County Strike’s Burden Fell Hardest on Poor

There’s only rice and milk in the house, so you need money for food by tomorrow. The bus drivers are on strike, so you ask your brother for a ride to the welfare office. You take your daughter out of school to translate. Then you get to the office--and wait. Of course, you always wait. But this time you wait longer because most of the clerks are on strike.

Still, Rosaura Sanchez, 38, who has not one dollar in her purse, has a measure of compassion for the Los Angeles County workers’ strike.

“It’s good, because they are out there asking for money they need,” she said, sitting in the Vermont Avenue welfare office. “At the same time, they’re preventing people who need money from getting it,” she added, her daughter translating from Spanish.

The countywide strike left welfare offices, records offices, even the morgue understaffed. There were no apparent catastrophes. All nurses and lab technicians were ordered by a judge to work. The strike was an inconvenience if you were filing a record or trying to get a marriage license or waiting for a death certificate.

But the walkout created one more burden for the county’s already beleaguered poor. First, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike; then this. And some got angry about it.

“I’m hungry. I’m pregnant. If they’re out there marching on the street, it’s ridiculous,” said Kendrea Spencer, 24, while waiting at the Pasadena welfare office for food stamps. “I know they have problems, but we do too.”

For others dependent on public assistance, the economic line separating them from striking workers was fuzzy.

“We’re in the same boat. Most of us here are single mothers with more than two kids. We are living from paycheck to paycheck,” said Audrey Lira, 35, a striking welfare office worker in Pasadena. She herself was once in a welfare-to-work program. “Now that we’re working for the county we aren’t eligible for those programs. We were better off before we started working for the county.”

Juggling Their Priorities

Both strikers and people affected by the strike were doing a dance of financial priorities: Do you cross picket lines for a day’s pay--or lose a day’s pay to strike for better wages? Do you wait hours at the welfare office and miss work or lose out on food stamps and go to work?

“I can’t afford to be here, but I have to fight for higher wages,” said striking worker Pat Lynch, 35, a single woman with an 11-year-old daughter. “It’s the principle. Our clients think we don’t care about them, but we do. We’re sensitive to their needs, but our families are suffering.”

Rena Mitchell, a homeless 19-year-old mother with a 5-month-old baby, waited to get assistance for a hotel and food stamps from the welfare office in Pasadena. “The strikes are hitting too many places--first the buses, now this,” Mitchell said. She went in to see her caseworker, but her caseworker was out picketing.

Outside a welfare office at Wilshire Boulevard and Coronado Street, about 100 employees were out chanting slogans, shouting at passing cars and blowing whistles. A nearby film crew asked them to stop making so much noise. But strikers continued waving signs and marching while dozens of aid recipients were turned away.

“I’m basically one paycheck away from being a client in this office, and I’m not the only one,” said Ingrid Escoto, 28, one of the picketing clerks.

The short-lived strike, which ended Wednesday night, may have been harshest on people waiting at welfare offices, but its impact reverberated across many departments--reminders of how many services the county provides. In general, supervisors made do with the unionized workers who did cross picket lines, as well as employees represented by other county unions not on strike. In one case--at the Los Angeles registrar-recorder’s office in Norwalk--paperwork was sent to an office in Orange County.

Some services stopped completely. Children who usually go to county libraries after school until their parents fetch them found some of the facilities closed.

Outside the Montebello Regional Library, Nancy Lopez, 14, a freshman at Montebello High School, was resigned to waiting until her parents arrived after work. “I knew the strike was going on, but I thought the library would still be open,” she said, sitting on the low-slung bough of a tree and using her lap as a desk. “I guess I’ll do my science homework until my mom gets here.”

The county coroner’s office was falling behind in processing bodies.

“This is not a good week to die in Los Angeles,” said Ben Marrufo, 31, a striking coroner’s employee.

Outside the department Wednesday, a mortuary van arrived to pick up a body but was blocked by picketing workers. Marrufo grew impatient with his co-workers.

“The family needs their loved one!” he yelled. He was immediately razzed by colleagues--”Scab!” they yelled--but they gave way.

“We will let everyone through, but the trouble is that workers like me are out here, and not in there,” he said, gesturing at the building. “There are 350 bodies in there. How will they get them all out?”

There was a worse problem keeping up with dead animals.

“Road kill is going to have to wait,” said Bob Ballenger, executive assistant in the county Department of Animal Care and Control. “You have to prioritize. Animals that are killed by cars are just going to wait until we get to them.”

Ballenger temporarily left his administrative duties Wednesday to take care of cleaning about 200 kennel cages, feeding the animals and providing them with water. He works in Downey at one of the six county-run shelters. About 60% of the Downey staff stayed off the job to support the strike.

“During a situation like this, our first priority is the animals,” he said. “A lot of us did the cleaning, including me.”

Picketers and county clients chatted at many venues. Gordon Cheatham, a 40-year-old mechanic with an injured leg, spotted his physical therapist, Daniel Rios, on the picket line outside County-USC Medical Center.

Rios was apologetic. “I feel real bad about not being there for him today,” said Rios, 48, who has worked at the hospital 23 years. “He needs to be walked, and you feel out here like you’re letting him down.”

Orange County Lends a Hand

The Orange County registrar-recorder’s office kept the Los Angeles County real estate market moving Wednesday. L.A. County deeds were sent to the Orange County office for review and approval. The documents were then sent back to the L.A. County registrar-recorder’s office, where they were recorded by department supervisors.

“It’s working right now,” said Conny McCormick, the registrar-recorder/county clerk. “But it’s only a stopgap measure.”

Real estate brokers and title company employees reported only minor delays.

“I think we’ll all survive this,” said Tom Dunlap, branch manager for Prudential John Aaroe & Associates in Beverly Hills. “I don’t think the world is going to stop spinning because we couldn’t sign a deed.”

Courtney Bell, 74, and his wife, Dorothy, 69, were rattled when they learned that the strike could delay their escrow closing, scheduled for Wednesday. After 46 years, the couple were selling their three-bedroom Long Beach home and moving to an apartment at Leisure World.

“I’m nervous, but my agent said there’s nothing to be nervous about,” said Dorothy Bell as she packed china and glassware.

News of the strike kept people away from at least one welfare office. Eric Berry, 40 and homeless, zipped through processing for food stamps and money on South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. “I wish it was like this every day,” he said.

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Times staff writers Ana Beatriz Cholo, Joe Mathews, Sarah Hale, Julie Marquis, Twila Decker, Dalondo Moultrie, Carol Chambers, Diane Wedner, Beth Shuster, Joe Mozingo, Patrick J. McDonnell and Erika Hayasaki, and correspondent Richard Fausset contributed to this story.