This is all about us and our issues in our Labor Movement. Please feel free to share your opinion, your thoughts and exchange ideas with us. We may agree to disagree, but the sound of democracy has always been the the clashing of ideas and opinions.
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself”-
Potter Stewart
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Andy Stern on the New Moment
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 11/25/2008 @ 5:56pm
Like any reformer, SEIU President Andy Stern has his admirers and his critics. I understand the critics’ arguments. But I also think Stern is a visionary labor figure. When in history were heretics well liked? Yet their ideas are worth hearing.
Yesterday, Stern came to The Nation offices along with Change to Win Chair and SEIU International Secretary-Treasure, Anna Burger, to discuss this new moment in the country’s history and what kind of strategic thinking will be needed moving forward. Their mood was optimistic–as well it should be, since labor spent some $450 million in the 2008 races, contributed mightily to massive voter outreach and mobilization and saw their candidates win.
“It’s a different world – the free market ideology has been discredited,” Stern said. This was “a clear election not on small things.” And he argues, “We’ve redefined the center. Universal health care is now centrist.”
Stern and Burger were less focused on the people just appointed to President-elect Obama’s cabinet than on the policies and proposals – especially the massive stimulus program – now being discussed. Stern said, “We’re not used to thinking in these ways, we need to think differently, and look at the outputs, not just the inputs,” meaning who the advisors are. (I have to admit that I’m more worried than Stern about the number of Robert Rubin proteges in the cabinet. It’s as if the guys who brought us this mess, via deregulation of Wall Street, are falling upwards.)
Both Stern and Burger were very pleased with the “real progressive appointments” of Melody Barnes and Patrick Gaspard. Barnes, the former chief counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, will serve as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Gaspard – who will be the White House political director – was the lead political operative for SEIU 1199, representing health care workers in New York prior to serving as the Obama campaign’s national political director.
Like everyone else, Burger’s and Stern’s top priority is rebuilding the economy. “The American economy hasn’t been working for working people for a long time. We need to make the economy work for people,” Burger said.
Stern views the economic stimulus as a needed reinvestment in our country, creating necessary jobs and rebuilding our infrastructure. Both Burger and Stern talked about the importance of creating not just any jobs, but “good jobs” – meaning secure jobs, middle-class jobs – which means workers have a voice (which means Employee Free Choice Act – read on). He joked about how during the Clinton era there was talk of 20 million jobs created and that many SEIU members had three of them – working three jobs to pay the bills.
These good jobs – and launching universal health care and energy efficiency – will be key to Obama’s success. Stern understands that the Obama Administration will be judged by whether it tangibly improves people’s lives. He paraphrased economist Robert Kuttner: “For the first time we are looking at a transformational, not transactional, presidency.”
Stern doesn’t think Obama is beholden to Wall Street in the ways previous Presidents or even today’s Senators are. He said Obama has “his own accountability system,” and he believes that in this “transformational moment” progressives need to ask [when it comes to domestic priorities], “How do we make sure what the President wants to get done, gets done?”
Along those lines, Stern discussed the kind of strategic thinking which would mean seeing a “difference between independence and interdependence.” We can’t approach this moment only with our own issues – we need to see a range of issues and work together. “Progressives need to work together as a strategic, smart, focused coalition,” he said. We don’t need to agree on everything in order to work together in a smart, strategic way.
Stern laid out what he saw as the important “phases” of the Obama administration. We’re now in a pre-inauguration phase – in which every group is working to get its issues on the agenda, including SEIU. On Inaugural Day, a huge set of initiatives will be announced – including signing a stimulus bill. Stern sees a second phase running from the day after inuaguration to August, and “if we go in different directions, we’re in trouble” – coming back to this idea of a progressive coalition working together strategically while not necessarily agreeing on everything. He believes we have to make sure progressives are on the same page – “push not pull from inaugural day to August to get some big things done.” Stern’s dream would be to achieve a massive stimulus, universal healthcare, and begin the work to create green jobs —and he thinks it can be done if we build strong coalitions and stick together.
A key part of SEIU’s work will also be through electoral accountability. The union is putting massive numbers of people in the field – half of the international staff and 30 percent of the locals – pushing for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and health care, reminding people of what this election was about. Stern argues that progressives have learned how to do elections – and some of that learning curve involves the importance of staying in the field, holding people accountable, not de-mobilizing.
The Accountability Now coalition – which SEIU is a part of – will work to hold elected officials accountable at the polls by recruiting and supporting tough primary opponents to run against incumbents who have forgotten their constituents. Stern joked that it’s almost like what management does to employees – although they’re not going to harass or intimidate Senators and Representatives, they will let them know that progressives won’t just sit back and blindly support any incumbent Democrat.
In terms of EFCA – which would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing representation – SEIU is sending out videos showing all the times Obama voiced support for the legislation. They are not naïve, they are clear-eyed, they are tough about the fight ahead. They feel that they need to do a better job educating people about the history of EFCA and the need for it. For example, the card check system (which would be implemented by EFCA) existed in this country for 32 years – from 1936-67 – it built a middle-class. Nine states have some version of EFCA, and former Governor Pataki passed a form of it in New York. Burger said, “You don’t need to rewrite EFCA or compromise – get it through the House, into the Senate, stay in the field and get is passed.” There may be a few GOP members who will vote for it – like Susan Collins, who can be reminded of her moderate roots, and there will be pressure brought to bear in Maine.
If EFCA passes, Stern wants to build a movement around labor – and build it to inspire people, and bring hope to people, and not just engage in class conflicts, or anti-management. He knows we’re not there yet. He also talked about the need for labor to think globally, at a time of global financial crisis. We need global re-regulation but we also need global labor unions and coalitions to engage at this level and at scale.
Stern is also interested in the new social networking platforms, and thinks that if MyBarackObama.com has an independent voice – and he argues it will – progressives need to figure out how to interact with this enormously powerful force.
Stern believes “we’re going to pass universal healthcare – Max Baucus’ plan is close to what Kennedy has proposed.” Tom Daschle as point-man is “an incredibly good sign.” Stern said that the difference between now and the Clinton period is people understand today that you need to solve the healthcare problem in order to solve the fiscal problem, and so the business community is not as mobilized against it.
On the auto-bailout Stern asked, “Who’s telling the Citigroup and AIG workers to take cuts?” He thinks there needs to be a more visionary labor perspective on this bailout. One idea – the federal government should replace its aging fleet of vehicles, pre-purchasing from the Big Three. It’s almost like buying preferred stock through these vehicles rather than giving a loan. Stern said the UAW is in a difficult position in terms of carving out an independent stance, and that the problem is a structural one that goes back a number of years: UAW has company unions, as opposed to sectoral/industrial unions whereas, in contrast, SEIU 32BJ in New York has every janitor in New York City under the same contract.
On trade Stern thinks that all the important trade pacts have been done – perhaps Korea is important ahead. But there needs to be new thinking on trade. Burger said, “Don’t tinker, think bigger. In this next period we need to rethink the way do trade.”
“We’re living through uncharted waters,” Stern said. “The sad thing is we keep being right.” He referenced various reports SEIU has issued over the years about the state of over-leveraging and the private equity markets. “We’re all getting to understand our free market ideology isn’t going to work.”
Stern concluded by saying, “America needs a plan,” referencing the fact that we need some tough thinking about a long-term economic plan, a new social compact. “You can’t keep lurching from moment to moment – we need a plan.”
As for Stern himself, on the rumor that he’s the next Labor Secretary, he joked, “This is on the record. I would be the only labor leader nominated for Labor Secretary who labor would oppose.”
Butcher Headed to Norway, No, It Isn’t Permanently
http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/search/label/seiu%20721
SEIU 721 head and public employee union big cheese Julie Butcher is headed off to an international conference in Oslo, Norway focused on ” fighting the privatization of municipal services by improving quality.”
When you consider it takes the City sometimes as much as two weeks (or more) to clean-up trash dumped on the street (UNLESS it happens while the Mayor is out of the country) it looks like LA’s municipal services could really use some quality improvement.
With the current economic mess, rising City budget deficit and the lack of quality services, outsourcing a lot of non-public safety related functions to private industry (which could be contractually obligated to provide quality service and rewarded for doing so) would save a ton of money and likely improve services.
It will never happen in LA. Our Mayor, City Attorney, City Controller and all fifteen City Council members are paid for lock, stock and barrell by the public employee unions. Not only would they not outsource but they continue to offer these workers increases in wages that they would not receive in the private sector. That’s what’s breaking the bank.
At a labor contract meeting over the weekend, Butcher had the following epiphany “Every city worker faces the same issues: dwindling resources against real increasing need; demand for services smack up against real pride in the delivery of good, reliable, fair municipal services, at best coupled with a unique connection to the public we serve.”
Maybe while she’s there Julie can organize the Vikings [and they will keep her because they love the USA and sunny Southern California].
= = = = =
Is there any chance she’ll be back for the meeting this week or is she intentionally staying away to claim she had nothing to do with the By-Laws or to appear like it wasn’t HER keeping the members from getting any real voice in the union.
Way to go Julie! You ARE good! Let Charley and the other 5 committee member take the fall!
Southern California union is probing top official’s role in ex-boyfriend’s deal
SEIU is investigating whether Local 721 chief Annelle Grajeda helped Alejandro Stephens, who had headed a local that merged with hers, stay on the L.A. County payroll. She denies wrongdoing.
By Paul Pringle
December 5, 2008
Early last year, Alejandro Stephens’ long tenure as president of one of California’s biggest union locals came to an end after the labor organization he headed merged into a larger local.
The Service Employees International Union sweetened Stephens’ exit with severance payments and other compensation that totaled nearly $180,000, said union spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette. A condition was that Stephens give up the salary he was receiving from Los Angeles County, Ringuette said. Under an agreement between the union and the county, taxpayers covered the salary of the head of the union local.
*
The separation deal has since become the focus of an internal SEIU investigation into whether Stephens’ former girlfriend, Annelle Grajeda, a top officer in the union’s national organization, inappropriately used her position to help him remain on the county payroll in 2007. She has denied wrongdoing and is currently on union leave.
The SEIU inquiry remains unresolved. Now, however, records and interviews show that Grajeda arranged to keep Stephens on the county payroll for the first eight months of this year. The arrangement she worked out called for the union to reimburse the county for Stephens’ pay.
The work status Grajeda secured for Stephens was a leave designed for employees who are needed for union business that also benefits the county, such as training sessions for shop stewards, county administrators say. Stephens, however, used the time to work for a union-affiliated nonprofit that he heads. The group stages an annual 5- and 10-kilometer race that is supposed to raise money for an emergency relief fund for union members, and for cancer patients, premature babies and other charitable purposes.
For the last several years, the nonprofit’s tax returns indicate that it has done poorly at that task. In 2007, for example, the nonprofit spent $22,782 on its charitable programs, just 11% of its outlays. Seventy-eight percent of its expenditures went to fundraising costs, and it ended the year with a deficit of $34,429, Internal Revenue Service records state.
The charity netted $6,882 in fundraising returns, spending more than 90 cents for each dollar it brought in. It reported $227,742 in long-term assets and fund balances. Elizabeth Brennan, a spokeswoman for the local, said that money is available for emergency relief and “benefits our members.”
Charity Navigator, an online monitoring service, and other watchdogs say well-performing nonprofits devote a minimum of 70% of their total expenditures to charitable programs and have fundraising costs of 10 to 20 cents per dollar.
“It’s really quite bad — very poor,” Charity Navigator President Ken Berger said of the spending record of Stephens’ nonprofit. “They’re an outlier.”
The union chapter involved, SEIU Local 721, represents about 80,000 social workers, nurses, sanitation drivers and other public sector employees across Southern California. It was formed last year from the merger that swallowed up the chapter that Stephens had headed, Local 660. Grajeda had been the general manager of Local 660 under Stephens, then became the president of Local 721after the merger. She also serves as an SEIU executive vice president and president of its state council.
Jim Adams, who approves union leaves as the county’s labor relations chief, said his office had no idea that Stephens was being paid to work for the nonprofit. “That was never part of any request,” he said. If his office had been aware, “I’m not sure what I would have thought about that.”
Adams said that a negotiated agreement allows the union to arrange for a limited number of employees to go on county-paid leave for union duties, provided the money for salaries and benefits is reimbursed. He said the county relies on the union to ensure that the leave is properly used. “What we’re interested in is whether they’ll pay us back,” he said.
In hindsight, Adams said his office should have been more vigilant about Stephens. “We certainly have to build in some due diligence,” he added.
Attempts to reach Stephens and Grajeda for comment were unsuccessful.
After Stephens lost his presidency last year, he continued to collect his roughly $47,500 in county salary, plus benefits, officials say.
The county tried unsuccessfully to get him to return to work in the Department of Health Services, where he was employed as a marketing representative, Adams said. He later went on vacation until January 2008, when the leave and union reimbursements arranged by Grajeda started, Adams said.
The SEIU has demanded that Stephens return most of the money it paid him in 2007, saying he violated the terms of his separation agreement by not forgoing the county salary. And the county is billing the local for Stephens’ government payments last year, citing the requirement that the union refund the salary and benefits of non-officers on leave.
Grajeda made the leave request in a Nov. 27, 2007, letter to the county’s chief executive office. The letter does not mention the nonprofit. In a brief interview shortly after she stepped aside from her union jobs, Grajeda said her lengthy personal relationship with Stephens ended in July 2007.
SEIU spokeswoman Ringuette said the union did not know about the letter. Ringuette declined to comment further, saying, “We are in the middle of an intensive investigation.”
Brennan, the Local 721 spokeswoman, said Stephens’ placement on county leave last year had been proper because the merger of the union locals involved an extended transition. “He continued to serve in a leadership role,” she said. “This is a unique situation.”
She said that Stephens worked full time for the nonprofit from January through August of this year. In previous years, he reported working part time for the charity as a board member, sometimes for as little as an hour or less per week, although the number jumped to more than 25 hours in 2007, according to IRS filings.
Three SEIU locals are involved in scandals, and nonprofit groups have played a role more than once. Last week, the union imposed a lifetime ban on the former president of its largest California local, Tyrone Freeman, and demanded that he return more than $1 million it says he misappropriated from the union and at least one affiliated nonprofit.
The Times had reported that Freeman’s local and a second nonprofit paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to small companies owned by his relatives and friends and spent a similar sum on golf tournaments, expensive restaurants, a Beverly Hills cigar lounge and a Hollywood talent agency.
The SEIU had removed Freeman’s former chief of staff from the presidency of the union’s biggest Michigan local, after determining he received $33,500 in improper payments from a housing nonprofit. Freeman and others with ties to the SEIU are the subjects of a federal criminal investigation.
Pringle is a Times staff writer
paul.pringle@latimes.com
See SEIU info posted at http://groups.google.com/group/misc.activism.progressive/browse_thread/thread/42eba64080875ff6/bce1104a919cfa88?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=SEIU+721#bce1104a919cfa88
[...]
What are UHW’s “crimes” that would justify a trusteeship? *** Blowing the whistle on backroom deals and substandard contracts conducted in the name of labor-management partnership; opposing the SEIU International’s support of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s so-called health care reform, *** which is based on individual mandates; and sending a delegation to the International Convention to propose constitutional changes, motions and resolutions designed to give rank-and-file leaders a voice at all levels of the union.
[...]
Sounds like what Local 347 (aka Julie B) did with the City! The backroom deals & substandard contracts that is. OH, AND the healthcare give-backs the return of $18.25 MILLION Wellness Fund return AND increasing our co-pay by 100% AND offering furloughs to reduce our COLA!
So true about UHW! I attended the rally in San Jose earlier this year and the second day of trusteeships in hearings in San Mateo, California. I heard a lot of details about what is going on and the more I talk to members and staff of UHW West, the more it sounds like retaliation. I also got to hear some of the witnesses that SEIU International put on and I found little substance, if any, in what they had to say. A two-hour open mike session followed and the members really gave the hearing officer, Ray Marshall, and the SEIU legal team, an earful. It was an amazing experience!
As for the City give-backs….that doesn’t smell right. The Local 347 members knew that this forced merger was going to weaken them, and it appears that their fears have materialized. Julie could have done more to help them stay out of this mud, but didn’t. They now have to contend with being part of 721’s troubles and investigations. The road out of this will be long and hard-fought.
I don’t think Julie could have done much against Andy to stop the merger seeing as Rosselli is still out. So far, Andy gets what he wants. (Is he still keeping Annelle, Rickman & Alejandro around on salaries paid from members’ dues?)
Anon, 12/6/08 is right. The SEIU give-backs are/were supported and pushed through by the Coalition of City Unions. Julie says the same thing above on 8/11/08; supposedly eliminating mandatory furloughs but having everyone else take voluntary furloughs & reduce their COLA.
See http://www.lacitycoalition.com/furlough-agreement.html
Coalition Reaches Agreement with Mayor That Terminates Mandatory Furlough Plan
August 9, 2008
On August 7, 2008, the Coalition of City Unions reached agreement with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on a plan to avoid mandatory furloughs, saving the City of Los Angeles $23 million while preserving critical City services.
The City’s 2008-09 budget adopted in May required civilian employees to save $23 million through mandatory “short-term layoffs” – better known as furloughs. The mandatory furloughs would have negatively impacted City service delivery. The Mayor’s Office, Coalition, and City officials used the mutual gains bargaining process to negotiate an alternative agreement that returns $18.25 million from the Employee Benefits Trust Fund to the City’s General Fund – savings that will not require service reduction.
“We are proud to have worked closely with the Mayor to achieve budget savings without causing harm to City workers and without cutting critical City services,” said Cheryl Parisi, Chair of the Coalition, which represents 22,000 City workers. “This is proof that the mutual gains bargaining process works for union members and works for the City of Los Angeles.”
