Within SEIU
What does reform, within SEIU, mean to you as an SEIU member?
This entry was posted
on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 8:30 am04 and is filed under SEIU INTERNATIONAL.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Labor leaders from AFL-CIO, Change to Win form national coordinating committee
Contact: Linda Foley 202-213-4303
The AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the National Education Association announced today the creation of a National Labor Coordinating Committee to consult among their affiliated unions and to act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans.
“Recognizing the historic moment we face, the American labor movement must unify to restore the American dream for working families,” said David Bonior, who continues as Chair of the unification effort.
“I am very pleased with our progress. The Committee pledged to complete its consultations and other work on unification plans over the coming months. A unified labor movement is the way to ensure that the vast majority of Americans who want a union are able to join one.”
The members of the National Labor Coordinating Committee are the Presidents of:
AFL-CIO
Change To Win
National Education Association
American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees
American Federation of Teachers
Communications Workers of America
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Laborers International Union of North America
Service Employees International Union
Unite Here
United Auto Workers
United Food and Commercial Workers
United Steelworkers
The Committee will work on some of the biggest challenges confronting our nation, including the reform of our labor laws, the renewal of our economy and the passage of national health reform.
The affiliates of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the NEA collectively represent more than 16 million workers in over 60 national and international unions.
To reach David Bonior, contact Linda Foley 202-213-4303.
SF Labor Council Raucous Meeting Protests SEIU Pres Stern’s Raid On Unite-Here-Unanimous Vote To Condemn SEIU International Raid On Unite-Here
Steve Zeltzer
lvpsf@igc.org
4/16/2009
In a well attended raucous meeting on April 13, 2009 of the San Francisco Labor Council representing nearly all the unions in San Francisco unanimously endorsed a resolution condemning the raid by Andy Stern and the SEIU International on Unite-Here throughout the country and also declared support for any SEIU local that “stands in opposition to this violation of union principles and practice. They also voted to rescind a resolution calling on the Secretary Treasurer Tim Paulson to write a letter to the SF Board Of Supervisors that the council believed that the 113 Steuart St. ILA headquarters where the San Francisco 1934 general strike took place was a historic site. Also despite pressure from the San Francisco Police Officers Association, the council by a vote of 45 to 40 refused to rescind a resolution calling on California Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop decades old criminal charges against radical Black activists called the SF 8.
The meeting was one of the most intense in some time as San Francisco Unite Here Local 2 president Mike Casey in a dramatic statement charged that the SEIU raid on his union had threatened all the work the members had done in order to get a national contract with the major hotel chains. The union had waited for years to sign a contract so their expiration dates would coincide with the expiration dates of other local’s chain hotels around the country. Casey was joined by many other SEIU rank and file delegates who said they were angered and appalled by the use of their union dues to finance a raid on another union that was fighting for their members. Olga Miranda who is also the leader of SEIU Local 87 of the San Francisco janitors did not speak at the meeting but resolution had been previously introduced by her to support any SEIU local that opposed these raids. SEIU Local 87 janitors decertified twice in the past ten years before they were able to win back control of their local from SEIU president Andy Stern who wanted to merge their local into the statewide SEIU Local 1877.
Domita Davis Howard who is the Stern appointed Executive Secretary of the 50,000 member SEIU 1021 had boycotted the meeting although she was on the SFLC Executive Board and was aware that this motion would be coming up. Not one delegate of the over 100 delegates who attended got up to oppose the resolution and it was adopted unanimously. Included were the other members of Stern’s Change to Win unions including the UBC Carpenters, UFCW and Teamsters who were also in the meeting.This action as well was not unique to San Francisco since similar resolutions have passed in the South Bay Labor Council and other Northern California labor councils as well as the Seattle Labor Council.
The frontal rebuff to the International SEIU and Andy Stern’s efforts to raid Unite-Here is a significant sign that the SEIU International is danger of becoming totally isolated in California and event threatening the continued power it has in the California labor movement as local after local bolts from the Stern operation.
