ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Union Seeks Meeting on Reinstating Contracts : Labor: Orange County’s largest employee group also will ask that layoffs be used as last resort. Decisions follow budget-cutting actions by the Board of Supervisors.

In its second emergency meeting over the holiday weekend, Orange County’s largest employee union voted Monday to ask the county for a formal meeting to discuss reinstating its labor contracts, and to appeal to department managers individually to use layoffs only as a last resort.

Still reeling from Thursday’s announcement that the county would immediately reduce its budget by $40.2 million and might lay off hundreds of workers, the leadership of the Orange County Employees Assn. decided Christmas Day to authorize legal action against the county. Though the 19-member board met again Monday, it still had not decided whether a lawsuit or administrative appeals would work best.

“There is a profound sense of betrayal here,” said John Sawyer Jr., an attorney for the union, which represents 16 collective bargaining units.

John H. Sawyer Sr., general manager of the union, which represents 11,000 of the county’s 18,000 workers, said a decision on legal action will probably come next week. Union leaders are angry that the County Board of Supervisors suspended collective bargaining agreements Thursday and gave county managers broad discretion over whom it can fire, regardless of a worker’s seniority.

Meanwhile, the union will seek “meet-and-confer” sessions with the county’s human resources department as early as Wednesday in hopes of renewing the collective bargaining agreements that the board voided as part of its budget-slashing plan, officials said. Supervisors said the bankruptcy filing gave the board the authority to set aside the labor contracts.

County Supervisor William G. Steiner said the county was under extraordinary pressure to reduce spending immediately.

“There was an urgency,” he said. “We spend $7 million a week in salaries. By the time we had the process for meeting and conferring, talking about those who had seniority and who might be laid off, the whole thing could have lasted until May.”

Union representatives also will seek meetings with every department manager in the next two weeks to suggest job sharing, early retirement and leaves of absence as options. Department heads were told Thursday how much they needed to cut, but they have until Jan. 10 to decide how to meet the goals.

Union representatives said they were never given warning that the county intended to slash millions from the budget this year and suspend the labor contracts, even the night before the board approved the action.

As late as Wednesday night, the management council of Sheriff Brad Gates, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram had assured labor officials that despite the financial crisis, “they were not going to make cuts on the backs of the employees or take from the pockets of the employees, because it was not the employees’ fault,” attorney Sawyer said.

Both Sawyers say the county has never done a good job of explaining how an estimated $2.02-billion loss in Orange County’s investment fund--which contains the savings of 187 school districts, cities and other public entities--translates into the need for $40.2 million in savings in the next six months.

County officials have said that nearly $30 million of that amount will come from slicing budgets in dozens of departments. The other $10 million will come from cash advances from federal, state and local sources.