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa issued the following statement to media on August 7: “Today, the City and its workers have stepped up and shown that we all are committed to keeping our City running in the black and at full-speed.”
City workers will pay slightly higher co-payments for prescription drugs, resulting in $1.62 million in savings to the City – a major reduction from the $23 million initially put on the backs of City workers. Thanks to everyone’s hard work we have reached an agreement which doesn’t punish City workers and allows the City to maintain the quality of service residents expect.
The City and the Coalition have agreed to close the remaining $3 million gap for this fiscal year together through a voluntary furlough campaign, the details of which will be forthcoming.
Si Se Puede!!!
How Did Agreement Happen?
August 9, 2008
When the City revealed a $400 million shortfall earlier this year, City employees affiliated with Coalition member unions stepped up to the plate to help. Union members from the front lines submitted hundreds of ideas of how the City could generate new revenue and operate more efficiently. Some of these ideas have been implemented through the “Mutual Gains” process while others are still in the research & development stage.
The final City budget included mandatory furloughs – unpaid days off (really, a cut in pay) – that were projected to save the City $23 million. These furloughs not only would have hit members hard but they also would have resulted in serious cuts in critical City services.
The Coalition stepped up to the plate and – through the Mutual Gains Process established during bargaining – engaged the Mayor and his staff in an effort to find ways to save the City money while avoiding furloughs and service reductions.
Our collective efforts, backed up by the strong support of Coalition union members, led to this historic agreement!
=============
This “historic agreement” is the hook, line & sinker Julie fed the COCU.
More may be on its way so open wide. See my post on 12/1/08 about the LAT http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-labudget22-2008nov22,0,6968660.story by David Zahniser and verified by http://www.lacity.org/mayor/stellent/groups/electedofficials/@myr_ch_contributor/documents/contributor_web_content/lacity_004990.pdf
Mr E, during our certification hearings at the ERB in August of 2007, the Hearing officer asked a very poignant question; Did the 347 Executive Board issue a statement or resolution against the merger? The truth was; no, they didn’t. It was at that point that the realization of weak leadership sunk in. UHW issued such a resolution regarding their attempted trusteeship, although the “jury” is still out on that one. The point is, our 347 leadership could have made the difference in our certification fight. We could have gained a valuable bargaining chip to preserve our “exclusive jurisdiction”, which the interim Constitution allows. The ERB challenge to the certification, wasn’t even attempted by the 347 leadership; that had to come from the Stewards of 347.
When it came time for the ERB to decide (April 2007) whether or not to hold hearings on the challenge to 721’s request for certification, Bob Hunt and Julie Butcher stood in support of the merger, and against us. Paid for with our dues money, of course.
Annelle is on “paid vacation”, Rickman Jackson is still working for SEIU at an “undisclosed” rate of pay, although may have to pay back thousand$, and Alejandro is still not out of the woods, see 12-05-2008 post. SEIU is still waiting for a final outcome on Alejandro before passing judgment on Annelle.
December 4th meeting with interim President of Local 721
On December 4th members of 721 met with Mr. Bob Schoonover regarding various subjects regarding by-laws issues. As some of 721 members may be aware there is an appointed 5-6 member Governance Committee that is working on the by-laws.
Mr. Schoonover addressed some of the issues regarding this process.
1.Term limits for Elected Officers at Large: President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer.
Mr. Schoonover supports the inclusion of term limits and stated that the law limits a term of a sitting local president to three years, not counting re-election.
2. The financial disclosure of all income and expenses of elected officers.
Mr. Schoonover supports this. However there was debate among the members present over whether this disclosure should be on a quarterly basis, on demand and whether the information should be available on the 721 website.
3. Termination of a staff member.
Mr. Schoonover opined that this should be up to a chief of staff. The discussion centered over the theory of checks and balances and accountability to the membership. Some were of the opinion that the Executive Board should be the ones who have the ultimate ratification as to the hiring and firing of staff so as to ensure accountability to the membership.
4. Steward Language.
Mr. Schoonover opined that a combination of language from the legacy’s previous Constitution and By-laws should be used. The discussion there was around using the strongest language possible to support stewards, recruit and train stewards, and recognition that stewards are the backbone of the union. There was also discussion about compensating stewards through mileage allowances and/or reimbursements on their phone bills.
5. Recall procedure for all officers.
Mr. Schoonover opined that he is not opposed to a recall procedure for officers and board members. The discussion there centered around what procedures would be in place so as to maintain the checks and balances necessary for complete accountability to the membership. Should a showing of 30% of the affected bargaining unit members be required for a recall election? Should 30% of the General membership be required for a recall election? Should a simple majority (50% +1) or a super majority (2/3 or 66%) be sufficient to oust a sitting officer or board member?
(721 members: What is your opinion on this?)
6. Election By-Laws.
Mr. Schoonover supports the inclusion of election by-laws. These are obviously necessary, in that they would maintain guidelines and procedures to conduct a fair, open and honest election process as well as procedural guidelines in which to challenge election results and/or improprieties.
7. Monthly financial statements of SEIU Local 721 to include all salaries, expenses and payments, debts and status of all liquid funds.
Mr. Schoonover supported the idea of financial disclosure. The discussion there is that the names of staff would not have to be included, only the position, salary and disbursements could be listed. Debts, status and funds should never be hidden from the members, upon request. There was debate over whether this information should be available on 721’s website.
8. Equal dues by paid by ALL members of SEIU Local 721. Presently, some members pay less than others.
On this subject there was considerable debate because there were bargaining units that are only paying a flat rate while the majority of the 721 members were paying a percentage of up to 1.5% of their salaries.
Mr. Schoonover opined that he supported a gradual increase that would eventually bring all members dues to an equal percentage. The discussion there centered around an interpretation of the International’s Constitution and By-laws that propagated an equal percentage of dues among the local’s members. Legacy local 660 members were concerned that they contribute approximately 72% of Local 721’s dues revenue and are footing the bill for the bargaining units that are flat rated, but are being shortchanged with respect to representation in the field.
9. Executive board meetings to be held during the evening and Saturdays so that members who typically work day shifts can attend the meetings.monitor and give input to the board.
Mr. Schoonover supports the idea of Executive Board meetings on weekday evenings to facilitate attendance by general membership, but is not too crazy about weekends. The discussion there is over the board meetings going beyond 9:00 PM on weekdays and making fatigued decisions. More multiple board meetings were discussed as an option.
10. Definition of a “Majority”.
Mr. Schoonover supports the idea of Roberts’ Rules of Order to define how the Executive Board would vote on specific issues. Whether by simple majority or by super majority.
It should be noted that the aforementioned issues are not currently and/or specifically addressed in the current draft of the 721 By-laws.
On November 10, 2008 the Executive Board of 721 convened a hastily scheduled meeting which was attended by members of an ad hoc Sub-Committee on the Constitution and By-laws and demanded that the president open up or expand the Governance Committee to members from the General Membership who are interested in participating in this committee as equal voting members of the Governance Committee. Hundreds of signatures by general membership were submitted demanding this action and the members of the Sub-committee demanded an answer by the close of that business day.
Mr. Schoonover committed himself to an answer on that issue by November 6, 2008, the day that the Governance Committee would meet on a weekend to facilitate attendance by the general membership.
At the meeting on December 4, 2008 Mr. Schoonover, again stated that he needed until December 6, 2008 to issue his decision. At the December 4th meeting, Mr. Schoonover recognized that under the current interim constitution and by-laws he does, in fact, have the authority and opportunity to make that decision and again pledged to make that decision by December 6.
On December 6, 2008 the Governance Committee met at the union hall at 9:00 AM. The interested general membership had given up their time to attend and find out if Mr. Schoonover would grant or deny their demands regarding the opening up or expanding of the Governance Committee.
Mr. Schoonover was not present and had not communicated any decision to any member of the currently sitting Governance Committee and was not responding to telephonic requests regarding his awaited decision.
Members were disgusted over this stalling tactic and show of disdain and disrespect towards the members. This was an act of irresponsibility and a snubbing of the members efforts to fairly and democratically implement the most important document of this new local.
THIS CALLS MR. SCHOONOVER’S ABILITY TO LEAD INTO SERIOUS QUESTION. THIS ALSO UNDERSCORES THE NEED FOR MORE OVERSIGHT OF THE LOCAL’S OPERATION AND WHETHER OR NOT THIS IS TRULY INTENDED TO BE A “MEMBER-DRIVEN UNION”.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28139155/?GT1=43001
ILLINOIS GOVERNOR ARRESTED FOR CORRUPTION
POSITION FOR WIFE SOUGHT WITH “CHANGE TO WIN”, FUNDED BY SEIU
CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich embarked on a “corruption crime spree” and tried to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate, federal officials said Tuesday.
At a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called it a sad day for the citizens of Illinois and alleged that the governor tried to “auction off” the Senate seat “to the highest bidder.”
The complaint alleges that the governor stated, “I want to make money,” adding later that he is interested in making $250,000 to $300,000 a year.
The affidavit contends Blagojevich discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions. It also says Blagojevich talked about getting his wife placed on corporate boards where she might get $150,000 a year in director’s fees.
The affidavit outlined a Nov. 10 call among Blagojevich, his wife, Harris and a group of advisers in which Harris allegedly suggested working out an agreement with the Service Employees International Union.
Under the plan, Blagojevich would appoint a new senator who would be helpful to the president-elect and in turn get a job as head of Change to Win, a group formed by the union. The union would get an unspecified favor from Obama later.
NBC News’ Pete Williams, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Note: All in the family. Where do you suppose she got the idea of involving SEIU for access to this kind of money? Is the International developing a reputation among this kind of political circle? Hmmmmm.
Another interesting article on where our $MILLION$ are going.
http://www.nrtw.org/en/blog/seiu-blagovichs-back-pocket-years-12092108
SEIU Bosses Gave Gov. Blagojevich More Than $1.7 Million Already, Not Including Possible Payout for Senate Seat.
Tue, 12/09/2008 – 17:04 — Nick Cote
Earlier today, we reported on the developing pay-for-play scandal involving humiliated Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich which allegedly involved offer the SEIU the power to name Barack Obama’s replacement as Senator in return for a cushy job with the SEIU’s Change to Win coalition or a new SEIU-funded lobby group.
A credible news source has revealed the SEIU official mentioned in the indictment was none other than SEIU president Andrew Stern.
Our research today indicates that Andy Stern’s SEIU has been Blagojevich’s biggest financial backer for years. According go the Illinois Sunshine Database, the SEIU Illinois Council PAC was the governor’s top contributor in his re-election effort, giving $908,382 in the 2005-2006 cycle. That same cycle, PACs for the Laborers and Teamsters unions, also Change to Win partners, were also among Blagojevich’s top 15 contributors.
The relationship between Blagojevich and the SEIU’s political fundraising arms go back years. In his first gubernatorial election in 2002, the SEIU PEA International gave his campaign $821,294, making the PAC his second largest contributor that cycle (the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had contributed $900,000 to the then-Congressman).
All told, union PACs poured more than $8 million into Blagojevich’s two gubernatorial campaign coffers.
You get what you pay for. But do SEIU members know where their money is going?
Sounds like the lid is ready to come off of the SEIU Administration. Just how far down does this rabbit hole go?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1208/Source_SEIU_official_was_Stern.html#comments
Source: ‘SEIU official’ was Stern
A Democratic source confirms that SEIU President Andy Stern is the “SEIU official” referred to in the federal complaint against Rod Blagojevich.
There’s no allegation that the SEIU official did anything wrong, and what appears to be a wiretap transcript has the official reacting non-commitally to Blagojevich’s offer of a quid pro quo. Another Democratic source tells me that Stern was been in Chicago November 3 meeting with Blagojevich, a discussion thought to have included talk about the Senate seat — though that meeting isn’t mentioned in the complaint.
An SEIU spokesman didn’t respond to a call or email seeking comment.
Here’s the relevant portion of the complaint:
On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with SEIU Official, who was in Washington, D.C. Prior intercepted phone conversations indicate that approximately a week before this call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH met with SEIU Official to discuss the vacant Senate seat, and ROD BLAGOJEVICH understood that SEIU Official was an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1’s interest in the Senate seat. During the conversation with SEIU Official on November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH informed SEIU Official that he had heard the President-elect wanted persons other than Senate Candidate 1 to be considered for the Senate seat. SEIU Official stated that he would find out if Senate Candidate 1 wanted SEIU Official to keep pushing her for Senator with ROD BLAGOJEVICH. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that “one thing I’d be interested in” is a 501(c)(4) organization. ROD BLAGOJEVICH explained the 501(c)(4) idea to SEIU Official and said that the 501(c)(4)70 could help “our new Senator [Senate Candidate 1].” SEIU Official agreed to “put that flag up and see where it goes.”
By Ben Smith 02:02 PM
For those willing, there will be a meeting of our unauthorized Bylaws Sub-Committee after the Regional Steward Council meeting this Saturday, 12-13-08, at approximately 12:00 noon, at the Local.
As you all know, at the last minute re-scheduled Board of Director’s meeting, on 11-10-08, that some of us were able to attend, Dan Mariscal demanded, on our behalf, that Bob Schnoover make a decision, before the close of the meeting, that day, to open the Governance Committee to all interested members, with an equal voice for all participants, or to announce, to all, that he would not be opening up the committee to us. Bob ended up responding that he would make that decision, after consulting with the appointed Board of Directors, via telephone conference call, before the next Governance Committee meeting scheduled for 12-06-08. At a prearranged informal meeting on 12-04-08, that some of us attended, with Bob S., to inquire of him his opinion on various questions we had regarding the current operation of the Local, we asked if he had already made up his mind regarding the opening up of the Governance Committee. He replied that he had contacted members from the original committee list and thought that the committee would be expanded but that he still needed a couple of more days to decide on opening up the committee to all others. At the actual Governance Committee meeting on 12-06-08, we asked Charley Mims, chairperson of the Governance Committee, if Bob S. had spoken to him regarding the opening up of the committee, and he replied that he had not. We asked John Tanner, staff person to the committee, if Bob S. had spoken to him regarding the same issue and he also replied that he had not.
If it wasn’t obvious to any of us before now, we have since come in contact with information that suggests the decision to open up the Governance Committee to any and all other members, with an equal voice for all, has finally been made. He will probably claim that after consulting with …… ‘IT DOESN’T MATTER! He has the arrognance to believe that his bylaws, with limited input from members like us, will be voted on and approved by the limited participation of members that are not in touch with what’s really going on. THE FIGHT IS ON. WE MUST ORGANIZE MEMBERS TO VOTE NO ON THESE BYLAWS. THEY WILL NOT BE IN MOST MEMBERS BEST INTERESTS. WE MUST PREACH ‘NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!’
We will discuss this and other topics, this Saturday.
Hope to see you then.
Your brother in arms,
Arturo Diaz
Union-founded Nonprofit Spent Zero on its Charitable Purpose in Two Years
Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times
PROBE: Tyrone Freeman, then head of the SEIU’s largest California local, helped start the Long Term Care Housing Corp. in 2004. He is under investigation by the federal government.
The charity was founded by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union. Its stated aim was to provide housing to low-income workers.
By Paul Pringle
December 13, 2008
A nonprofit organization founded by California’s largest union local reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose — to develop housing for low-income workers — during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show.
The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings.
Records show no recent aid to two charities from union golf event
Charity watchdogs say that nonprofits should never have zero program expenses in two successive years and that well-performing charities direct at least 70% of their annual spending to their charitable purpose.
“Of the 5,000-plus charities we’ve looked at, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that didn’t spend anything on its charitable programs,” said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, an online rating service.
Last year, the nonprofit reported spending $513,000 in connection with a Compton housing development, and $59,200 in consulting fees for its charitable programs, which together accounted for about 88% of its total outlays.
The primary mission of the charity — the Long Term Care Housing Corp. — is to provide affordable homes for the local’s members, most of whom earn about $9 an hour caring for the elderly and infirm. But SEIU officials declined to discuss the charity, saying it is a separate legal entity from the union, even though its board is dominated by officials from the local. The charity is located at the local’s headquarters.
Tyrone Freeman, then president of the 160,000-member United Long-Term Care Workers, helped start the charity in 2004. Freeman and the local are the subjects of a federal criminal probe and a congressional inquiry because of his spending practices. After an internal investigation, the SEIU accused Freeman and another former union officer of receiving improper payments from the nonprofit.
Freeman, who stepped aside in August, less than two weeks after The Times first reported on his financial dealings, has been banned for life from SEIU membership or employment. The SEIU has ordered him to pay the union more than $1 million in restitution. Attorneys for Freeman and others involved in the charity declined to comment.
The nonprofit is also caught up in the federal and internal investigations. The Times reported that the charity had listed the home of a union official as its administrative address, had failed to obtain a federal tax exemption and had lost the right to do business in California.
The charity had also claimed to have a relationship with the prominent California Community Foundation, which said it had never heard of the organization.
Exemption granted
Despite the legal troubles, the IRS has since granted the group an exemption retroactive to 2004, and its right to do business has been restored, according to the California secretary of state’s office. IRS officials declined to discuss the matter.
The charity did not file an IRS return — a Form 990 — in 2004, apparently because it had revenues of less than the reporting threshold of $25,000. In 2005, it sold $495,000 in unspecified “inventory” and made nearly $87,000 in gross returns from the sale, its sole reported source of revenue that year, according to the IRS documents. Los Angeles County assessor records show that the nonprofit sold two Compton homes in 2005 for amounts that totaled $495,000.
It could not be determined why the nonprofit did not report where it obtained the $495,000 in inventory, or why it did not list any part of the transaction as a charitable program expense.
