Public hospitals diverted ambulances. Beach crews cleared wildfire debris without heavy equipment. Libraries closed. Thousands of nurses stayed home.
A two-day strike in Los Angeles County kept some 55,000 unionized public employees off the job Tuesday as workers gathered at an enormous rally that clogged streets in downtown Los Angeles.
The walkout by the public employees union, Service Employees International Union Local 721, came as contract negotiations between the nation’s largest county and the county’s largest union snagged in the face of intense budget pressures.
Last week, city officials — who stretched last year to grant their unions generous pay raises — traveled to Sacramento to ask state legislators for help with a projected shortfall of nearly $1 billion. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles warned that without a state rescue, the city might have to lay off some 1,650 workers.
The financial hits have come as the county, which employs more than 100,000 workers and serves nearly 10 million people, is negotiating its contracts with its mostly unionized labor force.
SEIU Local 721 represents social, clerical, public health, and parks and recreation employees and has members in all but two of the county’s 38 departments. Union leaders said this strike, which ends Wednesday at 6:59 p.m., was the first to include all of the local’s members. Their contract expired in March.
Leaders charged that the county had “stalled” negotiations and violated dozens of labor laws, including surveillance of workers and retaliation.
By Tuesday morning, libraries from Compton to Catalina Island had shut down because of a lack of staffing, and maintenance crews who had been cleaning up wildfire debris were making do without unionized operators of bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Portable toilets were set up on county beaches where striking workers had left some restrooms closed.
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