Children’s Social Workers Win 20% Pay Increase : Labor: Union had threatened strike over alleged sex-based wage bias. Accord with county brings salaries of mostly female group closer to those of mostly male probation officers.

Los Angeles County children’s social workers who had been threatening to strike over alleged sex-based wage discrimination have reached a tentative agreement on a new two-year contract that would increase salaries by 20%, union leaders said Thursday.

The union had been negotiating a new contract with the county for more than a year, after a 1991 county-sponsored pay equity study concluded that children’s social workers--two-thirds of whom are women--earn substantially less than mostly male probation officers while performing more demanding and frequently more dangerous work.

The deal negotiated with county officials late Wednesday falls short of erasing the 34% pay gap between the two groups, which formed the basis of the union’s sex-discrimination charges. But leaders said the agreement goes a long way toward creating a more just working environment for the 2,300 social workers who provide services for thousands of abused and neglected children.

“This agreement constitutes a very big historical step toward the end of sex-based wage discrimination in Los Angeles County,” said Phil Ansell, field representative of Local 535 of the Service Employees International Union.

“Our goal has never been to attack the deputy probation officer function but to raise to a conscious level . . . the disparity L.A. County had tacitly created, and to correct it,” said Annette Jeffries, chief grievance officer for the union.

The agreement calls for raising experienced social workers into a higher job classification and gradually increasing salaries over the course of the contract.

Under the settlement, an experienced social worker would earn top monthly pay of $4,066, compared to current top pay of $3,346 monthly. A similarly experienced probation officer would still earn $321 a month more.

The contract extends from March, 1994, through February, 1996, and calls for additional bargaining on issues of caseloads, safety, health and continuing education. Rank-and-file membership is to vote on the package beginning next week.

Grappling with service cutbacks, budget deficits and other fiscal woes, county officials had initially refused to give the workers any pay increase, and had said the study was flawed because it compared only two job categories.

Officials said Thursday that the county’s concessions had nothing to do with the wage-parity dispute.

“We discounted that,” said Ken Miller, the county’s acting assistant division chief for employee relations. “This is not based on pay equity but on the job itself.”

The county looked at what is required of a children’s social worker and recognized a need to come up with a means to further career advancement, Miller said.

“This is a win-win situation for the workers and the county,” he said.

Children’s Services Director Peter Digre said the agreement also represents a win for the county’s troubled children.

Three-quarters of children’s social workers are making top pay, he said, “and it was working out to be a disaster for morale and was undermining the most important thing in our organization, stability at the front line. This (agreement) represents a positive step forward.”