ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Easygoing Union Rep Has Put Up His Dukes : Profile: Longtime O.C. employee association leader John H. Sawyer suddenly switches from behind-the-scenes role as friend of management to public fight over layoffs.

For more than three decades, John H. Sawyer has steered Orange County’s largest government employee association on a careful course that marked him as both a loyal defender of workers’ rights and a friend of county management.

But with the county in financial collapse, Sawyer has suddenly changed his style.

The 79-year-old general manager of the Orange County Employees Assn. has moved from his more comfortable role behind the scenes to center stage of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Sawyer has watched with growing alarm as county leaders suspended key provisions of the bargaining agreements he fought for on behalf of the union’s 11,000 members, angry that county department heads have been given broad discretion to lay off employees regardless of seniority.

Now, Sawyer and his son, John Sawyer Jr.--general counsel for the association--are readying for their biggest battle yet.

And they are not doing it quietly.

In recent days, Sawyer has stood before members of the Board of Supervisors, accusing them of “steamrollering” workers and demanding that employee contracts be reinstated. He led his 35-member bargaining team on a somber march to meet with the county’s top brass--after inviting TV crews to join the procession.

And Sawyer and his son have announced plans to file a legal action against the county as soon as this next week to challenge upcoming layoffs, while other labor organizations continue to study the issue.

“It’s a different tactic,’ the elder Sawyer said. “We have no regrets about doing it. I think the county was pretty public in rescinding both sections of our labor contract, and the only way we could fight back was vigorously.”

The general manager’s actions have raised eyebrows among county leaders, long used to a cordial relationship with the head of the association that represents nearly two-thirds of the county’s 18,000 workers. And Sawyer’s actions have prompted rival union leaders, with whom he has exchange jabs for years, to accuse him of grandstanding.

Sawyer put the other unions “in an awkward position” by coming forward so aggressively and threatening to sue the county, said Adam Acosta, field representative for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 2076, which represents about 1,300 county social service workers.

“We’re not on talking terms,” Acosta said of Sawyer and his group. “They have historically over the years tried to raid us.”

Sawyer remains respected in county circles.

“He is a leader and has to convey the wishes of the people he is leading. . . . I don’t think, in my time here, do I remember a situation that required the type of intervention that he’s indicating now,” said Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose retirement take effect today. “That should be a compliment to both sides. You should get pluses for going on year after year after year, in which the relationships are satisfactory with all concerned.”

John Sibley, the county’s labor negotiator for seven years and now chief deputy director of the Environmental Management Agency, sat across the bargaining table from Sawyer in hundreds of hours of negotiations over salaries, benefits and a range of grievances.

“John’s not a table pounder. He doesn’t cuss, he doesn’t swear. He proceeded steadily toward his objective,” Sibley said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him get up in front of the board and express his dismay at one of their actions. I’ve heard it at the bargaining table, but it is the first time I’ve ever seen him do that.”

These days, Sawyer is working 16-hour days in the hopes of cracking the county’s position. He has been giving interviews to reporters across the country--including one to a correspondent from a French newspaper--and expressed his indignation before a nonstop procession of television crews.

The appearances come between meetings with county department heads and consultations with Sawyer Jr. and Nick Berardino, the association’s director of employee relations services, about the legal action they are planning against the county.

“I told the Board of Supervisors, if they take radical actions which are destructive to county employees and employee morale, then the county might very well expect similar action on the part of employees against the county,” Sawyer said. “They have created an atmosphere of anger and hostility that borders on revolt.”

Sawyer appeared before board members Dec. 22, minutes after supervisors announced a wide range of cutbacks and suspended portions of employee contracts.

On Christmas Day, Sawyer was on the phone at 8 a.m. to his son the lawyer mulling the workers’ predicament. Later in the day, he called a meeting of the association’s board of directors and the group voted to sue the county.

By his own accounts, Sawyer usually is a much more reserved leader, to match the conservative leanings of the employees he represents.

