement at the last minute when council members objected.

During the closed session, Yaroslavsky criticized Deputy Mayor Michael Keeley for releasing the letter to the unions and the media. “What infuriated me was that despite that agreement, the letter went out,” Yaroslavsky said later.

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this story.