The charity reported paying consulting fees of $31,000 in 2005 and nearly $68,000 the following year but did not specify who received the money. In 2006, the union donated $50,120 to the nonprofit, which appeared to be the charity’s only income. The nonprofit ended the year with a $56,000 deficit and a negative net worth.
In 2007, the charity reported revenue of $633,000, although it did not specify the source. It listed its biggest expenses as the $513,000 for a contractor for the Alameda Court project in Compton, described on the city’s website as a 28-town-house development; and $60,385 for consultant services from Kenya Nelson, who is identified on the nonprofit’s website as the organization’s executive director. The charity again had a negative net worth, and a $17,850 deficit.
Attempts to reach Nelson were unsuccessful.
John Ronches, an SEIU trustee who has been running the local since Freeman stepped down, declined to comment.
Transparency urged
Laurie Styron, vice president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said the nonprofit should be more forthcoming. “Charities have an ethical obligation to be transparent,” she said.
The SEIU has accused Freeman of taking about $2,400 a month in improperpayments from the housing nonprofit from January through June of this year, in addition to a lump sum of $14,500. The payments were part of a self-dealing “consulting agreement,” the SEIU said in a report. The union said Freeman “controlled and directed” the charity.
Freeman’s former chief of staff, Rickman Jackson, whose Bell Gardens home was listed as the charity’s address, has been ousted as president of the SEIU’s largest Michigan local because, the union alleges, he received improper lease payments of $33,500 from the nonprofit. Jackson, who was president of the nonprofit’s board, could not be reached.
Former California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, who has been advising the SEIU on its internal investigation, said the union could determine that only one nonprofit meeting was held at the Bell Gardens home. Jackson is repaying the $33,500 in installments plus interest, an SEIU spokeswoman said.
In the meantime, Compton is investigating whether Freeman and the nonprofit defrauded the city by accepting a gift of municipal land when it had no tax exemption.
An attorney for the charity, former Assemblyman Dario Frommer, said the charity is cooperating in the investigation. He declined to comment further.
Attorneys for the nonprofit have said the initial failure to obtain the tax exemption was the result of a “routine” IRS request for more information.
Pringle is a Times staff writer
paul.pringle@latimes.com
STEWARD’S CORNER from Labor Notes
Handling Insubordination Grievances
— David Cohen
Ella was having a bad day. Her machines weren’t running right, but her foreman came over and said, “Ella, we need those machines up and running, and since Rafael is out today, I want you to start up his machines, too.”
“No way,” said Ella. “I’ve got my hands full, and the contract says I don’t have to run extra machines except in emergencies.”
“I’m telling you to get over there and start up those machines,” yelled her foreman. “If you don’t, you’ll be fired for insubordination.”
Sally, the department steward, went to the supervisor’s office. “We have to talk about your foreman,” she said. “He’s threatening Ella and trying to make her run more machines than she’s supposed to.”
Benito shot back, “I’m the one who told him to get Ella off her butt. I don’t have time now; talk to me tomorrow.”
“We’re going to talk about this now,” Sally said.
“Oh yeah?” snarled Benito, “Get out of my office or I’ll have you fired for insubordination, too.”
Management loves power. Threatening to punish workers for insubordination is a handy tool for reinforcing a supervisor’s power on the job.
For union people, the idea of punishing workers for being “insubordinate” to bosses—that is, uppity—is insulting. The concept reveals the anti-worker bias of labor law: management is considered the “master” and workers are considered “servants” who should show proper respect.
WHAT IS INSUBORDINATION?
Here is one management description: Insubordination is a deliberate and inexcusable refusal to obey a reasonable order that relates to an employee’s job. Employees may not decide for themselves which instructions they will follow and which they will not.
This is how most arbitrators and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) would describe insubordination. But there are different levels, and management’s behavior often has an impact on whether the worker’s actions are considered insubordinate.
There are two basic tests: Was the worker given a clear, direct order? Did the worker clearly know the consequences of refusing the direct order? Usually the supervisor must tell workers what will happen if they refuse.
This does not mean the boss can immediately give a worker a direct order with the threat of punishment and not have to listen to objections. Employees have the right to question and argue about an order.
• It is not insubordination if a worker asks questions or gives reasons why he or she shouldn’t have to do the assignment.
• It is not insubordination if the worker asks to have a steward explain to management how the order violates the contract.
• It may become insubordination if the worker consistently refuses after being directly ordered to perform the task.
• It may be insubordination if the worker does not argue but then never carries out the order.
• It is not insubordination if following the direct order will immediately put the worker or other workers’ lives in danger. The threat, however, has to be real and immediate.
• It is not usually insubordination if the supervisor giving the order is not the worker’s normal boss or part of the “chain of command” that the worker ordinarily has to follow. Workers should insist on finding the regular supervisor and asking that person to make the decision as to what they should be doing.
NOT IN FRONT OF THE KIDS
Here’s another example of class bias: arbitrators look at whether the supposed insubordination takes place in front of other workers. They tend to rule more harshly if the “master” is ridiculed or disobeyed in front of other “servants.” In some cases arbitrators have ruled against workers when they bragged about what they told the boss in private.
“Shop talk”—the use of salty language—is not automatically insubordination. Look at the context: How much shop talk goes on regularly? Do supervisors use it? Do supervisors and workers ordinarily use it with each other?
Many workers have been cleared when it was shown that management harassed them and they responded with a poor choice of words. Still, a worker may be considered insubordinate for using excessive shop talk after being told to do something.
What should a worker do if following an order will cause damage to a machine, produce a poor product, or result in inferior services for the customer? Clearly point out what the bad results will be and ask for a witness to that warning. A worker who does this generally cannot be disciplined for the resulting damage.
STEWARDS’ SPECIAL STATUS
NLRB rulings have given stewards a special status in regard to insubordination, saying, “when stewards are engaged in representational activities they are considered equals with management.”
This means that when stewards are dealing with management as a steward, they can engage in robust disagreement, can use profanity to some extent, and generally do not have to show deference. Stewards have a right to vigorously pursue an argument.
As the NLRB said in one decision, “the relationship at a grievance meeting is not a ‘master-servant’ relationship but a relationship between company advocates on one side and union advocates on the other side, engaged as equal opposing parties.”
WHAT ABOUT ELLA AND SALLY?
Ella’s situation is a classic case of harassment, but she needs to be careful. She was given a direct order and was told what would happen if she refused. But Ella has a right to argue her case, and the foreman jumped the gun by threatening her right away.
Sally the steward is within her rights to stay in the boss’s office and continue arguing the case. She is in a grievance situation, and Benito cannot just dismiss her and refuse to talk. He’s also running afoul of labor law, because a steward cannot be threatened for doing her duty to represent workers.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
DECEMBER 13, 2008
Blagojevich and Union Have Longstanding Ties
By CLARE ANSBERRY
Allegations that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich approached the nation’s largest union seeking help in a complex pay-for-play scheme involving an open Senate seat are the latest episode in a long, mutually beneficial relationship between the governor and the powerful Service Employees International Union.
The two-million member union had long been a big political backer of Mr. Blagojevich, who helped it organize workers throughout the state, sometimes over the objections of competing unions.
The relationship, while not illegal or even unusual for the SEIU, may help explain why the union finds itself involved with a federal criminal investigation against Mr. Blagojevich. The governor was arrested this week after federal authorities issued a complaint against him which, among other things, said his office suggested a deal might be worked out in which he would be given a union job in exchange for naming a labor-friendly senator to fill the vacancy left by President-elect Barack Obama.
The complaint said Mr. Blagojevich spoke twice, once in person, with an SEIU official about the Senate seat. An internal union communication, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, named Tom Balanoff, the head of SEIU’s Illinois territory, as the SEIU official. The SEIU says that it doesn’t believe any of its officials engaged in any wrongdoing and that it was cooperating with the federal investigation.
Organized labor routinely supports elected officials, campaigning on their behalf in an effort to elect pro-labor candidates. The SEIU was an early and strong supporter of Mr. Blagojevich, backing him over several other candidates in 2002. That year, according to an AFL-CIO document, the SEIU sought and received a commitment from then-candidate Blogojevich to issue an executive order that would direct the state to negotiate a collective contract with home-based workers.
The SEIU had been working for years to build union support among child-care and home-health-care workers, who are often low paid and without health insurance, and would have requested the same commitment from any candidate, said SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette.
“The SEIU aggressively seeks support from elected officials and companies to build membership,” she said. “I assume we would ask any candidate to try to make sure conditions become favorable for workers to unite.”
The commitment from Mr. Blagojevich would provide assurances that the SEIU’s organizing efforts would bear fruit when the governor was elected in 2002. Shortly after he took office in 2003, he signed an executive order allowing as many as 20,000 Illinois home-health-care workers to unionize and also appointed Mr. Balanoff to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which approves hospital-construction projects.
The following year, in 2004, the union intensified its child-care-worker organizing efforts, putting 24 full-time organizers in place, compared with one or two in earlier years.
As a result, when the governor finally issued an executive order in February 2005, allowing collective bargaining, the SEIU was well positioned to respond. The day after it received a letter from the governor’s office saying that a union election could be held, SEIU submitted 18,000 cards from workers it had signed up.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, which represents other state employees and was interested in organizing child-care providers, had to play catch up. AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee said that the “SEIU had a special relationship with the governor. We never did. We weren’t involved in their plans so we can’t speculate on what was worked out.”
Gary Chaison, professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University, said the SEIU’s tactic is to use its political influence to get legislation passed that would allow independent contractors in the state to be represented by one collective-bargaining agent. He notes that some people criticize SEIU President Andy Stern for doing anything to grow his union. “Others say it as a compliment,” he says.
—Ilan Brat contributed to this article.
Write to Clare Ansberry at clare.ansberry@wsj.com
Stern’s Team America
December 17th, 2008
Andy Stern was featured this week on the NPR show Talk of the Nation. After refusing to answer several questions about SEIU’s connection to the “pay-to-play” corruption scandal involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, he spent the rest of the show advocating his vision of a “21st-century,” more “American” form of unionism that makes the labor movement a subordinate partner to Corporate America.
When confronted by an SEIU member’s question about the secret backroom deals he’s made with employers like Sodexho, Compass, and Aramark, Stern’s defense was that “those workers are trying to find a way to have a partnership with their employer.” In fact, most of those workers are completely unaware of Stern’s partnership with their employer-one condition of a secret agreement that prohibits union staff from admitting to workers that the agreement exists.
In his final comments, Stern admitted that he does not believe in the power of workers’ collective action-specifically the right to strike-and that instead union members should rely on the political process to get the job done.
“I don’t think anymore that the power of unions comes from its ability to strike,” he said. “I think it comes from its ability to participate in the political process and to change America in issues that we’ve been talking about, like health care.”
Stern’s comments echo the position put forth in his book “A Country That Works,” which emphasizes the need for labor to “partner” with Corporate America and identify ways that the union can “add value” to employers. This model flies in the face of the history of organized labor and other social justice movements, where collective action has played a pivotal role in making positive change for working people in our country.
Just in the last few weeks workers at Republic Windows and Doors beat Bank of America with a sit-down strike, and over the past year healthcare workers in California have won standard setting contracts with the right to organize nonunion workers through worker-led strikes and action.
To listen to the complete interview, click here.
The transcript follows.
Talk of the Nation, Nov. 15
NEAL CONAN, host: This is Talk of the Nation. I’m Neal Conan in Washington. During the election organized labor went all out for the Democrats and Barack Obama. One union, the Service Employees International, the SEIU, became the single largest donor to either party, and raised over $80 million for the Democrats. That kind of money translates into influence, and it’s no secret that the powerful head of the SEIU, Andy Stern, expects that when he calls the White House they’re going to answer the phone. Andy Stern expects – he hopes also for quick action on two issues in particular – health care and the so-called check card – Check Bill which would replace secret ballots in elections for union recognition. And he now faces questions about his union’s involvement in the Blagojevich scandal in Illinois.
Andy Stern joins us in just a moment. Later, on the Weekly Opinion page, questions and answers about Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme on Wall Street. But first, SEIU president Andy Stern. If you’d like to talk with him about his agenda, his influence, his expectations in the future of organized labor, give us a call, 800-989-8255 is the phone number. The email address is talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Just go to npr.org and click on Talk of the Nation. And Andy Stern, nice to have you back on Talk of the Nation.
Mr. ANDY STERN (President, Service Employees International Union): Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: The criminal complaint filed against Illinois Governor Blagojevich states that an unnamed SEIU official had two conversations with the governor about a three-way deal. The president-elect would get to name his successor in the U.S. Senate. The governor and/or his wife would get a high-paying union job, and the union would get presidential favors to be named later. Did you know anything about this before the charges were made public last week?
Mr. STERN: No. When I heard the charges I was rather shocked and picked up the phone, and we called Patrick Fitzgerald’s office. We said that…
CONAN: He’s the U.S. prosecutor in Chicago.
Mr. STERN: The U.S. prosecutor in Chicago said that anything we could do to help in his investigation of Governor Blagojevich, we’d be more than happy to do, but it was rather surprising.
CONAN: We should also note that complaints as the unnamed union official does not say the unnamed union official did anything wrong or that the SEIU did either. But in any case, have you since talked with the FBI?
Mr. STERN: We’re going to cooperate with Patrick Fitzgerald in any way he wants to. We have, you know, made ourselves available, and I just think it is clear that no one in SEIU has been accused of doing anything wrong and from everything we know, we are just there to provide whatever help we can.
CONAN: The complaint says that Governor Blagojevich expected the unnamed SEIU official to run this idea up the flagpole. You sit at the top of that flagpole. Again, you heard nothing about this?
Mr. STERN: I was not involved in any of that, and you know, I think we’re going to leave it to Patrick Fitzgerald to get to the bottom of this. I think there’s a lot of discussions going on with the federal prosecutor in terms of his own investigation, and we’ll help any way we can.
CONAN: Have you spoken with Governor Blagojevich since the election?
Mr. STERN: I think I’m going to leave it right there.
CONAN: Well, according to several news organizations, including NPR, an internal SEIU email identifies the unnamed official as Tom Balanoff, the head of the SEIU Local Number 1 in Chicago. Is that true as far as you know?
Mr. STERN: I think that’s what you said, and I think that’s what’s being reported.
CONAN: And will you confirm or deny?
Mr. STERN: I don’t know – have any independent information on that.
CONAN: You know Tom Balanoff well, though.
Mr. STERN: I do know Tom Balanoff very well. He is a great leader, and he was the one responsible for our justice for our Justice for Janitors campaign in Houston. Five thousand members joined our union. The low-wage workers are pretty proud of what he did.
CONAN: Is the union in any way investigating what he may or may not have done?
Mr. STERN: I think we can just say we’re going to keep working with the U.S. attorney.
CONAN: All right. The organization that Governor Blagojevich was allegedly trying to get a well-paid position with is called Change to Win. Three years ago you broke away from the AF of L to CIO to form a federation of unions called Change to Win. You said at the time you had fundamental differences – basic strategy with the AF of L and especially increasing membership. A lot of people – you posed yourself as a different kind of union leader, and now we find this. And again, there’s a lot smoke. So far we know nothing, and there’s allegations of corruption involving a local in California, and there’s other – this comes away with the same – the impression people are going to get is the same old thing.
Mr. STERN: Well, I think what we’re seeing is the same old thing, and that’s the right-wing Republican attack machine on the move again. You know, I think we saw in the Washington Post blog today a discussion of how we’re seeing the same old politics of destruction and guilt by association. We heard John McCain yesterday talk about, we’re sort of wasting our time. At the moment where American workers are facing the greatest crisis, where our country needs to come together and solve these problems, where we had an election that was all about change, it is really sad that the same people who didn’t want Barack Obama, the same people who now don’t want workers to have health care or free choices, are going to drive a smear campaign against the president-elect and anyone else in their way, and I don’t think that’s what America wants anymore. We had a really serious moment of change, and I think we need to all focus on that.
CONAN: And we’re going to talk about your agenda and what you hope for works, but I just need to clarify a point. The Blagojevich investigation is part of a smear campaign?
Mr. STERN: I think when you see the kind of things that – no, the investigation is a very serious allegation. Now, what’s the smear campaign are ads that are being run and comments that are being made in newspapers. They’re trying to…
CONAN: The full-page ad in today’s New York Times.
Mr. STERN: In today’s New York Times, for instance, trying to attack the president-elect. You know, there are videos up by the Republican National Committee. There are blogs up by the Republican National Committee. Big Business ran ads today. You know, Mark McKinnon, Bush’s top strategist, is one of leaders of the front group. This is the Bush right-wing attack machine in its full glory at a time where America needs to focus on the economy. I think Patrick Fitzgerald is totally capable of getting to the bottom of this. But I think what we’re seeing is the same old politics of destruction which Americans rejected on November 4th.
CONAN: And this is coming up also in the context of the bailout for Detroit, the two of course big automakers and the UAW of course came in for its share of criticism largely from Republican senators last week in their debate over the bailout which failed in the United States Senate. As you look ahead, is this issue number one if those two companies don’t get money they say this month they’re going to have to declare bankruptcy.
Mr. STERN: You know, we are at the most significant crossroads in economic history since the Great Depression, and it was really sad last week to hear Republican senators from the south who are willing to ship American jobs overseas with bad trade agreements. We’re willing to ship American jobs overseas by giving tax breaks to corporations that offshore, protect their state, or protect their company, and not protect their country. I mean, America is at a fundamental time of change, and you would hope that rather than beating up on the middle class, and as we saw from a memo that came out recently sort of firing what they called their first shot in the Employee Free Choice Act, the Republicans do not seem to get we had an election. Americans want someone to care about them, and we have a bunch of senators who seem to care more about Nissan and Honda and Hyundai.
CONAN: Who have major auto plants in many other states.
