Engineers Union Is Fighting Its Move

A state employees union representing engineers who inspect hospitals for seismic safety filed suit Friday in Sacramento, seeking to block a plan to move about 60 of the engineers to a downtown Los Angeles building they consider unsafe.

A Superior Court hearing was set for Sept. 21 on the union’s request for an injunction against the move from the Junipero Serra State Office Building at 107 S. Broadway to the Washington building at 311 S. Spring St.

The same union complained last week that the California Department of Transportation is endangering the lives of hundreds of workers by not moving quickly to abate a fire hazard in the Caltrans building at 120 S. Spring St.

The controversy over the engineers’ move has gone on for months. Earlier this year, the state ordered a second, $1.2-million retrofitting of the 88-year-old Washington building, following an earlier $3.5-million retrofitting.

The area of downtown where all the buildings are located is in a zone of apparent seismic weakness worsened by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Nearby Los Angeles City Hall has just undergone a $300-million retrofitting and modernization in which it was equipped with seismic base isolators to cushion the shock of a major quake. A new Roman Catholic cathedral being constructed nearby will also have the base isolators.

A structural engineer hired by the state to assess the Washington building, Allan E. Porush, concluded early this year that, with the second retrofitting, the building would be acceptably safe.

But the engineers, who work for the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, insist that despite the retrofitting, the building, which is being rented by the state for more than $2 million a year, will still not comply with the state’s own seismic safety criteria.

Officials with the state Department of General Services insist they are using updated criteria that ensures the building is safe.

Hundreds of state workers have already moved into the Washington building and engineers have been ordered to make the move by mid-October.

The suit, however, alleges that doing so without further building improvements would subject them to “irreparable harm.”