Still Wanting to Fight the Good Fight

Gilbert Cedillo, the general manager of the largest L.A. County employees union, freely admits his ideas are unpopular these days. “I’m a trade unionist,” he says.

He doesn’t accept the notion that county government is facing financial bankruptcy. He opposes the more than $1 billion in cutbacks. Cedillo vows to fight the threatened layoffs of 18,000 workers, many of them from his Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union.

Mention the idea of closing the mammoth County-USC Medical Center and he shakes his head.

“We don’t need less health care,” he says. “We need more health care.”

The 41-year-old Cedillo says it makes no sense to eliminate the very services and programs that government is supposed to provide.

“If you’re not committed to the mission [of county government], which is providing services,” he asked the other day in his office, “why are you in government? I don’t understand people like [House Speaker] Newt Gingrich and [State Assembly GOP Leader Jim] Brulte. . . . If you don’t like government, why are you in it?”

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The painful choices facing the Board of Supervisors to stave off bankruptcy will be the most critical test to date for the union and Cedillo, who grew up in Barstow. He has already battled with county officials over proposed cutbacks, instituting a “rolling thunder” campaign of walkouts in 1992 against reduced health benefits for county workers.

He won that fight, as well as a nasty internal power struggle that year over control of the local when its board of directors ousted him in favor of a less militant leader. “Gil is a tough guy who believes in good principles to wage the good fight,” observed one registered nurse and union member at a rally last week to protest the proposed closing of County-USC.

In addition to his union involvement, Cedillo in his three years as Local 660’s general manager has been a prominent supporter of many grass-roots campaigns, including some unpopular ones--like trying to defeat Proposition 187.

At times, Cedillo mixes humor with his union militancy. He reminds visitors to the union’s headquarters, a stately building on Washington Boulevard south of Downtown, that it once housed a mortuary. “But we’re not dead yet,” he grins.

So, in repeating his mantra--that the county must remember its mission while dealing with its difficulties--Cedillo vows to fight on.

His solution is to sell off county-owned real estate with an estimated value between $22 billion and $40 billion. He favors more state and federal aid for California’s hard-pressed counties, which have gotten fewer dollars in recent years from Washington and Sacramento. At the very least, he suggests that the state Legislature pass laws allowing local agencies the freedom to impose new taxes.

He also supports a 10% tippler tax proposed by freshman Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) on all alcoholic drinks served in restaurants and bars as a way to raise more money for the county. And, of course, there’s the refrain from every union leader about gutting the county bureaucracy and its perks.

I was quick to challenge Cedillo. “Hey, the state has a $1.8-billion deficit,” I began. “Where’s it going to get the money for the county? And, come on, Gil, a tippler tax? No way will that pass. And new taxes? People say they want no more taxes. They’re getting taxed enough. It’s a new day, and people are angry with government.

“I mean, we’re talking a billion-dollar deficit here. You have to believe somebody’s going to take it in the neck. It’s probably going to be your people.”

Cedillo paused for a few moments, but would have none of it.

“I don’t foresee that,” he answered. “I think it’s realistic to have no layoffs. . . . We didn’t have to close the libraries during the Depression and they want to do that now.”

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Like I said, Cedillo has some opinions that don’t go down well. Like him, I fear that massive layoffs and the closing of County-USC will surely consign this county, if it isn’t there already, to the Third World category of supposed great paradises that really don’t work.

Cedillo is a key player in the budget-crunching morass, but I wonder how his unpopular notions will fare when the hard bargaining begins over the cuts--and yes, there will be big ones--to balance the county budget and avoid bankruptcy. “We have to fight to defend ourselves,” he says. “If we just roll over, we’ll get 18,000 layoffs.”