Mr. STERN: And said nothing when they all got huge tax breaks and huge incentives to locate their businesses in their state. General Motors – we should give credit to in the big three. They invented employee-based healthcare. They invented the employee-based pension system. They tried to do good for their workers. They made enormous mistakes in their management in terms of running their business but to stand up for foreign companies and not stand up for your country is something I just don’t understand.
CONAN: Our guest is Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, the largest – the fastest growing union in the United States – two million strong. We’re talking about the future of organized labor. And after the Obama election you’ve described this in some of your writings as well, the new deal. Is that what you expect?
Mr. STERN: What I expect is that Barack Obama will do what he told the American people he would do, and I think we’re beginning to see it already. He would find a way to provide quality, affordable health care for every American. He would stimulate the economy to get people back to work. He would deal with the needs we have about a new energy policy. You know, all I think we all hope for and expect and want to encourage Barack Obama to do is to do what his policies have been pretty clearly laid out, and I think he’s appointed a cabinet, and he’s ready to roll.
CONAN: A lot of people on the left have looked at that cabinet and said, wait a minute. This is not the change we voted for.
Mr. STERN: Well, you know, I think what we’re very lucky to have is president-elect who actually is going to have a cabinet to implement his policies. And his policies are pretty clear. I mean, he’s had campaigned on them for over two years. He’s talked about exactly what he wants to do. I think he’s found a group of people to implement his policies. He’s not looking for new ideas. He’s looking for a way to implement his ideas, and Americans, I think, understand they need him to do it quickly. And they need him to have the experience to do it effectively as well.
CONAN: We want to get callers in on the conversation as well. Our phone number 800-989-8255. Email is talk@npr.org. And let’s begin with Ed, and Ed is on the line with us from Stockton in California.
ED (Caller): Hi, Andy.
Mr. STERN: Hey Ed.
ED: Hey, the reason why I’m calling is I’m asking – I’m trying to find out – I’m a security officer out here in Stockton. And I work through a company called Intercon which is contracted out to all the Kaiser medical facilities here in California. And I’ve been fighting for three years to try to get the officers unionized, and it’s just not happening. And I’m wanting to know why. Why is it taking so long? They said that they would unionize us. They all agreed to it, but it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been fighting for this for three years, and we striked a few times. We’ve begged to Kaiser to please, you know, put this right now. I think the thing with the president – I think that getting this implemented right away is a good thing, and we need it. We need it. The officers in California – the security officers in California – they need to be unionized.
CONAN: And Ed are you working through the SEIU?
ED: No.
CONAN: OK.
ED: I am – I – we – the SEIU does – they’re assisting us in getting unionized, yes. But I don’t work with the union.
CONAN: Oh, but that would be the union if you got recognized – OK.
ED: Yeah.
CONAN: Andy Stern, go ahead.
ED: It would be the SEIU. So, basically we’re just wondering why it’s taking so long?
Mr. STERN: Well, I think you’re asking the $64,000 about why we need the employee Free Choice Act. You know, we have a system in our country that when workers want to have an organization and they – in this case, you know, make a demand on their employer, which is Intercon, who works for Kaiser.
ED: Correct.
Mr. STERN: You know, we begin World War III, you know. And rather than just allowing the workers, when a majority are interested to begin, to discuss with their employer their wages and benefits, working conditions as you know, we begin World War III. We have to take all kinds of you know, ridiculous actions at a time when people should be trying to work together. It creates all kinds of conflict. Then, you get employers like Intercon who just you know, decide that they know the law is on their side. They know that there aren’t effective ways for workers you know, to really get the job done quickly. And so this goes on and on and on, forever and ever, and workers get frustrated. Thank God, Ed, that you’re still sticking with us, because we’re going to get this job done for you.
ED: I appreciate it, I really do. It’s something that needs to happen.
Mr. STERN: Ed has there, have there been elections for a union there?
ED: No, not yet.
Mr. STERN: And are there any scheduled?
ED: Not to my knowledge, but I’m sure that they’ll let me know as soon as they are. Like I said, I’m one of the first few people that started trying to get the officers unionized, you know, that work for Intercon.
Mr. STERN: OK.
ED: So, it’s been a battle, and I’m just – I’m tired. I want it to hurry up. I want it to happen.
Mr. STERN: It’s not right.
CONAN: Ed, thanks very much for the phone call. We appreciate.
ED: Thank you.
CONAN: And we’ll talk more about the Free Choice Act when we come back and also about secret ballots and why these are controversial. Our guest is Andy Stern, the president of the SEIU. If you’d like to join us, 800-989-8255 or zap us an email, talk@npr.org. I’m Neal Conan. Stay with us. It’s the Talk of the Nation from NPR News. This is Talk of the Nation. I’m Neal Conan in Washington. Many of the biggest economic stories lately revolved around the issue of labor. U.S. autoworkers and layoffs in general, health care coverage for employees, the Republic window and door factory sit-in in Chicago. Today we’re talking with Andy Stern, head of the fastest growing labor union in the country, the Service Employees International. If you’d like to speak with him about his agenda, his influence, his expectations, and the future of organized labor, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org and click on Talk of the Nation. We were talking about the Employee Free Choice Act which you would like to see President-elect Obama, well, sign I would think, within the first hundred days. That’s what I’ve read.
Mr. STERN: Well, what we need in America is an economic policy that works for everyone. And clearly what we saw in 1935 is when a president at a similar time faced a huge economic, he did three things. He began to try to stimulate the economy. He began to try to make sure that people had work, and then he wanted to make sure that the government – since the government couldn’t solve every problem that workers could bargain with their employers to make sure they could share in the wealth of a growing economy. And the good news was for 40 years – I mean, this is the Employee Free Choice Act is not new. For 40 years, workers who wanted to bargain with their employer simply when a majority signed cards begin the process. And America worked a lot better. We created the greatest middle class in the world. And I think, with the growing inequality we face today, we need some non-governmental solutions to be able to make sure that workers get to reap the rewards not the just shareholders and executives.
CONAN: Here’s an e-mail from Steven in San Rafael, California: I’m a supporter of unions. How does your guest defend his proposal to eliminate the secret ballot for union formation?
Mr. STERN: This is a misinformation. It does not eliminate the secret ballot. What it says is that the workers get to choose whether or not they want to have a union when a majority sign up or when they ask for the election. So, what we’re doing is changing this from being the employer’s choice, from being the employee’s choice. And that seems very appropriate. After all, we’re talking about an organization of workers who then only get to bargain with their employer. We don’t get to choose who the employer’s representation, whether it’s a chamber of commerce or trade association. Workers should have the same right to make a choice of a secret ballot or signing up when a majority of people have cards and beginning the process.
CONAN: A lot of moderate Democrat are said to be very cautious about this bill because we’re asking companies to – well, I think you would agree that companies would make less money if this bill pass. It would cost them more to operate because their employees will be making more in a recession. This is going to drive some companies out of business.
Mr. STERN: I don’t think we’re asking the companies to make much more. I think we have this problem. Lee Scott makes $15,162 an hour. Wal-Mart has been enormously successful in the last year. The Walton family has made $30 billion more. And the workers make $10.68 an hour. So, we’re trying to figure out a better way to make sure that everyone shares in the success of the company. We used to have a time in America, and it worked a lot better, when CEOs made 43 times what the average worker makes. They now make 344 times. So, the issue isn’t costing more. The issue is lots of people contribute to the success of a company, and shouldn’t we all share a little bit more fairly.
CONAN: Let’s get another caller on the line. Mark with us from San Antonio.
MARK (Caller): Good morning. I’m a former United States attorney. I just retired about a year ago, and I was in Chicago for 33 years. Without a doubt Chicago is the most politically corrupt city in the United States. But that being said…
CONAN: Many would argue Washington D.C., but go ahead, Mark.
MARK: Well, yeah. The guest’s statement with regard to the smear campaign by Republicans. I’m a Democrat. I voted for Obama, and let’s assume for a second that the statement is correct that there is a smear campaign going on by the Republicans.
Mr. STERN: And that’s what John McCain – that’s what John McCain is saying just so we make it clear.
CONAN: Did he say smear campaign?
Mr. STERN: Well, I think he said there was a campaign being run that was really inappropriate.
CONAN: OK. Yeah.
MARK: And is that any worse than the political corruption and the corruption in organized labor? Most of the people that we sent to jail in Chicago for racketeering had direct ties to organized labor or were in fact officers of organized labor, and that’s been going on for as long as my career went on. And I don’t know that – and certainly I’m not intimating that all unions are corrupt, but some of the biggest ones have been. And it has been my experience that regardless of what the membership wants, a lot of those unions did whatever they felt was best for the people running the unions, and organized crime that had their hands in those labor unions.
Mr. STERN: Well, I’m very proud to say that in our union, you know, we’ve had a long history here of rooting that corruption on our own. Any organization has some bad apples. We can look at Bernie Madoff who just took $50 billion and was seen as pillar of societies so – in Chicago I appreciate – has a lot of different issues. You know, the issue for unions are – is that we need to represent our members interest not our leaders interest. And in SEIU, I think the success of our growth, the ability to get low-wage workers who are janitors and security officers, homecare workers, childcare workers an opportunity just to get a chance in life, people that do really God’s work. You know, something we’re really proud of. And so, you know, we think every institution has a responsibility you know, to keep itself at the highest standard of ethics, and that’s exactly what we intend to do.
CONAN: Mark, thanks very much.
MARK: Thank you.
CONAN: Let see if we can go now to – this is Amy. Amy with us from El Nido in California.
AMY (Caller): Yes, hi. Good morning. I’m an SEIU member, and health care worker in California. And I’m very concerned, Andy. I read in the Wall Street Journal recently about our top union officials colluding with employers like Aramark. And, you know, I was in Puerto Rico with our international convention. I know about the scandal there and now this scandal with Blagojevich. And my question is isn’t it a problem when unions collude with employers instead of solely advocating for workers like me?
Mr. STERN: I think what we need to appreciate is that it’s enormously important in the 21st century to try to build an America that works for everyone. And working with employers like health-care workers do in Kaiser, like out where you are in California, like health-care workers do in New York where we have huge partnerships with our employer, you know, I think we need a 21st-century version of unions where people try to work together. And I appreciate that everyone doesn’t necessarily see that from the same point of view. But I think that 20th century conflictual way did not create America that works. And I’m glad you know, to imagine a 21st century way that follows Barack Obama’s lead where employers and unions try to find common ground, trying to find an American way forward. And I think that is going to be the key to the excess of 21st century.
CONAN: Amy?
AMY: I completely agree, Andy, that that’s the way we should work. I happened to be a Kaiser medical social worker, and I agree that we need to work with employers. My concern is when top union officials work with employers behind my back and collude with them trading our organizing rights and agreeing to such standard wages without my involvement. That’s my concern. To me that is not a 20th-century – you know, 21st-century union model.
Mr. STERN: I’m not – you know, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I think Kaiser is a perfect model and a very good example of where despite this…
AMY: I agree, but Aramark is not.
Mr. STERN: Despite a lot of criticism as you know, from many other unions about our desire to work awhile ago to get out of a situation where there were too many strikes and too many differences. We found a way to have a partnership. In Aramark and Sodexho those workers are trying to find a way to have a partnership with their employer, and we’ve seen many, many, many workers who never had a union, never had health care, had never gotten a raise, seeing their lives fundamentally change, and that is what this union movement about – is changing workers’ lives, and that’s what we intend to do.
CONAN: Amy, thanks very much for the call.
AMY: Thank you.
CONAN: Appreciate it.
AMY: Bye.
CONAN: Here’s an email from Keith in San Francisco. If the government under President-elect Obama or successive Democratic president does manage to implement national health care, pension reform, living wage rules, et cetera, what role will labor unions play in the American economy down the road? Will it be worth the five percent or so in dues that many union members currently pay?
Mr. STERN: I think it’s hard to imagine in the long run that we’re going to have an American economy where the government controls everything. You know, I think our health-care system that we’re talking about – Barack Obama is talking about – is a public-private partnership as it currently is. I think our pension system will always have a certain role for private sector as well as Social Security and other social benefits we’ll have for the public sectors. So, I don’t really want the government to involved in every single aspect of the employment relationship. I think there are certain things governments do, and there are certain things the market and the private sector does, and I think collective bargain is the way you begin to reconcile those difference. If you’re an employer like Wal-Mart with 1.8 million workers, is a lot different than if you’re working for a small nursing home with a hundred employers. And I think you know, we need non-governmental solutions which I happen to believe can come about by workers and employers working together, whether it’s through collective bargaining or other forms of associations, because that’s how we get things done. That’s how we build teamwork in America.
CONAN: Let’s go to Doug, and Doug is calling us from Chicago.
DOUG (Caller): Hey, this is Doug. My question is, you know, we’re not – we’re an independent contractor. We work all over the state of Illinois. We get picketed on a pretty regular basis any time we’re getting work close to a city, and I’m just wondering, you know, if the unions are really trying to look out for people, why did they take and try and take our job away from us, and then why do they spend a lot of money and wasting their time picketing the job that they’re not going to get anyway?
Mr. STERN: Well, you know, we just heard a debate in America which I thought was an important one about the differences in wage rates between some auto companies and the others. And the responsibility of the union is to not let competition just be about wages. We need to have everyone be paid the same which is what you see in our janitors in Chicago or New York or San Francisco. We don’t want one employer to be less competitive than another. So, what happens if you’re – let me just explain, so if you’re an independent contractor, you’re not paying workers’ compensation, you’re not paying unemployment compensation, your employer is not paying, you know, any of those things, and I’m not saying you are, but we see that all over the country with people cheating the government, making other employers pay for their health care and their unemployment. That’s not a fair way to compete, and so we have laws in the books about what really is an independent contractor, and I think it’s a responsibility of all of us to enforce the law, and make sure everyone pays their taxes, everyone pays their unemployment, everyone pays the Social Security, so everyone competes equally.
DOUG: Well, if you’re familiar with the Illinois law then you know that you have to have workman’s comp and all that to work. So, anybody that’s legal has that. And that’s not really the question. I mean, the question is, I mean, our employees get paid more than union scale anyway, so I mean, why? Why are they going to work for union? They can work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. They’re not going to go work for the union, and if the union comes in and tries to shut my job down, I mean, that kind of gets a little frustrating.
Mr. STERN: I totally – you know, listen. If people are being paid well, people are obeying the law and following the law, you know, God bless them.
DOUG: OK.
CONAN: Doug, good luck.
DOUG: Yup.
CONAN: Bye-bye. Let’s see if we can go now to Walter. Walter with us from Middletown, Connecticut.
WALTER (Caller): Yeah. Mr. Stern, I’d like to ask you why and before Congress at the present moment, there is a bill sponsored or co-sponsored by no less than 90 representatives, HR 676, which calls for universal single-payer national health insurance, which is the only solution, the only viable solution to the current health care crisis, and the only solution that your rank and file employees including myself that endorsed, while you reject HR 676 in favor of some nebulous plan put together by Barack Obama, somewhat similar to Hillary Clinton’s, that essentially guarantees every American the right to pay for their own health insurance at a very premium rate through companies that will cap that form – the form of care that…
Mr. STERN: I pretty – I understand. You know, A, we were the first union in America to endorse HR 676.
WALTER: Not you, though.
Mr. STERN: SEIU. Yes.
WALTER: I’m not talking about (unintelligible)…
Mr. STERN: So, yes, we were – under my direction and leadership, we endorsed HR 676, one. Two is this is not an academic debate. For a hundred years, America has been the only nation on earth that has not found an American solution to the health-care crisis. And we are on the verge today for the first time in my lifetime under Barack Obama’s leadership as a result of this election of making sure every man, woman, and child has quality affordable health care. And the two things we know about health care is the longer you wait, the worse it gets. And that if you let the perfect be the enemy of the good, nothing will happen. We have a chance to solve this problem once and for all. It’ll improve America’s competitiveness. It will get America started on the road to a health-care system we all can be proud of, and I don’t think we should miss the moment.
CONAN: You’re basically saying single-payer would be a better system, but can’t pass right now?
Mr. STERN: I would say single payer has been around a long time. It has obviously lots of advantages. It’s never been tried in the United States. It’s just an academic argument at this point in time that is not going to happen. Pete Stark acknowledges it, and many of the supporters in Congress acknowledge it. Let’s get something done in America because people are dying every day, or suffering every day, or insecure because they don’t have health care.
CONAN: Walter, thanks very much for the call. Our guest is Andy Stern of the SEIU. You’re listening to Talk of the Nation from NPR News. And let’s go to Dee, Dee with us from Charlotte, North Carolina.
DEE (Caller): Yes, sir. Yes. I’m enjoying the show. I just wanted to, I don’t know, just looking at this historically this seems to be – and correct me if I am wrong. In America we vacillate between extremes. You know, either business is not treating labor correctly, then we have to go after them, and then as soon as labor gets some power, they start abusing their authority. Is there no systemic formula that we’ve come up with yet that can blend the two together so that we could move forward in a progressive manner?
Mr. STERN: Well, here is what I’d like to say – here is what I’d like to say, America has sort of grown in this, you know, conflict-resolution version of labor and management. But we’re now in a global economy. America has to be a team, you know, we can’t afford to be fighting with each other when people are competing against us in countries like China all over the world. In Ireland when they faced this same problem, business, labor, and government came together, and they made a plan. And they turned Ireland, whose greatest export products was its people, into the second most successful economy in Europe. I think we need that kind of plan now in America. I think business and labor and government has to come together. We can’t be choosing one or the other. We need to have an American plan, and that’s going to require all of us to participate and to give and take for the best interest of our country.