A native of rural Indiana, he has held the top job with the Orange County Employees Assn. since 1960, guiding it from a 2,000-member club that had no bargaining rights to an organization 11,000-employees strong.

“John Sawyer is OCEA,” said Robert MacLeod, general manger of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs and a former OCEA employee. “OCEA was basically a fraternal organization when he went to work there in 1960. He negotiated grievance arbitration for county employees when most public sector labor organizations didn’t even know what it was.”

That feat, accomplished in 1969, assured workers that a neutral third party would mediate grievances instead of county managers, MacLeod said.

Other accomplishments during Sawyer’s tenure include health insurance for retired workers, which the county revoked but restored several years ago in the wake of drawn-out litigation with OCEA. The association was also among the first in the state to secure uniform retirement benefits for workers in the 1960s, instead of employees getting only what they paid into the system.

“That was a hallmark,” Sawyer said.

And in 1982, OCEA secured parenthood leave that let fathers take time off. ‘That was way ahead of the times,” Berardino said.

Sawyer, whose Santa Ana office is decorated with etchings of U.S. Supreme Court justices, commendations from the county for his decades of service and a 1960s cartoon that pokes fun at striking workers, said he fell into the Orange County position.

The OCEA job marked an abrupt transition from years working in the personnel departments of private companies, where he faced off with labor working for American Motors and then for Packard Bell in El Segundo.

He had job offers in Philadelphia, Texas and Burbank, but Sawyer opted to take the Orange County labor job so he wouldn’t have to uproot his Brooklyn-born wife, Adele, and their three children.

“It was quite a change,” Sawyer said. “But it wasn’t bad because OCEA was quite a conservative group--not in any adverse confrontations with the employer--and that appealed to me.”

Sawyer declines to talk about his age--he says he’s “getting younger every year.” But state Department of Motor Vehicles records show that he is 79. His years of service have not slowed him and he says he has no plans to retire.

Sibley, who faced off with Sawyer in some marathon bargaining sessions that topped 35 consecutive hours with no breaks for fresh air, attests to that.

“I tell you, the only people who were awake much of the time were he and I,” Sibley said. “He wasn’t going to let me see him blink.”

Sawyer’s dedication pulled one of his two sons into the association’s fold.

“My first recollection of this place was when OCEA was just one or two rooms in a church and I was stuffing envelopes for some membership mailer. I might have been 13,” said Sawyer Jr., 47, who has now worked next to his father for 23 years.

The two ride together to work and can’t help but launch into shop talk during the several evenings a week Sawyer Jr. spends at his parents’ home, just miles from his own in an unincorporated part of the county near Tustin.

“If John Sawyer is OCEA, I think the reverse is true, that OCEA is John Sawyer. And I think that attitude is infectious,” said Sawyer Jr.. “It gets in your blood.”

The elder Sawyer, who also has a law degree, hired his son with approval from the association’s executive committee and board of directors after the younger Sawyer got his law degree from Hastings College of the Law, focusing in part on labor issues for public employees.

The elder Sawyer plays down his lengthy stay at OCEA with a certain modesty, describing himself as captive to his “destiny.” But others are less circumspect in characterizing his contributions.

“He has built such a strong, outstanding organization that it will always have his mark, whether he is here or not,” said Berardino, a 16-year employee of OCEA. “This is the house that John built.

“It will go on and be strong, but his mark will always be here.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: John H. Sawyer

Position: General manager, Orange County Employees Assn., since 1960

Born: Jay County, Ind.

Age: 79

Education: Bachelor’s and law degrees from University of Michigan

Private industry work experience: Personnel director, Phelps Dodge Copper Products and American Motors (two different divisions); president, Packard Bell wood products division

Family: Wife, Adele; sons, John Sawyer Jr. (OCEA’s general counsel) and Tom; daughter, Diana

On current crisis: “I don’t remember anything like this or even approaching it. Most of the bargaining in the county has been rather orderly.”

Source: John H. Sawyer