County Workers Reiterate Threat to Strike This Week

After a weekend of unsuccessful bargaining, representatives of the county’s largest employees union reiterated their threat to launch an indefinite strike by more than 5,000 social workers today, to be followed by a one-day general strike of all 41,000 union members Tuesday.

Union officials said 5,100 eligibility workers and supervisors at 52 Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services locations will walk off their jobs because negotiators have not been able to agree on issues including health insurance, caseloads and employee parking.

The social service workers handle eligibility work for various county welfare programs. The members voted last week to end their contract with the county and authorize a strike.

“There’s no fighting about salaries,” said Charles Hamson, who chairs the bargaining policy committee of the Service Employees International Union’s Local 660. “None of the 22 bargaining units other than nurses are being offered any salary increase this year. The earliest offer of a pay increase for the others is July, 1992.”

Most of the local’s members, however, are facing pay cuts, in effect, if they have to pay more for health insurance and parking, Hamson said.

Efforts to reach county negotiators were unsuccessful Sunday. Elliot Marcos, county director of labor relations, has called the union’s strategy “unconscionable” because its members serve the county’s poorest and most sickly citizens.

Local 660, which represents county employees, including nurses, accountants, paramedics, librarians and clerical workers, asked its members to pack the County Board of Supervisors meeting during Tuesday’s general strike.

The threatened walkout is part of a series of strikes that have affected several county agencies, including the Health Department, where nurses who work at six hospitals and 48 clinics staged a two-day strike last week.