CONAN: Here’s, in a way, a follow-up question from Ryan in Grand Rapids, Michigan by email. Since union’s real power comes from their ability to strike, how is the current economy with an abundance of unemployed workers reduce your leverage?
Mr. STERN: I don’t think anymore that the power of unions comes from its ability to strike. I think it comes from its ability to participate in the political process and to change America in issues that we’ve been talking about, like health care. I think it comes from the opportunity to build coalitions in our communities of people who believe that work should pay again in America. People of faith and community leaders and non-profit organizations to try to bring a discussion to the employers that are involved here, whether it’s Kaiser that we heard about earlier and Intercon, You know, trying to put a public face and put some public pressure on companies. I think it comes from, you know, our ability at times to, you know, ask p! eople to not purchase goods that are made by people when who are involve in unfair practices or as we’ve seen with SEIU in Wal-Mart through our Wal-Mart watch to shine a spotlight on to unfair practices so that employer change. So, I think there’s a whole array of things that unions can do besides striking, because that has to be the last resort.
CONAN: Ah, Andy Stern, thanks very much for your time today. We appreciate you coming down to visit with us.
Mr. STERN: Thank you.
CONAN: Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union joined us here in Studio 3A. Coming up, who’s to blame for the massive Madoff Ponzi Scheme? And, well, how to crook proof your portfolio. The Opinion Page is next. Stay with us. I’m Neal Conan. It’s the Talk of the Nation from NPR News.
Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor
By STEVE EARLY
Reading about the involvement of SEIU International vice-president Tom Balanoff in wire-tapped conversations leading to the arrest of Rod Blagojevich on Dec. 9, I was struck by a related headline in last Friday’s N.Y. Times: “Union Is Caught Up in Illinois Bribe Case.”
Not the kind of ink that labor needs at the moment, nor is it particularly fair to Chicago-based Balanoff. He hasn’t been charged with anything and, based on the evidence released so far, was merely on the receiving end of a job-seeking pitch from “Blago.” Nevertheless, the uncomfortable proximity of the two reminded me of the ethical, political, and public relations dilemmas once faced by Massachusetts unions, including my own at the time, due to the illicit activities of “Nicky Pockets.”
The late Nicky (aka U.S. Representative Nicholas Mavroules) hailed from the north shore of Boston. He was an ethnic Democrat, a great “man of the people,” and, most important of all, a “true friend of labor” just like “Blago.” He never showed up at the scene of a United Electrical Workers (UE) factory occupation, as the Illinois governor did 24 hours before the FBI cuffed him last Tuesday. But, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee in the 1980s, Nicky was a reliable meal-ticket, a man who could deliver Pentagon contracts for the 7,000-strong General Electric workforce in Lynn, Mass. Playing to the peace crowd too, he even sponsored “economic conversion” legislation. Therefore, in the minds of many trade union officials on the left and right, he was the kind of guy we should all stick with, even if he got caught in a little Chicago-style side game of “pay-to-play.”
Always wary of wiretaps, Nicky used a very sophisticated code to signal to favor-seekers that they needed to “pay.” He didn’t have any U.S. Senate seats to peddle so would-be players from cities like Lynn were told to bring “four bottles of wine” (translation: four thousand dollars). After much hard work, the feds finally cracked this code. They went after “our friend” for shaking down some of his own constituents, signaling to many local Dems that it was time to bid Nicky adieu. But, raised up on the swelling chords of “Solidarity Forever,” Nicky’s ever-loyal union cadre would not abandon their man.
Voters in an upcoming Democratic primary had a choice between a convicted bribe-taker and a liberal, female challenger, who had served honestly and well in the state legislature. Some of Nicky’s disillusioned union pals hung their heads and held their noses when they voted for him. Others—the true believers–were still waving their “Vote Mavroules” signs with genuine enthusiasm on primary day.
Either way, labor’s campaign landed Nicky back on the general election ballot, where his legal problems took everyone down in November. The 6th Congressional district elected a very lame Republican, while Nicky copped a plea and shuffled off to Club Fed.The winner was Peter Torkildsen, known in the tabs as “Torky,” and the voters paid a price for his sorry representation. Mercifully, this GOP interregnum lasted just two terms before the 6th once again became a safe Democratic seat, ending our Bay State embarrassment over sending even a single Republican to Washington.
What’s the moral of this story–from the days when organized labor was predominantly blue-collar, supposedly not as savvy, and certainly more “last century” than it is today? The lesson for labor, now and then, is: don’t get into bed with crooked politicians, because they may end up making you look as bad as them. Few unions, including SEIU, can afford the additional baggage of bad press generated by fiduciary lapses by anyone other than themselves (or fellow unions). The latter kind of scandal, like the recent embezzlement of $1 million by the head of SEIU’s second largest local, creates problems enough, particularly when any union misbehavior at the moment becomes Exhibit A in management’s ferocious campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Unfortunately, the ethical (if not always practical) advice offered above falls in the “easier-said-than-done” category. America’s self-proclaimed “21st Century Union” prides itself on being a “big player,’ which requires much larger cash investments in pols like “Blago” than the COPE money laid on “Nicky Pockets” twenty years ago. Between 2001 and this year, Andy Stern’s union spent a staggering $1,800, 000 on a man described by one Chicago newspaper as “SEIU’s best local political friend”.
What SEIU got, in return for its perfectly legal generosity, was a major organizing opportunity among non-union low-income workers previously classified as “independent contractors.” As AP reported two years ago, the union “won the right to represent 49,000 in-home providers serving children whose fees are covered by state and federal funds.” In December, 2005, after Blagojevich “ordered the state to negotiate, SEIU obtained a $250 million, 39-month contract that will raise providers’ daily rates an average of 35 percent and eventually bring them health coverage.” SEIU also gained a new Illinois chief lobbyist out of the transaction—Doug Scofield, a former Blago campaign aide who briefly served as deputy governor during his first term.
SEIU’s model child care campaign was soon mimicked elsewhere, by other unions (including my own alma mater, CWA, in New Jersey.) But, meanwhile, back in Illinois, the citizenry seems to be paying a much higher price for labor’s embrace of Blago than the modest cost of SEIU’s first contract settlement for exploited home-based care providers.
In Puerto Rico this Fall, angry voters just turfed out another disgraced friend of SEIU, who could end up as a cellmate of Blago’s. The “pay to play” schemes of Anibal Acevedo-Vila from the Popular Democratic Party led to a 19 count federal indictment. So now this defeated governor faces trial in February for tax fraud, concealing illegal donations, and engaging in a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 20 years in jail. Despite Acevedo-Vila’s considerable baggage at the time, SEIU leaders Andy Stern and Dennis Rivera, head of the union’s health care division, enthusiastically embraced him in front of 3,000 delegates and guests at SEIU’s San Juan convention in June. There, the governor gave a welcoming speech and provided the heavy security necessary to control anti-SEIU protests by left-wing Puerto Rican teachers.
What was SEIU’s “organizing play” in Puerto Rico—the return on its similar investment in Acevedo-Vila? Juan Gonzalez was the first to blow the whistle on that in The Daily News and Democracy Now. He reported that, after a ten-day strike among 40,000 teachers last winter, Acevedo-Vila gave his “close friend” Rivera “the green light to oust the teachers federation and replace it with a newly-formed group” more amenable to his Department of Education. Calling this “a shameful betrayal of solidarity,” Gonzalez pointed out that “Puerto Rican principals and supervisors” had, with help from SEIU, “created a new union for their own subordinates.”
This whole multi-million dollar scheme backfired in stages. First, the governor was indicted in March, then teachers’ pickets marred SEIU’s convention in June, then the teachers rejected SEIU as their union in October (a resounding “No” vote by 18,000 of them, which showed strong support for their old union, barred from the ballot for striking), and, finally on Nov. 4, Acevedo-Vila himself was badly defeated.
In Puerto Rico, as in Illinois and other states on the mainland, union rank-and-filers–no less than the general public–tend to have little patience with politicians who soil the office they hold and betray the electorate. Union officials, on the other hand, remain wedded to the “politics of deal,” regardless of any negative consequences for constituencies broader than their own. Before labor suffers even worse fallout from its “old politics” entanglements, maybe it should develop political action and organizing strategies less dependent on “friends” who demand “pay” to “play?”
Steve Early, a retired organizer for the Communications Workers of America, has been active in the Massachusetts union movement since 1980. He is the author of Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War At Home (Monthly Review Press, 2009) He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com
Blog from LaborNet.org
SEIU: WHO KILLED OUR INTERGRITY
THE GOVERNOR of Illinois saw a golden opportunity to turn his position into
money. With Senator Obama moving on to the White House, he now could appoint
a person to serve the remainder of Obama’s term in the Illinois Senate,
maybe even be re-elected as an incumbent for another two terms….. an
excellent selling point. There could be a lot of “business” that could be
“accomplished”, by such a candidate from this Senate position. So how could
this opportunity be translated into some serious money? It would have to be
through an organization. One that has access to some serious money. One that
has a reputation for making these “kinds” of deals. One that could really
use access to this Senate seat. The easiest way, the most profitable way and
the way most likely for success was given the most serious consideration.
After all, the organizations with the most integrity would have to be ruled
out. Can’t have the whistle blown on this deal….. I mean, opportunity.
After huddling with his “trusted” advisors, the Governor of Illinois,
approached the most likely organization.
The envelope please (drum roll)……and the winner is……SEIU.
The contacts were made and the proposal was presented to an “SEIU official”.
A directorship with SEIU’s “Change To Win” was seriously discussed with this
“SEIU official”, with a pledge to “run it up the flagpole”. Not a
“how-dare-you-involve-us-in-this-illegal-activity” response. Not a
“no-way-Jose” response. Not a “sorry,-can’t-help-you” response. But a
“let’s-see-where-it-goes” response.
Whether this “SEIU official” was Andy Stern, President of SEIU, or Tom
Balanoff, the president of the union’s giant janitors local in Chicago and
head of the SEIU union’s Illinois state council, is not the point here. The
point is that SEIU is looked at, by powerful political circles, as “that
kind of an organization”. Just how did SEIU’s reputation digress into this
“kind of organization”? How much damage does this do to our labor movement?
At what point does an organization that purports to be “fighting for
America’s working families”, become part of a “criminal complaint”? What
does this involvement say about SEIU’s integrity?
It says that SEIU’s direction needs to change. It says that SEIU’s
leadership needs to take stock of itself. It begs the members to take back
the organization that rightly belongs to them. Change to Win must now be
Change to Survive.
As scandal-ridden SEIU California locals fester over Department of Labor
violations, FBI and Congressional investigations, as well as trusteeship
attempts by SEIU administration, the members are filled with questions. SEIU
obfuscation is just not cutting it anymore. The catch-phrases and inspiring
slogans have rung hollow and the evidence of improprieties just seems to be
mounting and building.
As the SEIU administration now arranges itself in a circle with everyone
pointing to the left, the members voices cut through the fog of deceit with
a piercing and angry shout:
WHO KILLED OUR INTEGRITY?!!
Thanks the author!
I’m sure there’s good information in here but the walls of text, the blatant cut & pasting with no attempt at editing to improve readability, and the fact that this website is really nothing but 170+ comments added to a single non-entry, instead of the more logical format of posting a new entry for each new, unique article, well, trying to read through everything to sort the shit from the chaff just made my eyes water.
In my defense, Imma Dumas. What more can I say?
From Uniondemocracy@yahoo.com
Below are three recent articles pointing out the threat posed to significant
labor law reform by the corruption at SEIU….
1) Union Official Allegedly Liaison Between Governor, Obama Team (see full text
below)
Washington Post
December 10, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/09/AR2008120903057.
html
2) Quantum of Solis
Big labor wants Obama to dilute union disclosure rules. (see full text below)
Wall Street Journal
December 22, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122990431323225179.html
3) Allegations Against SEIU Could Delay Free Choice Act
http://www.rollcall.com/news/30959-1.html
Roll Call (see full text below)
December 19, 2008
1) Union Official Allegedly Liaison Between Governor, Obama Team
Blagojevich Apparently Hoped for Job Leading Labor Group
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2008; A08
Among the revelations contained in the complaint brought against Illinois Gov.
Rod Blagojevich yesterday was the description of an official with the Service
Employees International Union acting as an apparent intermediary between the
governor and Barack Obama’s camp in discussions over Obama’s Senate seat.
The alleged role of the SEIU official was surprising, given that the union had
not figured publicly in the investigation into Blagojevich (D). But on another
level, the SEIU’s apparent involvement is an indication of the extent to which
it has, under the leadership of its ambitious and controversial president,
Andrew L. Stern, become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics.
With organized labor holding such high expectations for the Obama
administration — notably, hopes for legislation fiercely opposed by business
leaders that would make it easier to form unions — officials of other unions
were hoping yesterday that the SEIU’s apparent involvement in the Illinois
scandal would not undermine their cause in Washington.
The U.S. attorney’s complaint states that Blagojevich mused aloud with his
advisers about the possibility that he could seek a high-paying job with Change
to Win, the coalition of seven unions — dominated by SEIU — that broke away
from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Blagojevich and his chief of staff wondered aloud
about a “three-way deal” in which he would appoint Obama confidante Valerie
Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman believed to be the woman identified in the
complaint as “Candidate 1,” to Obama’s Senate seat; Blagojevich in return would
become Change to Win’s executive director; and Obama would reward Change to Win
with pro-labor policies.
The complaint also states that on Nov. 12, Blagojevich spoke by phone with an
“SEIU official” who was in Washington and with whom Blagojevich had met a week
before on the understanding that the official was an emissary to discuss
Jarrett’s interest in the Senate seat. In the conversation, the SEIU official
is alleged to have said that Obama now wanted Blagojevich to consider
candidates other than Jarrett.
Apparently undeterred, Blagojevich allegedly suggested that SEIU could assist
in the formation of a nonprofit political organization that could employ
Blagojevich while also assisting Jarrett. The SEIU official agreed to “put that
flag up and see where it goes.”
SEIU leaders, who were gathered yesterday at a Denver hotel to discuss the
“card-check” legislation that would make it easier to form unions, declined to
comment yesterday, saying through a spokeswoman, “We have no reason to believe
that SEIU or any SEIU official was involved in any wrongdoing.”
A spokesman for Change to Win said: “No one connected with Change to Win ever
considered, discussed or promised any position at Change to Win to Governor
Blagojevich, his staff or his advisers. In the affidavit released by the United
States Attorney, a position at Change to Win is discussed only in conversations
between the governor and his advisers.”
The complaint’s wording suggests that the SEIU official who allegedly talked
with Blagojevich was Stern, because it quotes the governor’s chief of staff as
saying the official “could make” the governor the head of Change to Win, a
level of authority that only Stern holds over the coalition. But the SEIU
official with the closest ties to the Obama team is Tom Balanoff, head of
SEIU’s Illinois chapter. A labor source who was not authorized to speak
publicly said that although Balanoff had planned to be in Denver, he was not at
the meeting yesterday.
SEIU officials did not return repeated calls yesterday.
Stern has emerged as a central player in the labor movement by pressing
aggressively to expand union rolls, along the way irritating AFL-CIO leaders,
whom he accused of being complacent, and leaders of some SEIU chapters who
accuse him of cutting deals with business and government that enhance his
profile while undercutting local chapters. Among his victories was
Blagojevich’s decision to let SEIU, and not the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees, organize Illinois’ child-care workers.
Stern resisted attempts by some SEIU chapters to endorse Obama early in the
primaries, because Stern also liked former North Carolina senator John Edwards
and hoped to preserve the union’s resources for the general election. But Stern
went along with a full endorsement in February, and the union invested heavily
in the general election — though it probably played less of a role in key Rust
Belt states than the AFL-CIO did. A former SEIU official, Patrick Gaspard, was
named Obama’s political director.
Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University, said it was
doubtful SEIU would have conspired with Blagojevich, because it knew how
relatively weak his ties to Obama were and because it was doubtful that Change
to Win would hire him.
“They don’t just create high-paying jobs like that. It doesn’t even make sense.
It sounds like someone’s pipe dream.”
But, depending on what else emerges in Illinois, SEIU’s role could affect
labor’s agenda, he said: “If there turns out to be a connection with SEIU, it’s
not going to be a great thing for labor.”
2) Quantum of Solis
Big labor wants Obama to dilute union disclosure rules.
There is joy in Unionville this Christmas. Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of
Labor — Hilda Solis — brings impeccable big labor credentials. The California
Congresswoman first rode to power with labor backing against a fellow Democrat,
has voted with the AFL-CIO 97% of the time, and got three-quarters of her
campaign contributions from unions.
Ms. Solis says her goal is to expand the reach and power of unions in America,
and she supports such union priorities as the Employee Free Choice Act, which
would do the opposite of its name and end secret balloting to unionize a
workplace. Look for a showdown on that legislation in 2009. Meanwhile, the
other drama to watch is whether Ms. Solis will turn a blind eye to union
corruption by weakening federal oversight.
From day one of the Obama era, union leaders want the lights dimmed on how they
spend their mandatory member dues. The AFL-CIO’s representative on the Obama
transition team for Labor is Deborah Greenfield, and we’re told her first
inspection stop was the Office of Labor-Management Standards, or OLMS, which
monitors union compliance with federal law.
Ms. Greenfield declined to comment, citing Obama transition rules, but her
mission is clear enough. The AFL-CIO’s formal “recommendations” to the Obama
team call for the realignment of “the allocation of budgetary resources” from
OLMS to other Labor agencies. The Secretary should “temporarily stay all
financial reporting regulations that have not gone into effect,” and “revise or
rescind the onerous and unreasonable new requirements,” such as the LM-2 and
T-1 reporting forms. The explicit goal is to “restore the Department of Labor
to its mission and role of advocating for, protecting and advancing the
interests of workers.” In other words, while transparency is fine for business,
unions are demanding a pass for themselves.
