City Union Poised for Strike (LA Times) [View All]

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-strike22aug22,0,7199720.story?coll=la-home-local



City Union Poised for Strike
L.A. officials are unsure how disruptive the action would be, even after a judge orders key employees to report to work regardless.
By Joe Mathews and Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writers
August 22, 2006

Municipal workers were expected to begin their first significant strike in Los Angeles in a generation late Monday, even as a judge barred 200 of the most crucial workers at airports, sewage treatment plants and emergency response facilities from walking off the job.

The Engineers and Architects Assn., which represents more than 7,500 of the city's approximately 45,000 employees, called on its workers to begin a two-day strike with their shifts today. But because some of those overnight shifts begin at 10 p.m., pickets were expected to go up Monday night.

The union includes accountants, management analysts, civil engineers, sanitary engineers, criminalists in the Los Angeles Police Department, architects, airport operation coordinators and transportation engineers, according to the city's personnel department. Their average salary is $74,500.

Robert Aquino, the union's executive director, said the union might extend the strike for more than two days and suggested daily life would be disrupted for Angelenos. "You may be looking at an extended strike," said Aquino, who called Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a "scab" for saying he intended to cross a picket line to get to work today.