L.A. union plans strike at airport

Three months after a two-day strike failed to win better pay for its members, the union representing engineers, architects and other professionals who work for the city of Los Angeles is trying again, beginning with a walkout Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport.

The Engineers and Architects Assn., which represents more than 7,500 city employees, said this week that it is planning small, targeted strikes at different city departments on different days in the weeks ahead.

Sunday’s planned one-day strike by about 200 members at LAX appears designed to gain maximum publicity while costing the union little. The strike may involve many office employees who are not scheduled to work Sunday. The most essential EAA workers at LAX, including 41 operational personnel who work on runways and 37 people who are involved in information technology, are barred by a court order from walking off their posts.

But EAA officials are planning picketing at the airport that could affect travelers. Members have been told to gather at a crosswalk near the entrance to Terminal 1. Their presence could slow traffic into and out of the airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year, union officials said.

Robert Aquino, EAA’s executive director, declined to disclose dates or locations of future walkouts, but said similar one-day strikes would follow unless the city agreed to improve the pay of EAA workers.

The union represents accountants, chemists, forensic scientists and other technical professionals making from $36,000 to $126,000 annually, with an average income of $74,500.

“Things are going to start Sunday,” Aquino said this week. “We still don’t want to strike the city, and we understand Sunday is the busiest travel day at LAX because of returning flights from Thanksgiving. But once again, the city has to understand that there are consequences to its inactivity.”

This summer, after EAA members had worked two years without a contract, the City Council implemented its final offer to the union: a 6.25% pay increase over three years, from 2004 to 2007.

The union strenuously objected to the action, including terms that gave members no raise at all for 2004, the first year covered by the terms. The city responded that unions representing 17,000 other civilian city workers accepted a contract with identical salary increases.

The union had sought increases of about twice that, matching those granted Department of Water and Power workers. Union officials said that they reduced their financial demands in recent discussions with the city, but that the city was not willing to compromise.

Publicly, city officials expressed little concern about Sunday’s walkout. Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said that all critical employees will be in place at LAX on Sunday and that the city Transportation Department “is fully prepared and ready to respond” to any traffic problems near the airport or in other parts of the city.

Szabo declined to comment on negotiations with EAA, saying he was unable to reach officials who knew details.

EAA’s leaders have a record of failing to deliver on threatened disruptions in the city. Before a two-day strike at all city offices on Aug. 22 and 23, the union suggested its walkout would force the closing of runways at LAX, send sewage from the Hyperion sewage treatment plant into Santa Monica Bay, and create gridlock in downtown Los Angeles. None of those problems materialized.

Even as Aquino called city workers who showed up for work, including Villaraigosa, “scabs” for crossing the union’s picket lines, thousands of workers represented by EAA ignored the strike. At the time, the union reported that 4,500 workers did not show up for work and 2,000 joined picket lines. The city maintained that a little more than 2,000 were absent from work and 861 joined picket lines.

At the end of the strike, Villaraigosa all but officially declared victory. “There has not been a massive job action here, let’s be clear about that,” he told reporters.

But Aquino said the walkout was successful because it attracted public attention and had some effect on city operations, including a three-hour closure of the Port of Los Angeles and a delay in construction on a new runway at LAX. And the union chief says he has strengthened his hand for the new strike.

Last month, EAA won an official strike sanction from the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. EAA had not sought such a sanction before the August strike.

Privately, county federation officials indicated that while they wonder about Aquino’s tactics, they had little choice but to grant the sanction once his union requested it.

In a public statement, the labor federation’s top official, Maria Elena Durazo, said: “The labor movement strongly believes in the fundamental right of a worker to go on strike when absolutely necessary. We also believe that it is crucial to the labor movement that all unions whose workers may be impacted by the strike of another be notified so they may honor the action in any way their current contract allows.”

Aquino said the strike sanction means that other city unions will honor the picket lines, but it is not clear they will. City union leaders said they did not know what walkouts EAA planned and have thus far told individual members to follow their own consciences.

SEIU Local 347, which represents 12,000 workers in the city of Los Angeles and other local governments, sent a letter to its members late Wednesday reminding them that there is a “no strike” clause in their union’s contract with the city. The letter, signed by Local 347 President Bob Schoonover, said it’s not clear whether the clause applies to individual union members who choose not to cross EAA’s picket lines.

Service Employees International Union Local 347 officials say they will defend workers if the city does seek to discipline them. City officials have thus far pledged not to take any disciplinary action against workers who honor picket lines.

Schoonover’s letter noted that unions representing city workers have been preparing for negotiations and possible walkouts next year on new contracts. Schoonover wrote that Local 347 was focusing on the new contracts -- not the terms of the old contract that are the focus of EAA’s job actions.

“We have urged EAA to focus their energies on future gains that can be achieved in the spring negotiations,” his letter said. “We invite EAA to join us in moving forward.”

Aquino said that EAA, by continuing to oppose the old salary terms, was strengthening the bargaining position of city unions in next year’s talks. “We’re actually leading,” he said.

joe.mathews@latimes.com