Current Secretary Elaine Chao boosted Labor’s enforcement office and tightened
disclosure rules after years of neglect by the Clinton Administration. Staffing
rose to 331 from 274 in 2000 — still modest by federal standards — and picked
up the pace of surprise audits and investigations of abuse. Big labor wants Ms.
Solis to reverse all that, though with its growing political clout it deserves
more scrutiny than ever.
In the Illinois pay-to-play scandal, Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s chief of staff
approached the two-million strong Service Employees International Union about a
possible job for the Governor. The SEIU was Mr. Blagojevich’s biggest campaign
donor. No one at the union has been charged with any wrongdoing and the SEIU
says it is cooperating with the federal investigation.
In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the SEIU supported Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, who was
indicted this year for corruption. The biggest fraud case of the year involved
the SEIU’s home-care workers local in Los Angeles. Its boss, the 39-year-old
Tyrone Freeman, was a protégé of SEIU chief Andy Stern. Both Mr. Freeman and
his former chief of staff were ousted; a third senior SEIU official is on leave
pending an internal investigation, while a federal probe is also under way.
As some labor officials privately admit, Ms. Chao’s financial disclosure rules
helped to expose Mr. Freeman. Hundreds of thousands of misspent dollars —
including a $13,000 tab Mr. Freeman had rung up at the Grand Havana Room cigar
club in Beverly Hills and $650,000 for his wife’s video company — were pulled
from the same revised LM-2 forms that unions had so vociferously opposed in
2004.
Anna Berger, the SEIU’s secretary-treasurer, says the information required by
Labor now is “incredibly ridiculous,” adding “there was huge transparency”
before. But Sal Rosselli, president of the dissident SEIU-United Healthcare
Workers-West, told us Friday that the union does a poor job of policing itself.
He noted that an internal investigation revealed that the California problems
were brought to the union’s D.C. leadership’s attention as far back as 2001,
without prompting any action.
We’re as allergic to government red tape as anyone. But union complaints about
administrative burdens aren’t borne out by the LM-2s, which include their
accounting costs. Compared to the burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley, they’re hardly
onerous. And one constituency is grateful that Labor makes this information
public and, if necessary, prosecutes abuse: Dues-paying union members.
As for Mr. Obama, this spring he quietly promised to end federal oversight of
the Teamsters, imposed in 1992 to eliminate mob influence; the union endorsed
him over Hillary Clinton. Another California House liberal, George Miller, last
year pushed through a cut in funding for the OLMS. Congress will surely target
the office again next year. Ms. Solis backed the Miller measure in 2007. It’d
be nice to think that in her new job she’ll make union supervision as much of a
priority as union promotion, but don’t expect it.
3) Allegations Against SEIU Could Delay Free Choice Act
December 19, 2008, 2:57 p.m.
By Stephen Langel
CongressNow Staff
Roll Call
Allegations of wrongdoing against one of labor’s strongest voices could
undermine efforts to take up the Employee Free Choice Act during the first 100
days of the Obama administration, according to sources on both sides of the
issue.
Labor unions have made passage of the Free Choice Act their top priority during
the 111th Congress, but a growing number of allegations against the Service
Employees International Union — in particular its relationship with Illinois
Gov. Rod Blagojevich — have called into question whether Congress and the Obama
administration would be willing to move the bill early on.
The SEIU is one of the fastest growing unions in the country, representing the
health care, property and public services sectors. Blagojevich was arrested on
Dec. 9 for allegedly seeking favors from the Obama administration and others —
including SEIU — in exchange for a say in his appointment of Obama’s vacant
Senate seat.
According to the Justice Department complaint, an SEIU official listened to and
agreed to consider Blagojevich’s proposal to trade the Senate appointment for a
high-paying job with the union.
The complaint, said the Center for Union Fact’s executive director Richard
Berman, “has shone a light on SEIU’s propensity for doing business with corrupt
groups and people.”
SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette argues that no one in the union has been
accused of any wrongdoing; that simply being mentioned in a criminal complaint
is not tantamount to guilt. And she said the union has made every effort to
cooperate with the federal government in its case against the governor.
The legislation would eliminate secret-ballot elections, instead allowing a
union bargaining unit to be formed as soon as a majority of workers signed
authorization cards. It also mandates arbitration if contract negotiations
stall and imposes penalties on employers that coerce workers not to join
unions. A manufacturing business official described this bill as a “deal
breaker” that would end any honeymoon between the Obama administration and
Republicans.
A House GOP aide agreed that the charges would have an impact. The legislation
is “going to be looked at with a much more critical eye in light of these
allegations,” said the GOP aide.
But an aide to Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), the
bill1’s House sponsor, rejected these arguments.
“After eight years of a disastrous Bush administration, nothing will stop us
from enacting measures to help workers fight for their economic security like
access to healthcare, safe working conditions and sharing in improved
productivity,” the aide said in an e-mailed statement.
The bill’s passage is also sure to receive a boost from President-elect Barack
Obama’s choice of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Labor secretary. Solis was an
original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act and carries a 97 percent
lifetime rating from the AFL-CIO.
Last year the bill passed overwhelmingly in the House, but fell in the Senate
when Democrats failed to gain the sixty votes needed to cut off debate and hold
a straight up or down vote.
Imma Dumas, you’re right. This could be a lot more organized. I’ll work on that. I’m not very tech savvy, so I may need to corral someone who is. Please bear with me if I try something and it doesn’t work as planned.
Reformers, it seems the the Local already thinks you have enough input on the Governance Committee! See http://www.seiu721.org/about_us/exec_board/Default.aspx
SEIU 721 2008 Holiday Party pictures
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15113857@N05/3116777012/
1,626 uploads! They REALLY want to rub it in!
United for LA thinks they can tell Reformers how it really is!
“How a Real Democracy Works”
SEIU 721’s Nov. 22 Contract Campaign Conference at Cal Poly Pomona
A Message from Michael Hunt, Transportation Engineer, City of Los Angeles:
http://www.unitedforla.org/our-thoughts-and-conversations/how-a-real-democracy-works.html
Close the business schools. cobra health insurance
Several horse shows are annual events. The rest is picked up by the program. rrqqddhealth insurance leads
SEIU Prez DID Meet With Corrupt Ill. Governor
http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2009/01/09/seiu-prez-did-meet-with-corrupt-ill-governor/
Obama On The Employee Free Choice Act
16 Jan 2009 11:48 am
Here’s a transcribed portion of President-elect Barack Obama’s interview yesterday with the Washington Post:
Q: The Employee Free Choice Act – a timing question and a substance question: in terms of timing how quickly would you like to see it brought up? Would you like to see it brought up in your first year? In terms of substance, the bills that you talked about in your floor statement on the Employee Free Choice Act problems with bullying of [inaudible] people want to join unions. Is card check the only solution? Or are you open to considering other solutions that might shorten the time?
Obama: I think I think that is a fair question and a good one.
Here’s my basic principal that wages and incomes have flatlined over the last decade. That part of that has to do with forces that are beyond everybody’s control: globalization, technology and so forth. Part of it has to do with workers have very little leverage and that larger and larger shares of our productivity go to the top and not to the middle or the bottom. I think unions serve an important role in that. I think that the way the Bush Administration managed the Department of Labor, the NLRB, and a host of other aspects of labor management relations put the thumb too heavily against unions. I want to lift that thumb. There are going to be steps that we can take other than the Employee Free Choice Act that will make a difference there.
I think the basic principal of making it easier and fairer for workers who want to join a union, join a union is important. And the basic outline of the Employee Fair Choice are ones that I agree with. But I will certainly listen to all parties involved including from labor and the business community which I know considers this to be the devil incarnate. I will listen to parties involved and see if there are ways that we can bring those parties together and restore some balance.
You know, now if the business community’s argument against the Employee Free Choice Act is simply that it will make it easier for people to join unions and we think that is damaging to the economy then they probably won’t get too far with me. If their arguments are we think there are more elegant ways of doing this or here are some modifications or tweaks to the general concept that we would like to see. Then I think that’s a conversation that not only myself but folks in labor would be willing to have. But, so that’s the general approach that I am interested in taking. But in terms of time table, if we are losing half a million jobs a month then there are no jobs to unionize. So my focus first is on those key economic priority items that I just mentioned.
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It is usually necessary to confirm that the Act is part all of us and in order to win this important issue is by all means to have that accessbibility and availability of priority from the top to bottom.
THE UNION WAY UP
America, and its faltering economy, need unions to restore prosperity to the middle class.
By Robert B. Reich
January 26, 2009
Why is this recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?
Hint: Go back about 50 years, when America’s middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring. Paychecks were big enough to allow us to buy all the goods and services we produced. It was a virtuous circle. Good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs.
At the center of this virtuous circle were unions. In 1955, more than a third of working Americans belonged to one. Unions gave them the bargaining leverage they needed to get the paychecks that kept the economy going. So many Americans were unionized that wage agreements spilled over to nonunionized workplaces as well. Employers knew they had to match union wages to compete for workers and to recruit the best ones.
Fast forward to a new century. Now, fewer than 8% of private-sector workers are unionized. Corporate opponents argue that Americans no longer want unions. But public opinion surveys, such as a comprehensive poll that Peter D. Hart Research Associates conducted in 2006, suggest that a majority of workers would like to have a union to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. So there must be some other reason for this dramatic decline.
But put that question aside for a moment. One point is clear: Smaller numbers of unionized workers mean less bargaining power, and less bargaining power results in lower wages.
It’s no wonder middle-class incomes were dropping even before the recession. As our economy grew between 2001 and the start of 2007, most Americans didn’t share in the prosperity. By the time the recession began last year, according to an Economic Policy Institute study, the median income of households headed by those under age 65 was below what it was in 2000.
Typical families kept buying only by going into debt. This was possible as long as the housing bubble expanded. Home-equity loans and refinancing made up for declining paychecks. But that’s over. American families no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. Lower paychecks, or no paychecks at all, mean fewer purchases, and fewer purchases mean fewer jobs.
The way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do this is to expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.
Tax rebates won’t work because they don’t permanently raise wages. Most families used the rebate last year to pay off debt — not a bad thing, but it doesn’t keep the virtuous circle running.
Bank bailouts won’t work either. Businesses won’t borrow to expand without consumers to buy their goods and services. And Americans themselves can’t borrow when they’re losing their jobs and their incomes are dropping.
Tax cuts for working families, as President Obama intends, can do more to help because they extend over time. But only higher wages and benefits for the middle class will have a lasting effect.
Unions matter in this equation. According to the Department of Labor, workers in unions earn 30% higher wages — taking home $863 a week, compared with $663 for the typical nonunion worker — and are 59% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than their nonunion counterparts.
Examples abound. In 2007, nearly 12,000 janitors in Providence, R.I., New Hampshire and Boston, represented by the Service Employees International Union, won a contract that raised their wages to $16 an hour, guaranteed more work hours and provided family health insurance. In an industry typically staffed by part-time workers with a high turnover rate, a union contract provided janitors with full-time, sustainable jobs that they could count on to raise their families’ — and their communities’ — standard of living.
In August, 65,000 Verizon workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America, won wage increases totaling nearly 11% and converted temporary jobs to full-time status. Not only did the settlement preserve fully paid healthcare premiums for all active and retired unionized employees, but Verizon also agreed to provide $2 million a year to fund a collaborative campaign with its unions to achieve meaningful national healthcare reform.
Although America and its economy need unions, it’s become nearly impossible for employees to form one. The Hart poll I cited tells us that 57 million workers would want to be in a union if they could have one. But those who try to form a union, according to researchers at MIT, have only about a 1 in 5 chance of successfully doing so.
The reason? Most of the time, employees who want to form a union are threatened and intimidated by their employers. And all too often, if they don’t heed the warnings, they’re fired, even though that’s illegal. I saw this when I was secretary of Labor over a decade ago. We tried to penalize employers that broke the law, but the fines are minuscule. Too many employers consider them a cost of doing business.
This isn’t right. The most important feature of the Employee Free Choice Act, which will be considered by the just-seated 111th Congress, toughens penalties against companies that violate their workers’ rights. The sooner it’s enacted, the better — for U.S. workers and for the U.S. economy.
The American middle class isn’t looking for a bailout or a handout. Most people just want a chance to share in the success of the companies they help to prosper. Making it easier for all Americans to form unions would give the middle class the bargaining power it needs for better wages and benefits. And a strong and prosperous middle class is necessary if our economy is to succeed.
Robert B. Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author, most recently, of “Supercapitalism.”
Faced with Concession Demands, Unions Search for Ways to Resist
— Mischa Gaus, Mark Brenner
As companies scramble to shore up profits, many are turning to a well-rehearsed script: ask union workers for concessions. The supposed payoff ? You’ll get to keep your job. In late November, the Teamsters announced a deal with Yellow-Roadway Corporation to crack open their contract and cut wages 10 percent.
The company claims it is the latest victim of the credit crunch, unable to secure financing for its large debts. Union officials warn that the company could fall into bankruptcy if concessions aren’t granted. If approved by the members, the wage cuts will stay in effect through 2013, when the contract expires. In exchange for concessions, the company has offered the union about 15 percent of the company’s stock.
“We’re being bamboozled,” said Mike Schaffer, a Roadway driver and member of Local 769 in Miami. “Even if they come back to profitability, we don’t get any relief. The union agreed to this lock, stock, and barrel.”
But even profitable companies use turbulent times as an excuse to get the upper hand. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Essar Steel Algoma pressed Steelworkers (USW) Local 2251 for concessions in October, despite a record-setting third quarter where net income topped $146 million. The sheet-steel maker, whose products are sold to the construction and auto industries, insisted that workers agree to gut their contract. If not, the company threatened to lay off nearly a third of the workforce—1,000 workers—and build a new pipe plant elsewhere. Essar’s laundry list of givebacks would have clipped workers’ overtime and unemployment pay and steamrolled hard-won rights over job assignments and scheduling, as well as layoff and recall rights.
RIGHT FOR EVERY OCCASION
Management first developed the concessions formula during the downturn of 1980-1983. Since then, companies have stretched the argument for concessions to fit almost every situation. Whatever the problem, from global competition to rising health care costs, the solution is always making workers do more with less.
“Companies are going to use these hard times to try to see what they can get out of us,” said Cam Pucci, a steward in Local 2251 who’s repaired and maintained machines at Essar for 30 years. “They put the fear factor in, to see how far they can go.”
In hard times, employers frame concessions as shared sacrifice—everyone pulling together to get the company back on its feet. But sharing was in short supply during the 1990s, when profits were flush and CEO pay skyrocketed.
Even in hard times, though, management is brazen about cushioning itself. United Airlines, for example, clawed back more than $4 billion from workers between 2003 and 2006, while shedding 20,000 jobs and unloading pensions onto the federal government through bankruptcy courts. Top brass, meanwhile, were amply rewarded. Last year United’s top eight executives took in a combined $45 million.
At Essar, the union discovered that the company had paid out $438 million to shareholders in 2005 and 2006. “If they want concessions,” Pucci said, “they should be trying to recover some of that money.”
Although evidence has piled up for nearly 30 years that concessions don’t save jobs, some union leaders still call for givebacks as a solution to hard times. But others have seen that whether it’s easing work rules or chopping wages, health care, and pensions, concessions can’t change the economic landscape. These givebacks only weaken the union once business picks up.
“Taking $2 an hour off employees’ wages is not going to improve market conditions for steel,” said Wayne Fraser, USW district director. “That’s not the answer to what’s happening now. If other companies try it, they’re going to get the same answer.”
Despite the venom aimed at unions, wages don’t make or break a company. According to the latest figures from the Commerce Department’s Economic Census, even if every auto worker in Michigan worked for free it would only lower the price of the cars they produce by 5 percent.
JUST SAY NO
For unions that want to fight concessions, the first line of defense is refusing to reopen the contract. Essar tried to have USW’s district leaders reopen two years early, but the district declined. When Essar turned to local officers they shrugged off the hard sell, too. Mike DaPrat, president of Local 2251, told the company he would work within the confines of the contract, but that rewriting under duress was out of the question.
The union had learned from experience: workers had taken concessions in four contracts since 1992, slicing members’ wages, health benefits, and their majority stake in the company. Now the Steelworkers are wrangling with the company over shift length. Following one of the cardinal rules when concessions can’t be avoided, DaPrat insists that any changes be automatically reversed in three months, that future agreements be re-signed and not involuntarily renewed, and that management violations be subject to penalties.
Sometimes union leaders have to be told “no” as well, as rank-and-file carhaulers demonstrated in August. In an attempt to help ailing companies, Teamster officials had agreed to a tentative deal that would have weakened job security, introduced two-tier wages, and given companies the green light to use new technologies that track and discipline drivers. Members voted down the proposed agreement by 59 percent. Veteran driver George Warner called it “the worst contract I’ve seen in
38 years, since I’ve been hauling cars.” The second round of bargaining produced an agreement that removed the worst concessions, and members ratified it in October.
KEEP (STRIKE) OPTIONS OPEN
Even in difficult times workers can use strikes—or a credible strike threat— to hold the line against givebacks. West Coast longshore workers dodged the fallout from slack shipping volumes, using a May Day walkout—together with weeks of on-the-job agitation—to score healthy gains in wages and pensions, together with increased crew sizes to spread the work under container cranes.
And in Chicago, workers at Republic Doors and Windows captivated the nation last month by taking over their factory when the owners claimed Bank of America wouldn’t release funds to pay them severance. They won a settlement, and now their union, the United Electrical Workers, is in talks to reopen the plant. Republic workers didn’t miss the importance or power of action on the job.
“Would we have won without using direct action?” asked Melvin Maclin, UE Local 1110 vice president. “I don’t even have to think about that. We would have been out the door.”
