Mayor to Seek Limit on Strikers

Facing a strike by a city employees union pledging to disrupt life across Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday that he will seek to block about 200 key workers in airports, sewage treatment plants and emergency services from joining the two-day walkout.

Villaraigosa’s announcement at an afternoon news conference highlighted a long-running and personally bitter clash between the mayor and the Engineers and Architects Assn., a union that has been obscure for most of its 112 years. The battle also offers a prelude to possible strikes next year by other unions representing the city’s civilian employees.

The association, whose more than 7,500 members have worked without a contract since 2004, is preparing for a two-day strike beginning Tuesday. In public statements and radio ads, the union has said its strike would close LAX runways, send sewage spilling into Santa Monica Bay and create citywide traffic gridlock. City officials -- including Villaraigosa, Council President Eric Garcetti and City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka -- have pledged to protect public services.

Union and city officials say the strike is almost certain to go forward. No negotiations are scheduled.

The mayor said the city would ask a state court Monday to bar walkouts by employees assigned to “essential departments.” According to the mayor, that includes workers at Los Angeles and Ontario international airports, as well as in police dispatch, crime data analysis, the Hyperion sewage treatment plant and a few other functions. All told, he said, it involves roughly 200 workers.

A former union organizer, Villaraigosa said that he has never crossed a picket line but that he would do so next week. Asked about the union’s radio ads, Villaraigosa said such threats were intolerable, and he added that the association’s attempts to “terrify the public just boggles my mind.”

Robert Aquino, the association’s executive director, said the mayor’s decision to seek a restraining order vindicated the union’s belief that its employees are essential defenders of public safety.

The association has sought raises in line with those granted to police officers and Department of Water and Power workers within the last year and has held out long after other unions reached agreements. Instead, city officials have offered a three-year contract that mirrors that given to other unions that represent civilian city employees.

On Tuesday, the City Council voted 12 to 0 to unilaterally implement the terms of its offer -- which includes a cumulative raise of 6.25% over the three years. The contract makes no significant changes in health and retirement benefits and offers special raises for certain jobs that the city has found hard to fill.

“The mayor is going into court to argue that those employees are so important to the city,” Aquino said. “They’re making our argument for us now.”

Los Angeles has been dry as a desert when it comes to walkouts by city employees. The last strike of city workers -- by a tiny union of 16 port pilots -- came in 1997. It has been 25 years since the last general strike by municipal workers, according to labor leaders.

Legal experts say Villaraigosa’s decision to go to court to prevent a strike by some union workers has many precedents, but the outcome is far from certain.

A document filed this week by the city attorney’s office with the city Employment Relations Board lists eight job titles held by association members, including two classes of employees who work on airport runways, programmers who support the 911 system, analysts at the harbor, transportation engineers, forensic technicians and photographers at the Police Department, and lab technicians at the Bureau of Sanitation. A work stoppage by any of them “would create a substantial and imminent threat to the health and safety of the public,” the filing asserts.

Rob Hulteng, a San Francisco lawyer who is an expert in representing public sector employers in labor matters, said the city’s effort to secure a restraining order would turn on its ability to convince a judge that the city simply cannot do without certain employees. “That’s going to be the dividing line -- is it an essential public service, and how easily can those people be replaced?” he said.

Founded in 1894, the Engineers and Architects Assn. now also represents accountants, auditors, software programmers, administrators, surveyors and scientists. Their salaries range from $36,000 for community service representatives to $126,000 for the top forensic chemist at the Police Department. Under the terms imposed by the City Council this week, the average salary was raised to $74,500.

In 1999, the union hired Aquino, a Whittier native who worked for nearly two decades for the Teamsters, starting as a business representative in 1973 at the age of 19. He also spent several years as a bank vice president. Aquino is credited with rebuilding the union’s finances, bringing in a new staff and raising the association’s profile with a confrontational public posture.

He has raised eyebrows by criticizing leaders of other city unions, which now include many of Los Angeles’ most powerful figures. The association also broke with much of labor in endorsing Villaraigosa over then-Mayor James K. Hahn in the 2005 election.

Over the last two years, the union has frequently run ads attacking the city’s negotiating position and protested at city events. In April, four union leaders, including Aquino, were arrested when they interrupted a presentation by the mayor and City Council to the makers of the movie “Crash.”

Aquino has made Villaraigosa a frequent target of biting criticism. He declared Friday that the mayor had failed to deal effectively with his union because he was too busy pursuing legislation in Sacramento granting more mayoral control over the Los Angeles Unified School District.

And after The Times reported earlier this summer on the long list of personal needs that mayoral aides must fulfill, Aquino released his own list of items that aides should supply, including “a giant bottle” of Irish whiskey, “a velum scroll lest a proclamation be issued,” Tang chilled to 47.3 degrees and a bottle of ice water “to back up the [whiskey].”

“It shall be a termination offense for any staff member to get between the executive director and any form of camera lens,” the memo also said in bold type.

The centerpiece of the union’s plan for next week involves three simultaneous marches, beginning at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and converging on City Hall.

Los Angeles police objected, with Capt. Kevin McCarthy writing in a memo this week that the timing and extent of the march would paralyze downtown, force the closure of freeway on-ramps and result “in a gridlock situation in the entire region.”

The Los Angeles Police Commission, which issues parade permits, voted 4 to 0 late Friday afternoon to allow the union just one march to City Hall -- a long trip up Broadway from Olympic Boulevard. McCarthy told the commission that under the original plan, emergency personnel might be blocked from responding to a serious fire. “There’s a possibility that somebody could die,” he said.

Aquino said the city has handled simultaneous marches and pointedly declared: “If it were me, I wouldn’t want to be driving downtown on Tuesday afternoon.”

In its directives for next week’s action, the union is requiring members to join picket lines outside the city departments where they work. Any employee, union or not, who crosses a picket line should be confronted, according to the plans.

“If the individual refuses to honor the picket line and actually crosses it, you should no longer be polite,” one bulletin states. “You should call them what they are at that point, a scab, and any other derogatory term you feel is appropriate.... Direct threats are inappropriate.”

“Anybody who crosses one of their fellow employees’ picket lines is as despicable a person as there is,” Aquino said in an interview this week. “They will be scabs and they will continue to be scabs after that.”

Fujioka, the city administrative officer, who is responsible for negotiating union contracts, has pointedly criticized Aquino for such words, saying they amount to threats. Fujioka has also declared he will no longer negotiate with the union leadership on a current contract.

“The decision on whether to picket should be the individual’s personal decision,” Fujioka said this week. Of a strike, he added: “They can continue to have work actions. If they feel that further work actions can force us back to the table, that would be a wrong impression.”

Members of law enforcement unions will work Tuesday and Wednesday. Other unions that represent civilian city workers have told their members that the decision to honor the picket lines is a personal one.

But the city could face more strikes next year. Several key unions have formed a coalition that is preparing for negotiations with the city next summer. A notice sent last month to members of the city’s largest employees union suggested that “members should make individual preparations for a strike” next year. A strike support team is meeting the third Saturday of each month to prepare, and the union is considering a special dues assessment to pay for a campaign related to contract negotiations in 2007.