The meeting also had a sharp debate about rescinding a resolution that directed the SF Labor Council Secretary Treasurer Tim Paulson to send a letter to the Board Of Supervisors that the 113 Steuart Building in San Francisco which was the ILA headquarters during the 1934 general strike. The developer Gerald Hines had proposed to demolish the building and build a ten story building. The developer had hired a historian who initially had reported that this site had no historical significance. In the discussion that was held Michael Theriault who is head of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades reported to the delegates that he thought the delegates had introduced the resolution when he was not at the meeting in a “sneak” attack. He then said that it was indeed a historical site but that the ILWU International was in favor of the demolishment and that the developer had been duplicitous but that was the way it was and there would be no construction jobs unless you had duplicitous developers. He then launched an attack on the longshore workers saying that they had helped the greatest union buster and outsourcer in the country Wal-Mart by continuing to move products being shipped by Wal-Mart and this showed that even them were duplicitous.
This argument unfortunately was not answered by the delegates and instead ILWU Local 6 delegate Leroy King and head of the Northern California Council of the Northern California ILWU that he was in favor of rescinding the resolution and had invited the construction trades and other to attend the next meeting of their council.
The motion to rescind this motion passed in part because there were no delegates of ILWU Local 10 and ILWU Local 34 who were supporting the building from demolition did not speak. Video from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing is at
http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=10&clip_id=7442&meta_id=147801
Another important and bitterly fought struggle was the effort to rescind the resolution backing the SF 8. These eight former Black activists were targeted by the Bush administration and California Attorney Jerry Brown after more than 30 years for a murder of a policeman in San Francisco. Delegate Gloria La Riva reported to the council that a confession was exerted by two days of torture of two of the members by the New Orleans police with the participation of San Francisco policeman. Others pointed out that this was a political witch hunt and that these activists were union members including of the IBEW and other unions and had contributed to society for many years.
After an extended debate the resolution was defeated in a close vote. The growing internal war in the labor movement and the failure of the trade unions to mobilize their members against the growing attack on working people is creating anger among union members who want their unions to use their power to fight for jobs and justice on the job and in the street.
http://www.sflaborcouncil.org/ViewUpload/405
SFLC Resolution Opposed to SEIU’s Attempted Hostile Takeover
of UNITE HERE and its Jurisdiction
Whereas an internal dispute within UNITE HERE over constitutional reform and union democracy has led
to a minority faction within the union to secede, in violation of the International Constitution; and
Whereas SEIU has seized on this division within UNITE HERE as an opportunity to raid UNITE HERE’s
members and jurisdiction; and
Whereas an affiliation agreement between SEIU and this secessionist faction provides for organizing in
UNITE HERE’s traditional jurisdiction, namely hotels, gaming, and food service; and
Whereas slick mailings, followed up with live and automated phone calls have encouraged UNITE HERE
members in cities across North America (including San Francisco) to leave UNITE HERE and join a “new
union” which is an affiliate of SEIU; and
Whereas SEIU’s reprehensible behavior not only undermines UNITE HERE’s local unions now preparing
for industry-wide negotiations in Atlantic City, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but also will be
exploited by anti-union corporations and interest groups opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act; and
Whereas the actions of SEIU International leadership threatens longstanding cooperative relationships
and undermines solidarity between UNITE HERE locals and SEIU locals;
Therefore be it Resolved that the San Francisco Labor Council:
1. Condemns the intervention in the internal concerns of UNITE HERE by President Andy Stern and top
SEIU leadership, and their actions designed to attack and weaken UNITE HERE;
2. Condemns the campaign being waged against UNITE HERE and its locals with the reliance on
corporate-type anti-union tactics;
3. Demands that SEIU cease all actions and/or support in raids of gaming, hotel and food service
bargaining units and publicly acknowledge UNITE HERE’s organizing jurisdiction in these areas
across North America;
4. Encourages SEIU local leaders, members and staff to repudiate the SEIU affiliation agreement that
seeks to steal UNITE HERE’s jurisdiction and denies UNITE HERE a future;
5. Directs the Council’s Executive Director to send a copy of this resolution to Andy Stern, Anna Burger
and the Change to Win leadership, the SEIU International Executive Board, and John Sweeney and
the AFL-CIO Executive Committee.
6. Urges the California Labor Federation and other Labor Councils and bodies throughout the nation to
adopt the same position as this Council.
