L.A. County Employees Stage Protest

In a preview of what their threatened strike may involve, Los Angeles County workers picketed by the thousands during their lunch breaks Thursday, protesting the Board of Supervisors’ failure to include raises for public employees in its budget.

From Long Beach to Lancaster, members of the behemoth Service Employees International Union Local 660 took to the front sidewalks of more than 100 county government buildings. They carried signs, blew whistles and chanted, “L.A. County needs a raise!”--often as disinterested colleagues made their way out into the furnace-like heat in pursuit of non-cafeteria lunches.

The county’s financial difficulties have forced workers to go without pay increases for as long as five years.

The noisy protests, union leaders said, were organized to pressure the supervisors into giving the 40,000-plus Local 660 members raises of up to 5% when their contracts expire Sept. 30. The union represents more than half the county’s work force: everyone from accountants and librarians to children’s services, health and welfare employees.

The show of force--although smaller than organizers predicted--was also intended to put the supervisors on notice that the local will call for a strike if its members do not get what they want. The rank and file, in fact, have been asked to gather Sept. 4 to vote on whether to strike when the labor contracts expire, even though negotiators from both sides only began official discussions July 28.

The strike vote has been scheduled because the union isn’t expecting much from the supervisors, who included no money for raises in the budget they adopted in late June.

“All signs do point to a confrontation,” said Local 660 spokesman Steve Weingarten, who joined more than 150 protesters in the day’s largest demonstration, a mildly boisterous parade around the front of the county Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles.

“I don’t know when the showdown will come, but I cannot say it any clearer: We will strike over this,” he said. “We consider anything less than finding the money [for raises] an act of hostility.”

On Thursday, county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said he and the supervisors remain hopeful that they can give workers some kind of pay raise, even if only a symbolic one this year to show their good intentions.

But Janssen, the chief management negotiator on the pay issue, said officials must first see how much money lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento will be allocating the county--or taking from it--when they finalize their annual budgets in coming weeks.

“The board has been very clear that they support raises, as long as they are affordable,” Janssen said. Weingarten countered that union members aren’t buying that response this time around. For as long as five years, he said, members have gone without raises because of a county budget crisis that was fueled in part by cutbacks in state and federal funding.

“It is not a case of Washington and Sacramento” being responsible, he said. “It is a case of [the supervisors] not passing the buck, and finding the political will to find the money.”

During their brief protest outside the county headquarters building, some union members seemed ambivalent about whether they will strike if asked to.

“I’d have to think about it,” said Gerold Coughlin, who works in the county assessor’s office.