By Rachel Brahinsky

Many workers in the Bay Area were facing strangling economic times long before the dot-coms crashed and the national economy sank into a recession. Valeasia Haley, a medical assistant at the West Oakland Health Center, is one of them.

After 13 years of treating some of Oakland's neediest families, Haley still earns just $14.11 an hour, which comes to less than $30,000 a year. Plus, she told us, she pays for her own health care. As a single mom with two children, Haley said, it's a constant struggle to survive.

She and her colleagues earn from 25 to 47 percent less than employees in comparable positions at other local health clinics. Several told us they end up taking second jobs to make ends meet. "We're living paycheck to paycheck," Haley said. "It's an insult."

Haley and 76 other workers at WOHC's nine East Bay clinics plan to go on strike April 11 unless negotiations with management pick up. Local 250 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about one-third of the center's employees, wants a 7 percent wage increase; clinic managers insist that a 3.5 percent hike is enough to meet the rising cost of living.

The dispute erupted once last month, when more than 70 workers struck for one day. When the health center board didn't come up with a new offer, the workers voted to strike again this week if their demands weren't met. Last week there were indications that a second strike could be averted when the board announced it was ready to negotiate, but the talks stalled when the board only offered 4.5 percent raises.

"In six months they have only moved 1 percent," SEIU organizer Allen Dunbar told us. "That really is no movement. It needs to be more than that."

WOHC director Dr. Robert Cooper did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment.

The union argues that workers should be given a raise that is commensurate with the Bay Area Consumer Price Index for June 2001, when their last contract expired. The clinic is basing its offer on a sunken post-Sept. 11 CPI.

Almost 40 percent of WOHC's $16.4 million annual revenue is controlled by Alameda County. Several members of the county's Board of Supervisors are supporting the workers.

"They're asking for just a fair [cost-of-living] adjustment that's comparable to others providing the same kind of service," Sup. Keith Carson, who represents West Oakland, told us. "All the information I have leads me to believe that [clinic managers] have the funds."

Founded in 1967 to serve poor patients and to boost the local economy, the health center has a mandate to serve Oakland's low-income population. It provides mental health and substance-abuse treatment as part of a comprehensive array of health services. So Carson and the other supervisors are reluctant to threaten the center's funding.

"If this labor dispute can't be worked out, and we pull funding from the WOHC, there is no WOHC," said Joe DeVries, field director for Sup. Nate Miley, who sits on the Board of Supervisors' health care committee.

That would force low-income Oakland residents to look elsewhere for health care – and leave Valeasia Haley out of work.