Revealed: Bailed-Out Execs Plotting Against EFCA
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post at 2:02 PM on January 27, 2009.
These crooks “are asking us to bail them out and then using that money to stop workers from improving their lives.”
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.”
Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning “into France.”
“If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs,” Marcus declared.
Earlier he argued: “As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company wasn’t doing anything on [EFCA]… I would sue the son of a bitch… I’m so angry at some of these CEOs, I can’t even believe the stupidity that is involved here.”
Audio of the conference call, which was obtained by the Huffington Post, is excerpted throughout this piece to provide a clearer insight into the pitched battle surrounding the Employee Free Choice legislation. At one point, relatively early in the call, Marcus joked that he “took a tranquilizer this morning to calm myself down.”
“This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life,” he said, explaining that he could have been on “a 350-foot boat out in the Mediterranean,” but felt it was more important to engage on this fight. “It is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is a disaster, a total absolute disaster.”
The legislation — which would allow workers to form a union either by holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign written forms — is virtually certain to face a Republican filibuster. Obama and Senate Democrats have stated their commitment to the bill, though the timing of the vote remains a topic of heated debate.
Weeks before the November election, Marcus, Berman, and others saw this ominous political landscape taking shape. Hoping to aid opponents of EFCA in the Senate, they pleaded with participants on the call, mostly stock analysts or individuals with investment portfolios, to urge clients to prop up the campaigns of endangered Republican candidates, including Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
“If there are not enough Republicans operating as a firewall, after this election it is going to be very difficult to hold the line,” predicted Berman. “The only way after these elections if we don’t have a filibuster proof Senate… is to make this issue so hot in some states so that even a Democrat who is up for election in 2010 has to think twice about whether or not they are going to let this thing go by.”
At one point, another individual on the call suggested that participants send major contributions to Berman’s organization as a way of affecting the election without violating the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. “Some organizations have written checks for $250,000, $500,000, some $2 million for this,” said the man, likely Steven Hantler, the director of free enterprise and entrepreneurship at Bernie Marcus’ Marcus Foundation.
Citing the massive war chests that unions have brought to the EFCA fight, Marcus asked participants to make campaign donations rather than lobbying payments. “Fire all these guys in Washington,” he said of the K-Street operators, “they are worthless anyway.”
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Berman said that there “was nothing on that call that spoke to funneling money to anybody.” Indeed, at a separate point, Marcus discussed the need to contribute to issue advocacy and education activities. The call, Berman continued, was designed to explain some of the economic implications of passing EFCA and was “one of a series with people around the country who are connected to businesses.”
“There has been, though it has changed in the last few months, a fairly significant deficit in terms of understanding what this law is about,” Berman said. “I know a number of business groups have held calls with people about the impact of this legislation… The unions who are a proponent of this have not made it a high profile issue. I think they have learned from their polling that it doesn’t poll well, which is why they don’t’ want to make it a public issue.”
As for the business community, Berman added, “I do think that most businesspeople fully appreciate the damage that out-of-control labor leaders have caused for other businesses. There is no appetite for finding out if you are going to have to be the next business to deal with other labor issues.”
A Bank of America spokesman declined a request for public comment, and the bank’s representative on the call played a minor role. The conference call was referenced in a November 5 Bank of America research document, in which the company noted that EFCA “increases the likelihood that retailers would be unionized, which could drive higher labor cost at retail.” On “the flip side,” however, the document said the bill would increase the “spending power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and benefit increase.”
As evidenced by its dual interpretation of the legislation, Bank of America’s role in the EFCA fight is a bit murky. The company, as stated by an official there, hosted the call for the purposes of equity research, meaning that their goal was to represent the opinions of clients and not the bank itself. But their involvement in an effort to drum up support for defeating the labor-backed legislation, so soon after getting bail out funds from the federal government, left a bad taste in the mouth of some union officials.
“Bank of America is now not only getting bailout money. They are lending their name to participate in a campaign to stop workers from having a majority sign up [provision],” said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Private Equity Project at SEIU. “The biggest corporations who have created the problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using that money to stop workers from improving their lives.”
Subject: Andy Sterns ties to PERS
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
PERS buys Oregonian-Blazers from Newhouse
Media experts, NBA anticipate seamless transition
Oregon to Newhouse IV: Nice knowin’ ya!
What a difference a day makes. Barely 24 hours after spending $450 million out of his own pocket to buy the Portland Trail Blazers from Paul Allen, rookie publisher-owner of The Oregonian Si Newhouse IV announced that he has sold the combined properties for $1.95 billion.
The new owner is PERS-TPG, a joint venture of Oregon’s gold-plated government employee retirement fund and the gigantic private equity firm formerly known as Texas Pacific Group. PERS became a 10% owner of TPG in a deal announced last month. Thus Oregon’s 157-year old newspaper that has enjoyed a statewide monopoly for 47 years has finally landed in the hands of the state’s powerful government unions, known as the 800-lb. gorilla of Oregon politics.
In a one-page news release, PERS-TPG announced that former editor Sandra Mims Rowe had accepted a generous buy-out package and is already out-of-state, back in Virginia. Longtime political activist and former Willamette Week advocacy journalist-reporter Patty Wentz has been named the new editor.
A media and sports expert close to the negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the newspaper has been renamed Our Oregonian and will continue as a model of “third-way journalism” under the leadership of new chairman of the board Andy Stern, president of the national SEIU government employee union. The source indicated there would be no change in editorial content, citing not only the importance of continuity in management but also the government unions’ resounding success in the 2006 election campaigns.
Newhouse IV’s plans in the area have been scaled back. He will rent a furnished penthouse condominium in Portland’s emerging SoWhat district owned by a speculative out-of-state investor from California, and will remain with the new organization under a non-compete consulting agreement up to the June 28 NBA draft. Then, he will receive a big golden parachute and pack up out-of-state, returning to the familiar late-night Manhattan lifestyle of his native New York City.
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LA TIMES
Unions march for worker organization legislation
11:32 AM, February 5, 2009
Hundreds of union members have begun marching from downtown Los Angles to Westwood to rally support for the Employee Free Choice Act, proposed legislation that would make it easier to organize workers.
The march began about 10 a.m. at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor office near MacArthur Park and is expected to continue along Wilshire Boulevard, with three short stops before reaching the federal building in Westwood at 5 p.m.
Olympic Boulevard was closed this morning for the first three miles of the march. For the rest of the route, police and traffic officials will determine whether to direct marchers onto sidewalks or continue to close roads, organizers said.
The Employee Free Choice Act would require employers to recognize a union once a majority of workers signed membership cards, in what is known as a card-check system.
Typically, companies exercise their right to require an employee election organized by the National Labor Relations Board.
– Evelyn Larrubia
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-union12-2009feb12,0,2653505.story
Midwestern SEIU Official Resigns
Byron Hobbs, accused of billing the union for $9,000 in personal expenses, is the latest to leave a high-ranking post in the organization.
By Paul Pringle
9:10 PM PST, February 11, 2009
A high-ranking Midwest officer of the Service Employees International Union, who had been serving as trustee of a financially troubled local, has resigned after being accused of billing the labor organization for $9,000 in personal expenses.
The Chicago-based Byron Hobbs, who also sat on the union’s national board, is the latest of several SEIU officials to lose their positions or otherwise come under scrutiny for alleged financial improprieties. Among them is Tyrone Freeman, former president of the union’s largest California local, who is the target of a federal criminal investigation.
Hobbs could not be reached for comment.
He was executive vice president of the SEIU’s 90,000-member Illinois-Indiana healthcare local, and was overseeing a St. Louis chapter that the union had placed in trusteeship.
SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette said Wednesday that Hobbs has repaid the $9,000. She said the charges were from the Illinois-Indiana local, and the union is auditing the St. Louis chapter to ensure there has been no improper spending there.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois-Indiana local, Brynn Seibert, said the union’s handling of the allegedly improper charges showed “the system works.”
In California, Freeman was ousted after The Times disclosed that his 160,000-member local and an affiliated charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to small companies owned by his wife and mother-in-law, and spent a similar amount on luxury golf tournaments, expensive restaurants and a cigar lounge.
His former chief of staff, Rickman Jackson, was removed as head of the SEIU’s largest Michigan local, because he allegedly received improper lease payments for his Bell Gardens house.
Annelle Grajeda, president of both a second L.A. local and the SEIU’s state council, has been on leave since August, when the union began investigating whether she had improperly used her influence to keep her ex-boyfriend on the county payroll. She has denied any wrongdoing.
Last month, the union imposed a trusteeship on an Oakland-based local and fired its officers, accusing them of misusing dues money to wage a political battle against SEIU President Andy Stern.
The former Oakland officers, who allege they were punished for voicing dissent, are now organizing a rival healthcare union.
paul.pringle@latimes.com
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in “Re-Wed” Talks
By DAVID MACARAY
“In politics, as in religion, we have less charity for those who believe in half of our creed than for those that deny the whole of it.”
—Charles Caleb Colton
It is being reported that the first, tentative steps have been taken in a process that may lead, ultimately, to the reunification of organized labor’s two “competing” national federations—the AFL-CIO, and Change to Win (CtW).
In 2005, in a dramatic affront to union solidarity, CtW broke away from the AFL-CIO, despite determined efforts by labor activists, progressive commentators, and Democratic politicians to keep them on the farm.
Established in 1955 (when the American Federation of Labor merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations), the AFL-CIO is the largest and most influential labor federation ever to exist. Even with the seven big-time unions leaving it to join CtW, the Federation still has 56 unions and over 10 million members. George Meany was its first president.
Yet, in spite of the Federation’s high profile and influence, seven mutineers defiantly chose to break away and form their own coalition, arguing that it was not only time for a “change,” but that the House of Labor had revealed itself to be too unimaginative and ineffectual to continue to run the show.
The seven who split off were: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (UNITE HERE), the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), the United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW), the United Farm Workers (UFW) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). [note: while the UBC joined the CtW, it didn’t, technically, join the mutiny, having left the AFL-CIO on their own, in 2001]
The issue fueling the breakaway was the AFL-CIO’s lack of success in organizing, of bringing in much needed new union members. And the key contributing factor in that regard—the final straw, so to speak—was the AFL-CIO’s failure to organize a single Wal-Mart store (with nearly 4,000 to choose from), despite a prodigious, expensive, and well-publicized recruiting effort. Believing it could do better, CtW set off on its own.
Still, this was more than a simple policy dispute. Like all palace coups, there was considerable behind-the-scenes maneuvering and intrigue. The then (and current) president of the AFL-CIO was John Sweeney, who has served for 13 years. The man who led the mutiny against Sweeney was one Andrew Stern, president of the SEIU. And Sweeney himself was a former president of the SEIU. So, intersecting histories, simmering resentments, and unbridled ambition played a part in this, as well.
In the three and a half years since the breakaway, CtW found out a couple of things. First, they realized they hadn’t gained anything appreciable by setting off on their own, that remaining united had certain inherent advantages, and that the “whole” can, in fact, be greater than the sum of its parts. Second, they found out that organizing was harder than they thought.
David Bonior, a former congressman and one of Obama’s early Secretary of Labor candidates, has been shepherding these reunification talks. According to reports, among the issues being addressed are: how the Federation will be modified, who will lead it, how the leadership role itself will be structured (it’s been suggested, without much support, that the president’s job be rotated), and what the name of the reunified organization should be.
Apparently, there are some die-hard CtW’ers who vowed never to return to any entity called the “AFL-CIO,” and want the Federation’s name changed. On that score, those folks need to be reminded that “brand name” recognition is a precious commodity.
Also (and this is subjective), when it comes to assigning names to organizations, the group who coined “Change to Win” should be taken out behind the woodshed and whacked. In this era of glib seminar-speak, that name sounds like the product of an unholy coupling of a self-help author and Human Resource manager.
By any reckoning, the reunification of these two labor federations is welcome news. Clearly, the AFL-CIO is far from perfect. Maybe it’s a battleship in an age of speed boats. Undeniably, it is subject to those same bureaucratic diseases that infect any large, unwieldy organization, and, like bureaucracies everywhere, is stubbornly resistant to change. But, flawed or not, it remains labor’s most viable entity.
As for Change to Win, give them credit for trying to reinvigorate and redirect the American labor movement.
The reunification is far from a done deal. There’s lots of potential drama still incubating. One person the AFL-CIO is touting for president (to replace Sweeney, who’s 74 years old and won’t be seeking re-election) is Richard Trumka, formerly of the United Mine Workers and currently the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer.
While Trumka is a respected officer, and is reported to be lobbying energetically for the job, CtW hard-liners are opposed to him. They want a new face in there, someone they see as less inbred, less beholden to the Old Guard, someone not so closely associated with “business as usual.” On the other hand, as former mutineers who sheepishly paddled back to the boat, CtW can’t expect to call the shots.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright (“Larva Boy,” “Borneo Bob”) and writer, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
Schwarzenegger To Send Layoff Notices Tuesday
By Kevin Yamamura
kyamamura@sacbee.com
Published: Monday, Feb. 16, 2009
With budget negotiations still hung up in the Senate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to send 20,000 layoff warnings to state workers Tuesday morning.
Schwarzenegger will instruct his Department of Personnel Administration to give agencies lists of people affected — those with the least seniority among the approximately 100,000 state workers employed at General Fund units.
“In the absence of a budget, the governor has the responsibility to realize savings any way he can,” said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear.
Bargaining units represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1000 will be protected from layoffs under terms of a tentative agreement reached early Saturday. The layoff warning notices will specify that SEIU members will receive special protection, according to state Department of Personnel Administration spokeswoman Lynelle Jolley. Other General Fund employees whose bargaining units lack contracts will be at risk, however.
The governor has not specified how many layoffs, if any, he would pursue. Each 2,000 layoffs would save an estimated $150 million, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Schwarzenegger on Friday said he would hold off sending the notices to workers because it appeared a budget deal was imminent. But that tentative agreement went nowhere when Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, refused to vote Saturday for the budget.
The Governor’s Office early last week threatened to send the notices last Friday if lawmakers reached a budget deal by then. McLear said at the time that layoffs were necessary because the state had lost savings opportunities through half of February without a new budget plan in place. The latest budget deal would have made up those savings with a short-term loan to be paid back with federal stimulus funds rather than layoffs.
Last week’s threat appeared to be at least partially motivated by a desire to pressure lawmakers to reach a deal, particularly Democrats who are tight with state employee unions. But now the problem is finding one more Republican vote in the state Senate. If the governor’s threat is meant to apply pressure this time, it might be directed at Cox, considering that the state employs roughly 74,000 state workers in Sacramento County. Cox represents many of the suburbs northeast of Sacramento.
California Union Cuts Furlough in Pact with Schwarzenegger
By Jon Ortiz
jortiz@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009 | Page 1A
The union representing nearly 95,000 state workers has reached a tentative deal with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration that includes one unpaid furlough day off per month instead of the two the governor had ordered.
The deal also includes fewer paid holidays, changes to how overtime is calculated, kicks in more for employees’ health insurance premiums and limits layoffs.
The pact between the governor and Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the state’s largest civil service employee union, was reached early Saturday morning. Both sides wanted to finish the bargaining before the Legislature voted on state budget bills that include labor provisions.
“The talks were grueling,” said Yvonne Walker, president of SEIU Local 1000.
If the deal is ratified by the rank and file, SEIU members would be subject to eight hours of flexibly scheduled unpaid leave each month through the contract’s expiration in June 2010. The union views the concession as a win, since Schwarzenegger had started first- and third-Friday furloughs on Feb. 6.
Eleven other state bargaining units have yet to negotiate a contract.
The furloughs will apply to SEIU workers in departments run by constitutional officers, such as the secretary of state, the treasurer and the controller. That provision is a win for Schwarzenegger, because the constitutional officers and the Board of Equalization had all told their employees to ignore last week’s furlough. The governor has sued to force them to comply.
The tentative agreement with SEIU excludes sick time from being counted toward overtime, and the budget bill could exclude any personal leave from counting toward the overtime threshold. The state currently counts any paid leave time as though the time were spent at work.
The deal eliminates Columbus Day and Lincoln’s Birthday as paid holidays, and premium pay for state employees who work on those days, but state workers would get two floating personal days off with pay instead. Those days, like sick days, could not be used toward overtime calculations.
“We lost the (holidays), but employees don’t lose the time,” Walker said. “It’s a win for the state because it will be open for business two more days each year.”
The union also won language in the contract that limits layoffs to departments or programs that are shut down. Schwarzenegger had threatened to lay off up to 10,000 state workers if a budget deal wasn’t worked out by Friday. He then pushed back the deadline because budget talks looked close to a conclusion.
The SEIU contract doesn’t affect other employee unions still bargaining for their own deals. The state doesn’t have any negotiations scheduled, but, “our doors are still open for business,” said Department of Personnel Administration spokeswoman Lynelle Jolley.
The administration has said it wants to save $1.4 billion in employee costs from now until June 2010 as part of closing the state’s $40 billion budget gap.
How Republic Workers Occupied Their Plant
— Leah Fried
December 5 was to be the last day of work at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. But managers soon realized that workers would not go quietly: they had voted to occupy the factory.
Members of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110, they’d made plans to scatter throughout the plant, chain themselves to machines, and risk arrest. This is the story of how they did it.
The occupation that won workers their back pay and the admiration of union members around the world didn’t happen out of the blue. It was the culmination of years of struggle to build a democratic, fighting union able to take on the boss.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
In early 2004 workers at Republic suffered under a gangster “union” that represented the boss more than the workers. Chicago is one of the last bastions of these old-school outfits that help companies keep workers down.