Submitted by Mike Casey, UNITE HERE 2, and adopted by the Executive Committee of the San
Francisco Labor Council by acclamation on April 6, 2009 and unanimously by the Delegate Body of the
San Francisco Labor Council on April 13, 2009.
Respectfully,
Tim Paulson
Executive Director
http://www.sflaborcouncil.org/ViewUpload/406
Resolution on SEIU Locals and SFLC Support
Whereas, the San Francisco Labor Council has taken a position opposing the
Andy Stern-led attack on UNITE H ERE,
Therefore be it Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council offers its
support to any SEIU local that stands in opposition to this violation of union
principles and practice.
Resolution submitted by Olga Miranda, SEIU 87 and adopted by the
Executive Committee of the San Francisco Labor Council on April 6, 2009.
Respectfully,
Tim Paulson
Executive Director
OPEIU3 AFL-CIO 11
http://www.sflaborcouncil.org/ViewUpload/395
Resolution Calling for Attorney General Jerry Brown to Dismiss All
Charges against the San Francisco 8 Defendants
Whereas, Herman Bell, Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Henry (Hank) Jones, Jalil
Muntaquim (Anthony Bottom), Harold Taylor and Francisco Torres, seven men
collectively known as the San Francisco 8 defendants [charges having been dropped
against Richard O’Neal], are a group of community activists who have devoted their
lives to serving their communities and making a difference, and are fathers,
grandfathers; and
Whereas, all of these men were members or associates of the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense (BPP), a primary target of the FBI’s unconstitutional COINTELPRO
program in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, a program designed to disrupt and destroy a
number of progressive organizations in many United States cities; and
Whereas, in 1973, three Black activists – including one of the defendants – were
arrested in New Orleans and tortured by local police, and interrogated by two San
Francisco police detectives at intervals between the torture, which lasted several days,
during which the three men were separated from each other, stripped naked, covered
with wool blankets soaked in boiling water, beaten with slapjacks, suffocated with
plastic bags tied over their heads, sleep deprived, kicked, beaten, shocked with
electric cattle prods on their genitals, anus and under the neck; and
Whereas, statements resulting from the New Orleans torture were used to bring
charges in the mid-1970s in several jurisdictions (including charges for the 1971
killing of a San Francisco police officer); all of these charges were dismissed when
the judges learned that these ‘confessions’ had been coerced under torture; and
Whereas, in 2007, after 36 years, the prosecution re-filed the charges against the San
Francisco 8 based on the same tortured ‘confessions’ illegally obtained in 1973. By
September 2007, six of the eight who were eligible for bail were released thanks to
the support of their families and supporters, who saw the case as a continuation of the
COINTELPRO attack on the Black liberation movement; and
Whereas, this case was reopened based on questionable claims of “new” evidence;
and
Whereas, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office declined to renew the
prosecution of these community activists, but the California Attorney General
imposed the current prosecution of this case, and the jail and court costs of potentially
millions of tax dollars to be incurred by the City of San Francisco,
Therefore be it Resolved, that in the name of fairness, justice and human rights – and
to express our outrage that this prosecution based on coercion and tortured
‘confessions’ in this 36-year-old case would be allowed to proceed – the San
Francisco Labor Council calls on California Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop all
charges against the San Francisco 8 defendants and
Be it Finally Resolved that this resolution be forwarded to affiliates for concurrence and action.
Submitted by Davis Welsh, NALC 214, and adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council on
February 9, 2009.
Respectfully,
Tim Paulson
Executive Director
OPEIU3 AFL-CIO 11
HIGH STAKES DIVORCE BATTLE CONTINUES
Even though the UNITE faction led by Bruce Raynor has found a new marriage partner in SEIU, now called Workers United, its divorce from its previous union in UniteHere has not yet been finalized. The battle over money and jurisdiction, which I described in a previous posting on this blog, rages on unabated.
Settlement talks mediated by UFCW President Joe Hansen reached an impasse after SEIU/Workers United refused to accept Hansen’s written recommendations as a basis for settlement. Instead on 30 April, SEIU President Andy Stern, UniteHere General President Bruce Raynor and Workers United President Edgar Romney wrote an open letter to UniteHere Hospitality President John Wilhelm representing what they called a “clear path to resolving issues and serving workers.” The letter proposed either continuing Hansen’s mediation efforts for two weeks or submitting outstanding issues to arbitration, while offering what it styled as “unilateral” steps to demonstrate sincerity. These include a no raiding commitment, ceasing efforts to contact UniteHere’s uncontested members, respecting its new organizing efforts, and not disrupting existing employer relationships.
