Contract Agreements Avert Strikes by County Workers

As child social workers continued their strike Wednesday, the union representing half of Los Angeles County’s 80,000 employees called off a threatened strike of its own that could have crippled county operations.

Capping a marathon eleventh-hour bargaining session that began at 9 a.m. Tuesday, leaders of the Service Employees International Union Local 660 emerged from bargaining tables at a downtown Los Angeles hotel at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday with tentative contract agreements for about half of its 17 bargaining units. Most workers would get a 10% pay hike over the three-year contract, with many getting additional increases to bring them to “equity” with other county employees.

Exhausted but encouraged, union leaders called off a series of threatened job actions--scheduled to have begun Wednesday at 12:01 a.m.--citing significant progress at the rest of the bargaining tables.

The first wave of the threatened work stoppages would have targeted a wide variety of services, ranging from welfare offices to road maintenance and other Department of Public Works programs.

County hospitals, courthouses, probation offices, libraries and a wide array of other county facilities were targets of threatened strikes over the next week.

Several large bargaining units have yet to agree to pacts with the county, including the unit representing 5,000 county nurses. Those nurses want a contract that provides retraining and forbids almost any layoffs during the county’s ongoing restructuring of its health care system, according to union sources.

Late Wednesday, they still held out the possibility of job actions if they don’t get such assurances. “We want to be able to settle this,” said Local 660 General Manager Annelle Grajeda. “But we want to settle with decent raise and job protection language.”

Negotiators for another 3,000 or so court clerks, supervising probation officers and other county employees represented by Local 660 also had not agreed to a tentative contract. Negotiations for some remaining units of the massive union local were set to resume today.

Even without a full accord, union leaders and county officials hailed the tentative agreement, saying that it finally gives the majority of county workers the cost-of-living increases they have gone without for as long as five years as the county endured its worst fiscal crisis ever.

“We delivered as a union for our members and we won. And we didn’t have to go on strike,” said a bleary-eyed Local 660 President Alejandro Stephens, after a long night of bargaining.

County officials said they wanted to ratify the proposed pacts quickly and settle with the holdout unions, so they can put behind them the long-standing specter of widespread labor unrest and get on with running the nation’s largest county government. They announced a similar pact with the union representing county sheriff’s deputies Saturday.

“I think it is an extremely fair contract for the employees and it is affordable for the county,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky. “There is no reason in the world that the rest of our employees can’t settle with us in a matter of days. We want to wrap this up, and quickly.”

Specifically, the pact would provide Local 660 members with incremental raises of 2% every six months beginning Jan. 1, 1998. In addition, some union members would receive additional “inequity” raises.

Librarians, for example, would get an additional 5.5% over the life of the contract to make up for historically low salaries.

Many Local 660 workers applauded the proposed agreement, saying that it was the best they could have hoped for, given the county’s continuing fiscal woes. Others said they would vote against it because it offered too little money, spread out over too many years.

“I like it; we’re finally getting something for a change and I feel that something is better than nothing,” said Florence Wilson, a clerical secretary in a downtown branch of the Department of Public Social Services, which administers welfare programs.

But many welfare eligibility workers were unhappy with what union leadership agreed to, Stephens said.

“There are many who feel that they were poised for a strike and that there was a possibility that they could have gotten more” if they did strike, he said. “But what we have done is stem the tide of inflation that has eroded our spending power. I believe that once their membership sees this package and sees the big picture, that they will come away with the same impression; that we delivered for our members without going on strike.”

Said Local 660 spokesman Steve Weingarten: “You call it bargaining because you don’t get everything you want. But there will be a ratification vote and we’ll see. We’re confident that the members will support it.”

No date has been set yet for a ratification vote, officials said.

Meanwhile, about 3,000 of the county’s child social workers remained on strike for a second day, leaving managers to answer emergency calls at the Department of Children and Family Services’ child abuse hotline.

For the second day, that meant that potentially thousands of abused and neglected children in the county’s care were at risk, according to county officials.

The members of the Service Employees International Union Local 535 said they are close to reaching an agreement with the county over pay issues--about 8%--but that their concerns over having excessive caseloads and too much paperwork have not been addressed by the county.

County officials remained adamant Wednesday that most of the paperwork is required by the state, and is necessary to ensure accountability in a department that deals with such life-and-death issues as determining whether children are safe in their homes or with foster parents.

Local 535 shop steward Sarah Bottorff disagreed.

“We absolutely understand the need for accountability and paperwork,” said Bottorff, who is a social worker. “But we have 10 to 12 forms where one will do. It’s not accountability. It’s stupidity.”

Yaroslavsky said county lawyers drafted a petition for a temporary restraining order Wednesday and will go to court as soon as today to force the social workers back to their posts “the minute any child is put in harm’s way.”

“This walkout is a road to nowhere,” Yaroslavsky said. “We cannot and will not negotiate” over some of the issues, particularly regarding paperwork.

Although no negotiations were held Wednesday, Bottorff said the social workers probably will return to work Friday whether the county goes to court to force them to or not.

“We think that after three days, management will be stretched so thin that things might begin to fall apart in a big way,” she said.

In the meantime, the 3,000 or so workers and supervisors out on strike were planning a mass rally and march Thursday at department headquarters.