Workers March, Then Authorize County Strike

Urged on by rousing speeches from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and their union leaders, thousands of whistling, chanting county workers marched through Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday in protest of county budget cutbacks and layoffs and then voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if no agreement is reached with the county before contracts expire later this month.

At an evening session after the march that had the flavor of a revival meeting, nearly all of an estimated 2,500 members of Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, whose contracts expire on Sept. 30, shouted “Yes” to a strike if an agreement is not reached with the county. Only a few people voiced opposition.

Union leaders had been set to collect individual ballots but dispensed with the plan after the workers, who filled the cafeteria of the Department of Water and Power building, began shouting “Strike, strike, strike.”

The outcome of the vote was sealed when Jackson, evoking such civil rights heroes as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., exhorted the workers to “stand up for their dignity.

“If Rosa Parks can stand up in the seat of the confederacy, cannot Local 660 stand up in Los Angeles? If Martin Luther King Jr. can go to Memphis and lose his life for a garbage worker’s job, cannot you stand up for your own job in California?” asked Jackson.

The crowd roared and chanted in unison, “Shut the county down.”

Union leaders were delighted.

“This is the new day for Local 660 and our relationship with the Board of Supervisors. This is the day we take back our county,” said 660 general manager Gilbert Cedillo.

Earlier, an estimated 7,500 people representing labor, religious and community groups--many of them county workers who had walked off the job--berated county officials for approving a budget that exacts deep cuts in health and welfare services and workers’ benefits.

The county is demanding that workers take an 8.25% pay cut as “their share of the burden.” The strike authorization sets up the most serious labor dispute ever between the county and its employee unions.

“I’ve spoken to 3,500 workers at different sites this week, and they are absolutely unwilling to step back from where they’re at financially,” said Cedillo. The union represents about half of the county’s 80,000-member work force, including clerks, librarians and health care workers.

Many county workers who took part in the march and rally bolstered Cedillo’s stand.

“Nobody can afford a pay cut; we’ll have to take second jobs,” said Lydia Sy, who said she has worked in the county registrar-recorder office for 14 years and earns about $22,000. Sy said that about 40 of her colleagues who work in a registrar’s office in Norwalk had walked out to join the rally. “Only our supervisor is left behind,” Sy said.

Anita Agers, a clerk in the mental health department, said she earns about $19,000 a year and can barely afford to provide for her two children.

“I live paycheck to paycheck,” Agers said. “If I have to take a pay cut, I told my mother that I will be moving back in again.”

The county, facing the worst financial crisis in its history, last month passed a $13.5-billion budget that touches nearly every county department but falls particularly hard on health and welfare services. Budget measures call for closing 24 health clinics and 43 public libraries, laying off about 2,000 county employees, slashing benefits for general relief recipients and imposing a countywide 8.25% pay cut.

It is the last measure that has most rankled workers. The county must wring $215 million in pay and benefit cuts from workers to meet its budget needs. Union leaders assert that the county is trying to balance the budget on the backs of its employees and have offered up the prospect of an unprecedented general strike.

The objects of the demonstrators’ wrath--the members of the County Board of Supervisors--were nowhere in site, having canceled their regular Tuesday morning meeting because of a lack of a quorum. Board Chairman Ed Edelman issued a statement saying that he understood the protesters’ frustrations.

“I understand and share the frustrations of employees arising from the deep fiscal crisis facing the county,” he said. “The statewide loss of billions of dollars in property taxes has left local government in an impossible position. No one wants to see layoffs, pay cuts or service reduction. One thing, however, is clear: A general strike would benefit no one.”

But the slogans employed by the demonstrators spoke otherwise, with placards that read: “Not on Our Back: No Pay Cuts.” “No Layoffs.” “No Service Cuts.”

The march and rally were generally peaceful and even took on a festive air with a mariachi band and a youth drill team to entertain demonstrators.

In an incident at the start of the march near Olvera Street, police arrested an unidentified man who allegedly attacked a free-lance photographer and then tried to jump off a bridge into northbound traffic on the Hollywood Freeway. No other disruptions were reported.

Jackson’s 10-minute rally address urged workers to bridge ethnic and racial differences and unite to “fight back against the abandonment of urban problems.

“We need more teachers, and more schools and more social services . . . and yet we are being offered more police, more jails and longer prison sentences and capital punishment,” Jackson told the crowd. “We are not just fighting for dollars, we are fighting for dignity.” In an interview with The Times before he addressed the crowd, Jackson asserted that the actions of the Board of Supervisors would drive more people onto welfare rolls.

“We must change our priorities,” he said.

County officials countered that they have done their best to ensure that everyone shares the pain.

“Cuts were made across the board, to management, non-represented employees as well as represented employees,” said Elliot Marcus, the county’s director of labor relations and its chief negotiator. “If the county can’t come up with the money it needs, it means further reductions in services and more layoffs of people who were performing these services. To share the burden across the entire work force seems to me the more equitable way to deal with this.”

Labor leader Cedillo said that with the strike authorization vote, the union will begin laying the ground work for a potentially crippling walkout--organizing its legal team, delegating strike captains, and seeking sanctions from its international and from the American Federation of Labor.

County officials, meanwhile, say they are prepared to go to court to force employees deemed essential to public safety--such as firefighters, nurses and law enforcement workers--to stay on the job. Twice in the past--in 1988 and 1991--the county was successful in obtaining temporary restraining orders to force striking nurses back to work, Marcus said.

Marcus also warned that the county will consider locking out employees.

“We have a range of weapons in our arsenal,” he said. “It depends upon the severity of the strike and how widespread it is. At this point I can’t tell you what our response would be until we see how things are shaping up.”

But even as the rhetoric heated up Tuesday, union and county officials voiced hope that more strife might be averted. The two sides are scheduled to resume talks today, this time with a mediator present.

Marcus said he is optimistic that an agreement can be reached.