The County of Los Angeles is experiencing major disruptions on the first day of strike

Tens of thousands of workers from the County of Los Angeles left their jobs and on strike on Tuesday, in the midst of what their union described as a failure by the county to negotiate enough for a new contract.

Local section 721 of the Seiu, which represents around 55,000 workers, began a two -day strike on Monday evening with social workers, nurses, office employees and other public employees who came out of work. The union said it was the first time in the history of the county that all its members joined a strike.

As a result, non -urgent libraries, clinics and health parks are closed. Public service counters throughout the county will move more slowly. The authorization of forest fire debris can be interrupted.

A sea of ​​workers from the Royal Purple T-shirts Signature of the Seiu 721 breast leaving Tuesday to the County Center of the County of the city center of Los Angeles for a rally marking the first full day of the strike.

Mike Long, union spokesperson, said 14 members had been arrested for refusing to disperse during a march after the rally, a tactic, he said, supposed to underline the gravity of the situation.

The impulse for the strike, said the union leaders, was 44 violations of labor law which would have been committed by the county, in particular reprisals and job contracts supposed to be occupied by union workers. The members of the union said that they had also been insulted by the salary offered by the county officials, who said that they could not afford significant increases due to a dizzying number of financial misfortunes.

“Does anyone remember what they tried to give us in the fall? Zeroes,” said Union David Green’s head while workers were able to spread purple cows in the city center rally. “Do we deserve zeros?”

The CEO of County, Fesia Davenport, said that county officials had “discouraged” a zero increase offer in recent weeks, but have remained cautious about what they could offer.

“We do not want to negotiate ourselves in a structural deficit,” said Davenport in an interview on Monday. “We want to hold the line.”

Otherwise, she said, the county may have to reduce the positions on the road, similar to the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, proposed. Last week, Bass published a budgetary proposal which included 1,650 layoffs to help close a deficit of nearly a billion dollars in part powered by employee increases, the city agreed last year.

The county said that he now offered members of the local section 721 of Seiu a bonus of $ 5,000 during the first year of the contract, as well as an adjustment of the cost of living and an additional bonus.

Valencia Simpson (left) and Asiata Adekunle Murtala (right) walk in the street with thousands of members of the local section 721 from Seiu to Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.

(CARLIN STIEHL / LOS Angeles Times)

“The county offers what we think is a three -year fair compensation package, given the huge budgetary pressures we face,” Davenport office said in a statement.

Steve Koffroth, chief negotiator of the Seiu contract, said that the county had waited for the last moment to respond to the union’s first proposal for a new contract. The previous contract expired at the end of March.

“We had them before Christmas, and they sat on it for months,” Koffroth told the crowd of Bouing.

When county officials made a counter-offer, he said: “They came with a bite of bread.”

The county had initially declared that he could not afford the increases this year due to the costs of forest fires, a massive sexual abuse and the loss of federal subsidies. Davenport said that the union’s initial salary proposals could have cost the billions of dollars.

The members of the union allege that the county spent too much money for external contractual workers rather than filling thousands of vacant positions. Many rally speakers underlined a study led by a union last December which revealed that the county had spent billions for private companies, in what was equivalent to a “taxpayer-sector-person”.

The county rejected the report as a “deceptive and erroneous” negotiation tactic.

The members of the union said that dependence on entrepreneurs was particularly apparent in health care, where they said that vacancies are temporarily filled with very remunerated contract workers.

“How would you feel if someone enters your hospital for three weeks and makes your salary four times and leaves you,” said Theresa Velasco, member of the Syndicat’s Board of Directors, who works as a community health officer in Rancho Los Amigos, the county rehabilitation hospital.