The Going Gets Tough for Easygoing County Labor Union

The association representing 11,000 Orange County employees is 57 years old. You could call it a union, but it doesn’t mind if you don’t. You’ve probably never heard of its leaders. It has never gone on strike. It has snubbed overtures to affiliate with larger unions. It doesn’t call news conferences to vent against management. It’s been about as visible as Casper and just about as friendly. While metropolitan-area unions in other parts of the country have historically viewed their management counterparts with suspicion, the Orange County association has seen its as partners.

Until now.

The Orange County Employees Assn. now is wondering whether it’s been played for suckers. All of a sudden, the “in-your-face” tactics of the traditional big-city unions may not sound like such a bad idea.

For the first time, the association isn’t worrying about hurt feelings with the county of Orange. The county’s decision to rescind part of its contract with the union--so that it can expedite employee layoffs after the bond market fiasco--has the association furious.

“It shocks you into an awareness of what people can do to other people,” association General Manager John H. Sawyer said Thursday. ‘We had such a trusting relationship, and we now find that destroyed. Even between individuals, when that happens, it’s a very destructive kind of thing to do.”

Sawyer didn’t have to think long when asked if there’s been anything like this in the association’s history with the county: “Never anything even close.” At most, he said, employees have taken one-day actions to protest something here or there, but never with this level of rancor.

“Through the years, the OCEA has always been very protective of the rights of its members,” Sawyer said, “but it thought the most effective way to do that was to be cooperative and supportive of county government and management. Throughout all these years, we’ve worked very successfully with that theme in mind. Our board has always insisted we handle ourselves like ladies and gentlemen.”

Then, last week, the association learned that the county was invoking an “immediate emergency” and rescinding the parts of its negotiated agreement that involve layoffs. Sawyer points out that the contract provides for layoffs in certain situations but that the county has circumvented those provisions and didn’t come to the association to make its case.

Traditional big-city labor supporters would chuckle over any employees association being so historically trusting toward its employers. But labor strength is bolstered by public support--a major stumbling block in Southern California. And the truth is that even many of the association’s rank-and-file and board members will never be mistaken for Samuel Gompers.

“Quite frankly, we’re in conservative Orange County,” said another association official. “There isn’t a lot of support for labor organizations, so we just felt it was more beneficial (over the years) to have a low profile.”

Beyond that, though, the union actually liked county government. “We just get along,” Sawyer said, “and the groups have just liked each other over the years.”

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Now the union considers itself “fighting for our lives,” Sawyer said. While not attributing the motive to Orange County, he noted that “in some parts of the country, private corporations have gone into bankruptcy because that’s a convenient way of throwing out the union contract.”

The union plans to sue the county. It has sued the county before, but without rancor and mainly to protect its interests or to force a legal opinion. This will be different, Sawyer said.

“At the outset, county employees had the attitude of being cooperative with management,” Sawyer said. “They regretted the situation and were grieving that bad things were happening, but they were supportive of management. This has turned into an attitude of almost shock and hostility now against the county for canceling their contract. If it doesn’t abide by its agreements with its employees, how are the people on Wall Street and the banks who deal with them on big money issues going to feel about the sanctity of their contracts with the county?”

In another place and another time, a union would try to shut down an operation if it felt this aggrieved. The prospect of management blowing the public’s nest egg and then laying off employees to make up for it would strike the public as inherently unfair.

But with no history of playing hardball, you wonder whether the local employees association is up to it. Will it have to be content with just learning a lesson about trust?

Sawyer sounds as if he’s already learned it.

“At the very best, county employees are going to be very wary from here on,” he said. “At worst, this hostility will exist until the last current employee is long gone from the county.”

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