Countywide Strike On as Last-Minute Talks Fail

More than 40,000 Los Angeles County service workers plan to walk off the job today after eleventh-hour negotiations between their union and county officials failed to avert a strike that will disrupt services to many of the region’s neediest residents.

The talks between Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union and county officials broke off Sept. 29 but resumed early Tuesday evening after the workers’ sixth day of rolling walkouts paralyzed critical components of the public health system. The resumption was possible because the Board of Supervisors abandoned its policy of not meeting with union representatives while walkouts were occurring.

The prospect of a general strike by health workers was headed off Tuesday afternoon, when a judge ordered nurses and lab technicians at public hospitals to stay on the job as the walkout spreads throughout the county today.

However, because the judicial order covers only about 5,000 workers, it will not prevent severe disruptions of service at welfare and child support offices, as well as at libraries and such county offices as the registrar-recorder’s, the assessor’s and the treasurer-tax collector’s, as well as the Probation Department.

The decision to resume talks after nearly two weeks of silence came after the board met in executive session to discuss the strike. By that time, Tuesday’s installment of the rolling walkouts had crippled key operations at four public hospitals--including County-USC Medical Center, the linchpin of the region’s trauma network.

“Once you thought it through, with the impact of a countywide strike, it’s important to continue negotiations,” Supervisor Don Knabe said.

But about 8 p.m., when the talks finally got underway at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, the complexities of dealing with Local 660’s 19 different bargaining units and the county’s determination not to budge from its salary offer quickly set the stage for today’s strike.

Throughout the evening, in fact, union spokesmen repeated that today’s strike was a certainty--unless the county gave the union a tangible reason to call it off. “We haven’t changed any of our plans,” union spokesman Mark Tarnowsky said.

The county has offered a 9% raise over three years, already accepted by several other county unions, But Local 660 is pushing for a 15.5% three-year boost for its 47,000 members, 60% of whom make $32,000 or less.

Tuesday’s bargaining session broke off shortly before 10:30 p.m. and talks are set to resume at noon today.

Earlier Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs granted the county’s request for a temporary restraining order preventing hospital employees from leaving their posts today.

Included in the order are registered nurses, lab technicians and other related health workers. Pharmacists and licensed vocational nurses are not covered, nor are recently unionized doctors. The latter have joined nurses on picket lines during the week of single-day, rolling strikes to protest what they call poor patient care and their own contract dispute with the county.

The judge agreed to issue the order after attorneys for the county said the public health system was imperiled. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center’s emergency room closed during the rolling strike last week and three trauma centers were shuttered one day apiece during the week.

“Any disruption of emergency services provided by the county hospitals or the temporary removal of these resources . . . will have a profound adverse impact upon the provision of emergency services, particularly in the inner-city areas of the city of Los Angeles,” wrote Virginia Hastings, the county’s director of emergency medical services, in a declaration filed with the judge.

The county’s chief administrative officer, David Janssen, said he was “relieved” at “having the court order 5,000 of our employees to work in the health area.”

Local 660 lawyers had argued that their medical workers had a legal right to strike under recent state law. Tarnowsky, the union’s spokesman, said that Local 660 would honor the ruling but that “the strike is going to be effective” nonetheless.

The union and county agreed to set up a hotline to alert workers about the order during the night and morning. Janavs set an Oct. 31 hearing for further argument, and Local 660 is considering an appeal.

The flurry of activity came as four hospitals--County-USC, Rancho Los Amigos, Olive View and High Desert--and more than a dozen clinics were paralyzed by the rolling strike. More than half their staff members walked off the job Tuesday, creating several surreal scenes.

As word of the strike has circulated, patients have stayed away from county hospitals. County-USC normally has about 720 inpatients, but had only 425 Tuesday. Its normally crammed emergency room was virtually empty.

The last time Joanne Smith of San Gabriel was there it took her eight hours to obtain treatment. But when she walked in Tuesday morning with her husband Roger, who had a broken arm, she was pleasantly surprised.

“I’ve never seen a hospital this dead,” she said. “Maybe people should strike more often.”

Harry Qualls, a 52-year-old electrician from Glendora, wandered the halls, looking for a nurse as he puffed on a Marlboro. The catheter tubing attached to his arm had come loose and his IV no longer fit in it.

“I wish I could find someone to fix this,” he said.

Qualls, who is unemployed, came to County-USC nine days ago with intestinal problems. He is now being tested for colon cancer but has yet to receive the results.

He is sympathetic to the hospital staff--”They should make more”--while worrying that contract talks and job actions could slow his tests.

“I hope this doesn’t stop them from figuring out what’s wrong with me,” Qualls said.

At the four hospitals, elective surgeries were postponed, and numerous clinics were shut down. County-USC’s trauma center, the busiest in the region, was shuttered and emergency cases were diverted to other hospitals, often via helicopter. Three county clinics--Tujunga, Glendale and Sepulveda--were closed and five others were in varying degrees of emptiness.

The reactions within the county Department of Health Services mirrored the anxieties that persuaded Judge Janavs to grant the restraining order:

“There’s a general backup that is occurring by not scheduling elective procedures,” said health department spokesman John Wallace. “There are dialysis patients not being serviced. . . . There are chemotherapy patients being postponed.”

Ariel Heart, 46, of the Westlake district, was relieved that Olive View’s pharmacy was open to fill her prescription Tuesday. However, she said she was worried about whether she could make her chemotherapy session today.

“I’m a little [concerned], because I’m one of those three-weeks-on, one-week-off chemo patients, and I already had one week off,” she said.

Sheriff’s deputies, social workers and firefighters have already settled their contract issues with the county, and--with nurses required to work--there were hopes among county officials that the impact of a general service workers’ walkout would be minimal.

But they were still bracing for severe disruption.

“The county is looking at all kinds of contingencies, but nothing is determined yet,” Janssen said. If citizens call on county services, “there may not be anyone there to help them.”

On the hospital picket lines Tuesday, union members yelled their demands for more pay to incoming patients and drivers.

Typist Jeri Stephens, 41, was picketing outside Olive View in Sylmar because she said she and her three children could barely survive on her $24,000 annual salary.

“Sometimes I can’t even afford the dollar to get into the Kaiser parking lot,” she said.

Nurses and other medical workers were torn as they picketed hospitals, not wanting to jeopardize patients but hoping to make their demands--which include a boost in nursing staff--heard.

A handful of nurses stayed on duty at some hospitals to care for patients, which rankled Lenora Stewart. “I understand that they don’t want to leave the patients,” said Stewart, a pediatrics nurse herself for nine years who was picketing at County-USC. “I don’t want to leave them either. But unity is very important in a fight like this.”

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Times staff writers Jeffrey L. Rabin, George Ramos, Erin Texeira and correspondent Richard Fausset contributed to this story.

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