LABOR IMPASSE STILL FESTERING AT MUNICIPAL COURT.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Although contracts have been forged between 20 county courthouses and the union that represents clerical staffers, Newhall Municipal Court - with 21 union workers - is one of three holdouts to the deal.

Representatives from Service Employees International Union, Local 660, plan to distribute fliers today at the Valencia Boulevard courthouse, part of the county civic center complex that includes the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff's station and the Valencia Public Library.

On Tuesday, clerks picketed at Inglewood Municipal Court to press for a settlement to the negotiations that have been in progress since November. South Bay Municipal Court in Torrance is the third site where both sides at the bargaining table haven't come to an agreement, said Rob Leonard, organizing director for Local 660.

The Los Angeles-based union has represented about 900 clerical staffers at 23 municipal courthouses in Los Angeles County since the workers, in elections in July, voted to establish collective bargaining and voted in the union, Leonard said.

One of the main sticking points yet to be resolved is whether union representatives at each courthouse can attend to union matters during work hours, said Dan Cassidy, an attorney representing the courthouse management in the labor negotiations.

``The union wants us to have a court employee, at taxpayer expense, conduct the union's business. We think that, with the few employees we have, we can't afford to be releasing people from doing the court's work to do union business,'' Cassidy said.

``We don't think they should be able to get up and leave their (unfinished) work.''

The union represents 40,000 employees who work in assorted departments of Los Angeles County government, a number that's more than half of the county's work force, Leonard noted. The union is trying to negotiate the first contract for court clerks - those who work in the courtrooms and those who directly serve the public at the courthouse windows for traffic, civil and criminal cases.

The court administrators reached contract agreements with workers at the other 20 courthouses March 23, Leonard said.

Leonard said that Municipal Court workers are pressing for a cost-of-living adjustment clause in the contract, saying pay hikes would be tied to an agreed-upon rise in the consumer price index.

``For us, unification poses certain possible threats,'' Leonard said, noting that the union wants the contract to safeguard against potential job transfers to other courthouses, employee layoffs or change of duties.

Another factor coloring the negotiations, Leonard said, was a change in California law in recent years that is shifting court funding away from the counties and onto the state. ``Right now, court employees have no idea who will be their employer in the next three or four years,'' he said.

Finally, many courthouse jobs have been reclassified in a way that removes them as civil servants, meaning new hires to those jobs don't have that protection as their more veteran peers, Leonard said. ``It's clearly a union-busting tactic,'' he said.

Developments in recent years have had - or likely will have - ramifications on courthouse workers, Leonard said. One example is June's passage of Proposition 220, the state ballot initiative that dealt with the unification of Municipal and Superior courts.

Union members are concerned that these and other changes could affect their job security, workplace duties and civil service protection, Leonard said. Workers also want the contract to guarantee a grievance procedure when there is a clash between an employee and management.

The union has negotiated contracts for union members at the following municipal courthouses: Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, Compton, Long Beach, Whittier, Downey, Culver City, Malibu, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Alhambra, East Los Angeles, Pomona, Antelope Valley, Citrus, Los Cerritos, Santa Anita, Rio Hondo, and Southeast, in Huntington Park.