L.A. Workers on Strike

L O S   A N G E L E S, Oct. 11 -- They drive trucks and take care of the sick. They are the the rank and file, and when they were offered a 9 percent raise, they balked; it wasn’t the 15.5 percent they had asked for.

They are among the 42,000-plus L.A. County workers who walked out on strike this morning, compounding the dilemmas for residents of Los Angeles, where the transit workers have been on strike for 26 days.

The walkout by nearly half the work force of the nation’s most populous county — with nearly 10 million residents — forced service cutbacks at six hospitals and 42clinics. University of Southern California Hospital’s trauma and emergency rooms were both closed this morning, forcing patients to go to private clinics for treatment.

Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday to keep about 5,000 nurses, coroners and other medical employees fromjoining the strike. But there were reports of nurses calling in sick this morning, said Bart Diener, the Assistant General Manager of the Service Employees International Union, Local 660. He also added that he was unsure how many nurses called in sick and said the information remained anecdotal.

“The emergency rooms remain open to walk-ins, people who present themselves at the hospitals,” said John Wallace, a spokesman for the county health department. “Doctors by and large are not participating in work actions.”

Paperwork Piling Up

The massive walkout was expected to hinder operations at a number of county departments, including jails, libraries, animal services and marriage licenses.

Stacks of mail piled up outside the registrar-recorder’s office in Norwalk a day after the postmark deadline for voters to register by mail for the Nov. 7 election.

The shortage of county workers may also pose another problem, says Los Angeles spokeswoman Judy Hammond. Because so many office workers have been affected by the strike, Hammond fears that Los Angeles county will not be prepared for voting.