Court Clerks’ Strike Enters Second Week

A strike for higher pay by hundreds of Los Angeles County court clerks entered its second week Monday with no hint of a settlement and reports that the walkout was affecting everything from the processing of cases to the issuing of payments for court-appointed attorneys.

With striking clerks braving the season’s first substantial rain to maintain their picket lines, union negotiators insisted that it is up to the county and court officials to act on the clerks’ latest demand for their first pay raise since 1991--a 16% salary hike over the next three years.

“It’s in the court’s court,” clerks union president Karlene George said.

But court and county officials, who Friday offered a 12% pay package that the clerks rejected, insisted there is no additional room for negotiation.

“We don’t have any more to give,” said Robert W. Parkin, presiding judge of the Superior Court.

“We gave them the last, best and final offer, and they rejected it. So it is up to them to declare an impasse or to come back and ask for another session. But nothing has happened,” Parkin said.

With talks stalled, court officials acknowledged that the number of clerks participating in the walkout has grown. Although union officials continued to say that about 95% of the 450 Superior Court clerks are on strike, court officials put the number somewhere between 79% and 86%--above the percentages they cited last week. About 60% of the 150 Municipal Court clerks also are on strike, according to their union.

More significant, court officials said the impact of the strike was widening. “Last week, it was characterized as an inconvenience, but it is going beyond that,” said Jerianne Hayslett, spokeswoman for the Superior Court. “It is becoming problematic.”

Although continuing to say that no criminal cases have been dismissed because of the strike, Hayslett said the cumulative effect of delaying cases and processing a mountain of paperwork has required the court to begin using administrative personnel to cover the work.

And transferring employees from departments such as finance and human resources, she said, has meant that their functions have been put on hold or, at least, delayed. “It’s unbelievable the number of things [affected]. It is sort of like having a log in a river. One log gets stuck and it’s not too much of a problem, but the more logs that get jammed in, the more problems you have,” Hayslett said.

*

For example, she said, transferring employees who normally process fees for court-appointed attorneys to the courtrooms means those payments have been delayed. And that alone, she said, has affected payments to as many as 250 attorneys per day.

Similarly, union officials said that the walkout was causing other problems for the court system--both because of the cumulative effect of the 5-day-old strike and the usual heavy volume of criminal and civil cases after the weekend.

“Things are backing up,” said Esther Richards of the union representing Municipal Court clerks.

“I think we can probably operate like this for a while,” Parkin said. “But I don’t think we can do it for very long. We are going to have to do something pretty soon.”

In that light, there were reports that the courts were talking with the county about seeking a temporary restraining order to force the strikers back to work. But Parkin said he knew of no such effort and the county’s chief administrative officer, David Janssen, declined to comment about any strategy that officials might use to end the walkout--the clerks’ first in at least 25 years.

Meantime, the union representing Superior Court clerks filed an unfair labor practices charge against the county and courts Monday. The charge follows the decision last Friday by management negotiators to warn the unions that if a 12% pay offer was rejected, the courts and county would revert to a 4% pay offer made in September.

That action, union attorneys claim in their filing, violated good faith bargaining requirements.

*

Times correspondent Joseph Hanania contributed to this story.