I'm sure that leaders of a three-day Fresno County employee strike will declare it a success because that's what unions always do.

But the truth is the walkout was ill-advised, poorly conceived and a slap in the face to the most vulnerable members of our community.

Proof is in the numbers: Fewer than half of the 4,100 employees represented by the Service Employees International Union protested a 9% pay cut by not reporting to work.

This isn't the participation rate of a strike held for just cause. It's the meager turnout you'd expect when a work action is called for political reasons -- or to satisfy a union's most extreme members.

There were winners in this strike. They are the jail correctional officers and other employees who showed up and did their jobs. Good for them.

The strike didn't make sense, anyway. The state labor board had already ordered union representatives and county management to meet in Sacramento today.

The union should have let the process play out and saved three days' pay for members. The only thing the strike accomplished was to drive the wedge deeper between public employees and those in private industry.

Workers in the private sector have been laid off and furloughed. They've seen wages cut and pensions frozen. And when private workers see county employees -- many of whom participate in a gold-plated pension program -- striking over a 9% pay cut, their blood boils.

In the midst of the strike, U. S. News & World Report ranked Fresno as the second-worst city in America to find a job.

By the end of this year, with a slowly recovering economy, Fresno will still have 26,000 fewer jobs than it did before the Great Recession started. So says an economic analysis prepared for the U. S. Conference of Mayors.

And there's no telling when local home values will bottom out and rise again -- as they have in other parts of the country.

Someone in leadership at SEIU should have raised a finger in the air and figured out which way the wind blows. These are tough times. The county is broke. There are no raises to be had. If, as the union claims, the county didn't play fair and square in contract negotiations, that's why we have courts and labor boards.

There are factors other than Fresno's basket-case economy behind the county's financial woes. The Board of Supervisors, for example, has shown a consistent lack of good judgment and leadership for the past 30 years.

The irony is, one of the board's worst decisions last decade was enhancing the county's already lucrative pensions. This coming fiscal year, the pension program will require a county contribution of $191 million. This is a big reason why supervisors have had to cut employee pay.

Finally, this strike made a mockery of the word "service" in the union's name. By striking, members imposed hardship on the people who most need them most: poor children, families seeking food stamps and people in need of mental health treatment.

A strike can be just and righteous. This one was just bogus.