Workers had their wages frozen at $8 an hour for three years and had seen hundreds of their co-workers fired for no good reason. Discrimination, unfair treatment, and low wages were the hallmark of their former union, Novelty and Production Workers Local 16. So workers sought a change.
First they approached several worker centers, which arranged a meeting with UE organizers. Workers were impressed with UE’s record of democratic, aggressive unionism. In November 2004 they organized an election, joined UE, and went on to win their best contract ever.
In the contract fight of 2005, workers regularly wore UE buttons and stickers with contract demands. They organized marches to the boss’s office, practiced picketing, and voted and publicly vowed to strike if necessary. A contract was won on the eve of the planned strike, with raises of $1.75 immediately and improvements to working conditions and benefits. This struggle set the tone for years to come.
Unity, however, wasn’t automatic. Democratic unionism doesn’t exist without some growing pains.
Republic workers are a diverse workforce: 80 percent Latino, 20 percent Black, and 25 percent women. Hotly contested elections for stewards and officers, intense debate, divisions based on race or gender—all took place in this local.
Leaders had to work hard to build black-brown unity, overcome factionalism, and be willing to lose some debates (such as one over a dues increase) in order to create a local in which all the workers felt ownership.
Some leaders of the occupation had campaigned against each other in elections and each had their own following. But in the end, the workers were able to come together every time they needed to fight the boss.
UE had also been dedicated to building alliances in the community and the labor movement. Years of work to forge links with worker centers, religious groups, community organizations, and immigrants rights organizations laid the base for solidarity.
Rank-and-file members’ longstanding participation in solidarity activities, Jobs with Justice, and immigrant rights marches in Chicago helped local leaders get to know UE better. And regular participation in national political action helped lawmakers know UE as well.
PLANNING AHEAD
UE began planning for a possible plant occupation in November, when machinery started disappearing from the plant. Local leaders were prepared for the worst-case scenarios.
We bought chains with locks and organized a core group committed to civil disobedience if necessary. We knew it might come down to getting arrested. Workers understood they had to keep the company’s assets from leaving the factory.
As workers met again and again to talk over what might happen and organize for a fight, we developed a strategy that focused on Bank of America. The bank, which had just received $25 billion in bailout funds, would decide whether Republic would continue to receive financing.
UE reached out to allies and elected officials to mobilize public pressure on the bank, including a big picket of its offices in Chicago two days before the occupation. Members of Congress, most significantly Representative Luis Gutierrez, pressed the bank to negotiate with the union.
The occupation was launched after the company didn’t show up to a meeting with the bank and UE. Workers came to their last day of work and decided unanimously not to leave until their demands were met: vacation pay, 60 days’ severance as the law required, and two months’ health insurance.
The company was informed of the workers’ vote to occupy the factory. They knew they faced more than 200 angry and organized workers who were not about to leave quietly.
Management called the police, but at the same time our longstanding allies mobilized hundreds of supporters, via urgent alerts and phone calls, to come to the plant.
By this time the press had become a steady presence. The idea of the whole world seeing 200 workers dragged out by the cops in front of a supportive crowd rallying outside the factory—it all helped the company decide not to fight the union.
The police left, and the chains stayed in their bags. The workers had taken the plant.
As word of the factory takeover spread, solidarity started pouring in, from unions and community, religious, immigrant rights, and civil rights organizations. The messages visitors left on posters in the plant lobby, the donations, and letters from all over the world were key in strengthening the workers’ resolve.
But most important was the unity of the workers, who despite their differences, rose to the occasion and showed incredible strength.
The day the occupation began the local executive board and stewards organized their co-workers into three shifts, round the clock. UE organizers also took shifts (although those tended to last 20 hours).
Rules were agreed upon and posted in the cafeteria: No alcohol, smoking, or drugs. Non-UE members, unless immediate family, were not allowed onto the factory floor.
Committees for welcoming and security at the door, clean-up, food, and patrols to keep the assets safe were staffed in eight-hour shifts. At the beginning of each shift all the workers and organizers would meet to give updates, take volunteers for each committee, and review what would happen that day.
Workers kept busy with rallies and press interviews outside the plant in addition to their committee responsibilities. Children accompanied their parents, doing homework and playing amid the adults’ work. Donated food, blankets, and two TVs (one for news, the other for sports) were shared equally by all.
After six long days, the lead committee made up of shop leaders and UE reps came back with a settlement that workers voted enthusiastically to accept. We had won all our demands and then some.
Now, we are working to reopen the factory with all the workers back on the job. But we know that something beyond jobs or money owed has been won. We have inspired millions to know that the world is what we fight to make it, that we can win.
Leah Fried is a UE organizer.
For information about the UE workers’ nationwide “Resistance and Recovery Tour”, visit http://labornotes.org/republictour
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-la-layoffs4-2009apr04,0,1368240.story
From the Los Angeles Times
SEIU officials say L.A. is considering 400 immediate layoffs
The city also reportedly could eliminate an additional 2,800 positions in the months ahead and may offer a voluntary early retirement package because of growing budget shortfalls.
By Phil Willon
3:38 PM PDT, April 3, 2009
Faced with annual budget shortfalls that could grow to nearly $1 billion by 2010, Los Angeles city officials are considering the immediate layoffs of 400 city workers and eliminating an additional 2,800 positions in the months ahead, according to union officials.
The city also is considering offering a voluntary early retirement package to employees that, because of the substantial financial liability added to the city’s ailing pension fund, would require higher contributions by workers to help cover the additional costs.
Details about the potential layoffs and an early retirement offer emerged from ongoing talks between the city’s financial experts and public employee unions.
Service Employees International Union 721 described the city’s proposal in an e-mail to its membership Thursday night. A copy was obtained by The Times.
The memo states that the city “is talking about” immediately eliminating 1,600 city positions, of which 1,200 are vacant and 400 are filled. An additional 2,800 layoffs would be included in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s 2009-10 budget, which he is scheduled to submit to the City Council on April 20.
The SEIU memo goes on to say that the unions are pushing for early retirement offers over layoffs. Specifically, the unions want the city to offer the package to employees who are within five years of retirement eligibility.
“We’re hopeful, because that’s a more positive way to go . . . than layoffs,” said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU 721. “But it’s pretty hard to say what will happen until you get to the end.”
Barbara Maynard of the Coalition of L.A. City Unions, which represents 22,000 city workers including those who belong to SEIU 721, said she believes an early retirement package “will go a tremendous distance” to helping cover the budget shortfall in 2009-10.
Avoiding mass layoffs would allow the city to continue to provide critical services to residents, Maynard said.
“Every city employee represented by unions in the coalition provide a valuable service to the city of Los Angeles,” she said. “We will do everything we can to maintain critical city services and keep Angelenos employed.”
The discussions were triggered by a grim financial forecast released by the city’s top budget analyst, interim City Administrative Officer Raymond P. Ciranna. He predicted a $427-million budget shortfall in 2009-10, driven primarily by declining tax revenues and increases in employee pay and benefits.
The budget gap would more than double in the next year because of the city’s troubled pension systems, which, like pension systems across the country, have suffered enormous investment losses in the spiraling recession.
The city is legally obligated to keep the pension systems afloat, which could cost $458 million in 2010-11 and $663 million in 2011-12. That expense would be in addition to the city’s expected budget shortfall, forecast to be $525 million in 2010-11. (No updated forecast for the 2011-12 budget shortfall has been provided.)
The chief administrative officer is the city’s lead representative in the ongoing negotiations with the public employee unions, although the mayor’s office has been heavily involved in the talks.
Villaraigosa said earlier this week that no agreements have been reached, but that “everything must be on the table” to address L.A.’s financial woes, including layoffs and early retirements. The mayor also is exploring whether to privatize the Los Angeles Zoo and sell but lease back city parking garages and meters, which could raise hundreds of millions of dollars
Villaraigosa has said that layoffs should be a last resort because, in tough economic times, people in need are more likely to turn to city programs for assistance.
Last year, when the city faced a $406-million budget shortfall, Villaraigosa proposed eliminating 767 city jobs. Ultimately, close to 600 funded job positions were eliminated, saving the city millions of dollars. All but one of those slots, however, were vacant. Only a single employee was laid off.
As he prepares his 2009-10 budget, Villaraigosa faces the unenviable task of balancing the city’s finances when city revenues are expected to decline by $211 million, in part due to a drop in property-related tax revenue. At the same time, expenses are expected to increase by $216 million.
Those costs are driven primarily by increases in employee pay and benefits approved by the mayor and City Council at the end of 2007. However, city unions also agreed that in times of fiscal crisis, aspects of the compensation agreements could be revisited.
On its website, SEIU 721 calls that labor agreement the “best contract in 40 years.” It also boasts that the union successfully “defended it when the city tried to declare a financial emergency last year.”
MAYOR’S FY 2009-2010 BUDGET DOES NOT INCLUDE A NEW 6TH STEP FOR SEIU 721 MEMBERS
APRIL 21, 2009 – EAA has begun analysis of Mayor Villaraigosa’s FY 2009/2010 proposed budget. One of the things we noticed was the absence of a 2.75% “6th Step” increase for SEIU represented classes.
We also verified that the 3% COLA due to EAA members on July 1, 2009, is in the Mayor’s proposed budget.
As we continue to analyze this budget, we will be reporting on other features and preparing to participate in the City Council’s budgetary process. Check this website frequently for the very latest information on this and other important issues.
Monday, May 04, 2009Last Update: 2:54 PM PT
Bodyguards Say SEIU Owes $924,000 For Protecting Bosses During Union Beef
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A security service claims the Service Employees International Union CTW/CLC owes it $924,000 for protecting SEIU union leaders during a struggle with a local, SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West. The Oso Group sued Bullock Associates and the SEIU in Federal Court.
According to the complaint: “The parties’ contractual agreement had its origins in the time period of January and February 2009 during which SEIU was seeking to perfect and implement a trusteeship over one of its local union affiliates, SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (’UHW’). During that time frame, the UHW’s then-leadership was actively resisting the trusteeship by purportedly encouraging its members to destroy, damage, or transfer UHW documents, records and other UHW property. SEIU claimed to fear possible violence and retaliation from the UHW, asserting that UHW leaders had encouraged and/or instructed members to physically resist the trusteeship proceedings; impede the ability of the trustees to take possession of the Oakland headquarters and other UHW facilities; withhold, destroy, damage or transfer UHW documents, records, and other property; and to commit acts constituting harassment, threats and violence toward UHW employees and staff members who chose to continue to work for UHW and/or cooperate with the trustees.
“In recognition of the volatile and dangerous circumstances, plaintiff and defendants entered into a contractual relationship which required that plaintiff provide, inter alia: (a) SEIU and its out-of-town leadership with 24-hour, seven day a week security, surveillance, and protection service at various UHW facilities in California under conditions where physical violence had routinely occurred and was threatened; and (b) executive protection and drivers for the upper echelon of SEIU leadership visiting California during the UHW transition period, including the provision of protection and privacy for SEIU executives involved in discreet meetings with CEOs of major hospital organizations and one or more members of the California Legislature and staff in which SEIU, which was concerned about work furloughs for its members during California’s budget crisis, successfully negotiated a furlough exemption for its California workers. In return for plaintiff’s performance of these difficult, inherently dangerous, and highly specialized services, defendants agreed to pay plaintiff in full immediately upon its submission of weekly invoices,” according to the complaint.
The Oso Group claims the union owes it $924,434.13. It is represented by Malcolm Segal with Segal & Kirby.
http://www.eaaunion.net/EAA_IS_HERE_TO_STAY_433.page
May 7, 2009 – Tentative results are in for the representation election. However, 3 of the units have sufficient numbers of challenged ballots to affect the outcome. Over 70% of the ballots mailed to EAA-represented employees were returned, an impressive number. The actual number of votes cast in each unit follows:
EAA IS HERE TO STAY
MOU 1: Voted to protect their union, stay in EAA.
EAA: 859
SEIU: 568
No Union: 17
Challenged: 123
Void: 7
MOU 8: ERB to resolve challenged ballots due to large number of challenges. Runoff election likely.
EAA: 453
SEIU: 489
No Union: 36
Challenged: 75
Void: 5
MOU 17: ERB to resolve challenged ballots & irregularities in the ballot counting. Runoff election likely.
EAA: 165
SEIU: 180
No Union: 9
Challenged: 19
Void: 0
MOU 19: Voted to protect their union, stay in EAA.
EAA: 108
SEIU: 88
No Union: 4
Challenged: 8
Void: 12
MOU 20: Voted to protect their union, stay in EAA (ERB must resolve challenges, but number of challenges is small compared to vote margin). No runoff expected.
EAA: 497
SEIU: 392
No Union: 34
Challenged: 77
Void: 0
MOU 21: Voted to protect their union, stay in EAA.
EAA: 659
SEIU: 269
No Union: 7
Challenged: 68
Void: 5
Remember that the procedures require a successful choice to obtain 50% + 1 of the votes counted after disposition of all challenged ballots. If no choice receives this amount, a runoff election is scheduled between the 2 choices receiving the highest numbers of votes.
EAA thanks everyone who voted to protect his or her union. Your effort in learning the facts and returning your ballot is appreciated.
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
At the SEIU: Harassing dissidents’ lawyers, China Style
On his trips to China, Andy Stern may have learned how to hone his union managerial skills. The authoritarian rulers of China go beyond simply punishing critics; they go after the victims’ lawyers to teach other lawyers the painful consequences of helping dissidents. Stern can pay well to hire an army of his own lawyers to harass lawyers who represent his opponents.
When the 150,000-member SEIU Local United Healthcare Workers-West, under its president, Sal Rosselli, was a normally self governing local and it dared to criticize Andy Stern’s policies, it was compelled to retain lawyers to try to ward off Stern’s moves to destroy its autonomy. Now that Stern has taken over the local, ousted all its officers, and seized its treasury, his appointed trustees are not content with mere total authoritarian control. They are moving against the lawyers who represented UHW in its days of independence.
Rosselli and the former officers of UHW have resigned from the SEIU and set up a new union, the National United Healthcare Workers; they are challenging the SEIU for representation of those 150,000 healthcare workers in California. The dispute could be resolved by collective bargaining elections sponsored by the NLRB for private employees and public employee relations boards for local government workers. No such elections will be fair and square democratic contests. The SEIU begins the campaign with an enormous treasury, swollen by the seized assets of UHW, and with a big staff. Rosselli’s NUHW enters with an empty coffer and must painfully piece together campaign money and staff salaries. But at least elections will give workers a chance to decide.
Now comes SEIU’s double legal assault: one set of lawyers is retained to confront Rosselli and a host of former UHW representatives on charges like “stealing” SEIU “property” e.g., mailing lists. Another set of lawyers is hired to confront the lawyers who represented the old autonomous UHW. The effect of these suits, and apparently the intention, is to make it extraordinarily difficult for the dissident NUHW to campaign for support among healthcare workers. They can be so tied up in defending themselves in court that they will have few of their meager resources left for election contests. In contrast, with guaranteed dues and agency shop fees from a million and a half workers, the SEIU remains loaded with cash.
Harassing legal action, like that against Rosselli and his union supporters, is nothing new and does not seem to require special comment. As part of the “normal” repression of union dissidents, it brings no credit to Stern for imaginative inventiveness. But the action against Rosselli’s lawyers does seem to introduce a kind of China refinement.
In their guise as the new representatives of UHW, and their reputed replacement as the former legal clients of one of UHW’s former law firms, Stern’s trustee- attorneys are bombarding the firm with an extensive list of burdensome demands. Their suit in California state court, against the firm of Siegel and Lewitter and 100 unnamed “Does,” demands they produce every scrap of paper and electronic blip (”correspondence, files, memoranda, billing records, and other documents and materials”) that are in any way related to its services for the autonomous UHW and its former officers, now removed.
The suit of the Stern-appointed trustee goes far beyond a mere fishing expedition for data. Its effect, if successful, would make it difficult for the Rosselli team and its National Union of Healthcare Workers to mount an effective legal defense. By taking over UHW-W and its treasury, the trustee has already deprived Stern’s critics of money, forcing them to seek voluntary donations from supporters. The suit would compound that disability by depriving them of experienced legal representation. The trustee-attorneys ask the court for “injunctive relief enjoining and restraining Defendants, and all of their principals, associates, agents, servants, employees and all persons acting in concert with them, and each of them, from providing any form of legal services or representation to the Former Officers with respect to any matters relating directly or indirectly to Defendants’ former representation of UHW-W, and from disclosing to any subsequent counsel for Former Officers any of the confidential information of UHW-W which Defendants obtained in the course of their representation.” They want more than data and disqualification. They want money: “damages,” costs, legal fees.
The Siegel firm insists that it must resist these sweeping demands because it must respect the confidential limits of its attorney-client relationship. In rejecting any attorney-client assertion, the trustee-attorneys claim that they, as UHW’s current legal representative, have the right to any material produced for it. But equating the status of a democratically elected leadership with an officialdom imposed arbitrarily is a misleading stretch. The Siegel firm, in representing UHW-W through its democratically elected officers, was obligated to protect the rights of the members by defending their democratically elected officers. The trustee-attorney represents the Stern administration which appointed it. A more apt comparison would be between the democratically elected leaders of a small nation and a replacement Quisling officialdom imposed by a tyrannical oppressive invader.
The trustee-attorney may have certain extensive technical legal rights over the trusteed UHW. In contrast, the Siegel firm asserts a legal responsibility to protect the interests of its clients. In the context of current events, that claim is buttressed by the moral standards of fair play, decency, and democracy.
Andy Stern began with the proclaimed goal of helping to liberate workers of the world from oppression. Along the way, he has taken a devious detour. He is busy liberating an army of high-paid lawyers to torment union dissidents and their attorneys.
Posted by Herman Benson at 10:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: NUHW, Roselli, SEIU, Stern
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