County Workers’ Loss of Job Security Hurts Us All

It used to be that when you got a job at the county, you had it made.

This was true for truck drivers and graduates of the USC School of Public Administration. The truck drivers may not have made as much money as someone at the wheel of a cross-country big rig. The public administration graduates were undoubtedly out-earned by high fliers from the business or law schools. But they had security and the satisfaction of knowing that, for the most part, they were helping people.

That’s been changed by the huge Los Angeles County budget deficit, and the increasing chance of pay cuts and layoffs.

*

“Overall, I was fortunate to get good employment and I did well,” Ken Suarez told me. “I felt my job as a personnel analyst for the county was the best job I could have. I was pleased. My long-range plan was to get exposure in the central agency, go out into the field, and then come back to the central agency. . . . I met my wife here. We are raising a family. We try to live within our income.”

Suarez, 49, is a quiet, serious man who was nice enough to take time out from his lunch at the Hall of Administration cafeteria to talk to me. He signed up with the county in 1972 after serving in the Marine Corps and graduating from UCLA with a political science degree.

As a member of the office of affirmative action, Suarez makes sure construction contractors comply with equal opportunity hiring guidelines. “My job is to assist women and minorities, especially women, to get into the construction trades,” he said. He views his work with pride.

Attrition, transfers and retirements have reduced his office force by 25% and Suarez figures he may get hit with an 8 1/4% pay cut advocated by the supervisors. “As for feeling the pressure, I definitely do,” he said.

I heard about other pressures from a man and woman seated at a table at Pasqua’s, the outdoor sandwich and pastry shop on the Hall of Administration plaza. They didn’t want me to use their names. “The tables have ears,” the man said.

But eventually we talked. It’s not just the threatened salary cuts and layoffs, the woman said. Even worse, the county supervisors have no respect for the county bureaucracy. She was particularly angry over an attack by Supervisor Gloria Molina on Chief Administrative Officer Harry L. Hufford at Tuesday’s supervisorial meeting.

Hufford is thought of in the bureaucracy as one of the best in the ranks, the kind of hard-working, self-effacing public servant admired in schools of public administration.

Tuesday, Molina treated him with contempt as she questioned him about negotiations on the proposed pay cut. “I find this to be very devious,” she said when Hufford explained his role in the talks.

Hufford’s face reddened. I’ve heard him give speeches about the importance of integrity in public service and I knew Molina calling him devious was the worst kind of insult. “Don’t use that word with me,” he said. “Don’t ever use that word. Ever.”

Anger and insecurity is evident elsewhere in county government.

Tuesday night, I went to a meeting of shop stewards of Local 660 of the Service Employees Union International, the largest of the county employee unions. Faced with the 8 1/4% pay cut, audience members loudly and repeatedly cheered as speakers urged them “to fight until we win.”

“Shut ‘em down! Shut ‘em down!” the shop stewards shouted.

I imagine that not everyone will be sympathetic to the county workers. Many people have it rougher in this recession. County government isn’t closing down or transferring its operations to Georgia. There are thousands of men and women who’d willingly accept an 8 1/4% pay cut, just to have a job.

But government is different from a company. Services are all that government provides. It deals in people rather than commodities and is judged by the skill with which its workers dispense help. The work force--the people behind the counter, in the hospital wards, on the fire lines--comprise the most important part of the county enterprise.

There have been well-publicized failures. But for the most part, county workers have fought floods, operated libraries and health clinics, built roads, maintained parks and boat slips and done a multitude of other tasks so efficiently that we don’t pay much attention to them.

If the work force deteriorates, it will be hard to reassemble if government can’t promise the security that once drew people to county employment. The damage being inflicted is more than a personal loss for the employees. In the long run, it will hurt us all.