Sickout Protesting Prop. 187 Fizzles : Labor: Major employers and unions say they did not have higher than normal reports of workers staying home.

A sickout Monday by opponents of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration measure approved by state voters last month, failed to produce any measurable impact in Orange County, according to a survey of businesses and labor unions.

Announced two weeks ago by Los Amigos of Orange County, a grass-roots Latino organization, the sickout was supposed to have been a showing of the economic strength of the Latino community.

But the effort seemed to have fizzled as a result of a lack of organization.

“I think it was very well-intentioned, but it wasn’t organized in a detailed fashion,” said Angela Keefe, president of the 5,000-member Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 681.

Amin David, president of Los Amigos, who was reached at work Monday, said the group distributed flyers announcing the sickout. However, he said, Los Amigos did not conduct any large media push.

“We thought the idea had some merit to build an awareness,” David said, but “we’re cognizant that to do a ‘187 flu sickout’ we would have to make an awesome effort to reach people in Southern California.”

Personally, David said, he intended to work only half a day before leaving his ceramic tile business to attend church.

Elsewhere, some 200 farm workers in Oxnard who heard about the sickout in radio reports walked off their jobs.

Laborers from BUD of California, a Dole subsidiary, left their seasonal $100-a-day jobs picking and packing celery about 7:30 a.m. to proclaim that immigrants--even illegal immigrants--contribute to the economy and their families deserve public services.

Opponents of Proposition 187 were encouraged to call in sick Monday to protest the passage of the measure, which seeks to end education, social services and non-emergency health care to illegal immigrants. Implementation of the measure, however, has been blocked by the courts as a result of lawsuits.

The idea for the sickout occurred following the Nov. 19 death of Julio Cano, the 12-year-old Anaheim boy whose illegal immigrant parents said they delayed seeking medical treatment for their son because they feared the passage of Proposition 187 meant hospital officials would report them to immigration officials. The boy died of acute leukemia.

In Orange County, major employers such as the county, Disneyland and Disneyland Hotel, as well as labor unions, said they did not have higher than normal reports of workers calling in sick.

“We haven’t heard of anything like that,” a spokeswoman for the carpenters union in Orange said. “Contractors have not called to complain. And believe me, if we had some problems, they would have called by now.”

Staff members were busily at work at the Santa Ana offices of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a national immigrants’ rights organization. The group’s director, Nativo Lopez, said it was his understanding the sickout was directed toward private industry and not “necessarily service organizations” like his.

More than two-thirds of Orange County’s voters approved the proposition in the November election.

David said that Los Amigos intends to schedule another sickout in Southern California, tentatively scheduled for May 1.