County Workers Back on Job After 1-Day Walkout

As Los Angeles County’s delivery of services returned to normal for the first time in a week Thursday, thousands of government workers returned to their cubicles and desks, some seething over their leaders’ abrupt suspension of the first countywide strike since the 1960s, others simply relieved.

The leaders of Local 660, Service Employees International Union, stunned their rank and file late Wednesday by announcing they would honor Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s request that workers return to the job while good-faith bargaining continued.

The announcement followed a raucous, closed-door meeting in which union leaders were heard urging their members to return to work or face dwindling picket lines.

Thursday, the union struggled to explain the dramatic, last-minute decision to its 47,000 members. The official line was that the series of daylong “rolling” strikes, culminating in a countywide action Wednesday, had made the county give in to some of the local’s demands.

But one union leader acknowledged that Mahony had provided cover for Local 660 to call off the job action after some of its members crossed picket lines and many expressed anxiety over the walkout’s potential effect on their precarious personal finances.

“In some ways, it was fortuitous,” Local 660 Assistant General Manager Bart Diener said of Mahony’s late-afternoon statement, “because frankly the same considerations” were weighing on the minds of the union’s leaders.

Some union members Thursday said they were glad the pinch on their finances was over, and others reconciled themselves to returning from the picket lines.

“In essence, us coming back to work is good because we get to show the taxpayers we’re not all about the money,” said Julio Asturias, who works in the North Hollywood office of the Department of Children and Family Services. “It’s frustrating now, yes, but the fight is not over. We have to give them a chance to negotiate in good faith.”

But many union members, who had geared up for a bruising contract fight, were dismayed.

“I’d be better off at home watching my baby’s first step than coming here, barely being able to live and having my own union sell me out,” said Xochilt Nunez, a single mother of three and union steward at the Panorama City welfare office. Nunez earns about $350 a week.

Others were also angry at Mahony.

“Mahony is nobody. He does not belong to the union,” said Maria Juarez, 58, a clerk in the treasurer-tax collector’s office. “We wasted two days without pay for nothing.”

Indeed, so many welfare workers were incensed that there were scattered walkouts across town. “I’m not going to be a puppet,” said Gloria Mallen outside the Lincoln Heights office, where a clutch of employees chanted “Sold out!”

Diener said such sentiments were to be expected, though he argued that they were in the minority. “Switching gears like this in the middle of a strike is a gut-wrenching experience,” he said.

But those who need county services welcomed the workers’ return.

“I came yesterday and it was closed,” said Rosemarie Verdugo, 52, of East Los Angeles while sitting in the waiting room of the Roybal Health Center. “I’m very much relieved it’s open. I need pills for my high blood pressure. I was really worried about it [the strike] because I didn’t know how long it was going to last.”

“I admire them for coming back without a contract. There’s a lot of people out there who need them,” said Chester Garland of Los Angeles as he waited in a child support office. “The public is with them.”

County supervisors were conciliatory after the turnaround of their largest union, which normally works closely with the board to bring in money from Sacramento and Washington and supports most supervisors’ reelection campaigns.

“I hope it’s all going to work out in good terms,” Supervisor Gloria Molina said. “It’s a win-win for everybody,” she said of the union’s return to work.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky praised those who crossed picket lines Wednesday to continue to provide services and said he was certain the county would take care of all its employees.

“The county has a lot on the table,” he said.

During a closed-door caucus in the ballroom of the Westchester hotel where negotiations were being held, Annelle Grajeda, general manager of Local 660, told her members Wednesday night that they had to call off the strike temporarily because the ranks of union members on the picket lines were dwindling.

Through the doors she could be heard saying that union members could “go back in tomorrow with heads held high.” But dissident members of the group loudly objected, shouting “No! No!”

When she emerged, Grajeda attributed the suspension to Mahony’s request. On Thursday she added another reason: The county had moved at the bargaining table.

“We’re getting more than any other [county] union and that’s because we’re fighting,” Grajeda said by cellular phone from the hotel, where negotiations continued. “A strike is a tactic. If the tactic worked, you don’t continue that anymore, and maybe you transition to something else.”

County officials said that there has been movement at the table, with targeted increases offered to some groups of employees and changes in work rules to others, but that the concessions are what they had planned to offer since before the strike.

“I do not begrudge the union leadership’s spin,” Yaroslavsky said. “Everybody knows what happened and there’s no point in going back over that terrain.”

The dispute has primarily been about pay, with Local 660 pushing for a raise of 15.5% over three years for its membership, 60% of whom earn $32,000 or less annually. The union has said its members deserve to share in the county’s good times after accepting pay freezes during the 1990s recession.

Supervisors have offered just 9% over three years, the same deal accepted by several other county unions, including those representing sheriff’s deputies and firefighters. The board argues that it cannot afford higher raises because of looming deficits and because other unions would also want more money.

All along, the county has held out the promise of targeted pay increases for some of Local 660’s diverse membership, and the union has said it would need some form of across-the-board increase for its entire membership.

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Times staff writers Ofelia Casillas, Joe Mathews, Zanto Peabody and Jason Song contributed to this story.