Wilhelm responded on 1 May, rejecting SEIU’s offer as “disingenuous.” SEIU would remain free to disrupt existing HERE organizing campaigns and to campaign against HERE in “disputed” jurisdictional areas. Wilhelm points out that SEIU/Workers United is still claiming jurisdiction over core HERE sectors hotels and gaming. Moreover the offer does not address the key issue of financial resources.
SEIU has a strong motivation to buttress itself financially. Based on a recent study by HERE, in 2004 SEIU’s net assets were $75.8 million; by 2008 they had fallen to $33.7 million – a 55% drop in four years. From 2004 its liabilities increased 101% to $156.1 million in 2008. By the end of 2008 SEIU’s liabilities were 82.2% of total assets, making it the most financially leveraged union in the USA. In contrast UniteHere at end 2008 had total assets of $265.1 million against total liabilities of $59.5 million, giving it net assets of $205.6 million, a leverage ratio of only 22.4%. UniteHere’s net financial assets are therefore more than six times greater than those of the much larger SEIU.
If SEIU can claim the lion’s share of UniteHere’s financial assets as a dowry from the wedding with Bruce Raynor’s Unite faction, it will fill the budgetary hole created by its spending on political campaigns and on its massive counter-insurgency campaign against the National Union of Health Workers (née UHW-W) in California.
SEIU’s budgetary problems are evident. Not only has it laid off a large number of national staff in recent months but UHW-W trustee Eliseo Medina recently had to reassign many SEIU staffers working on CTW political campaigns in California to try to put out the growing insurgency among UHW-W shop stewards switching allegiance to the NUHW. At the end of 2008 SEIU owed $87.7 million to the Bank of America (largely in the form of a mortgage on its headquarters building in DC) and $15.0 million to the Amalgamated Bank itself. (Is it ironic that SEIU was successfully campaigning against Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis who is SEIU’s largest creditor?)
The issues of jurisdiction and financial resources are of course intimately linked. Wilhelm fears that if SEIU takes over the bulk of UniteHere’s financial resources (much of it in UniteHere’s Amalgamated Bank) that his financially crippled union would not be viable at all, let along compete with SEIU/Workers United in its core jurisdictions.
SUNDAY CONVERSATION:
Unplugged: The SEIU chief on the labor movement and the card check
He’s signaling a truce with Culinary but has harsh words for its parent, Unite Here
Tiffany Brown
Andy Stern, Service Employees International Union president, poses for pictures with organizer Melissa Brown from the local SEIU offices on Thursday, May 7, 2009.
By Michael Mishak
Sun, May 10, 2009 (2 a.m.)
In Andy Stern’s world view, bigger is better.
And better still if the center of that world is his 2-million-member Service Employees International Union.
To hear him tell it, two of the nation’s most progressive unions would not now be at war had they only listened to his advice five years ago. Back then, as Unite, the garment and apparel workers union, and Here, the hotel and casino workers union, considered merging, Stern suggested an alternative: join SEIU, which was surging forward as the country’s largest and fastest-growing union.
Unite President Bruce Raynor and Here leader John Wilhelm declined.
Instead they formed Unite Here, parent of the Culinary Union, promising to organize large numbers of workers nationally. The honeymoon was short-lived, and long-simmering tensions between the two leaders erupted into public view this year, with Raynor calling for a divorce and Wilhelm struggling to keep the merger intact.
Enter Stern. The SEIU president revived his old proposal that they join him. Raynor has accepted, effectively leading a secession. His former Unite allies took 150,000 members and formed a new SEIU affiliate, Workers United. The move outraged Wilhelm, who accused Stern of raiding Unite Here and engineering a hostile takeover of the union’s hotel and casino jurisdictions.
By now, Stern is accustomed to criticism.
Under his leadership SEIU became one of the country’s most dynamic unions. Over the past year, however, Stern has attracted criticism for taking over locals, ousting elected leaders and making contract concessions with employers in return for organizing rights.
Now Wilhelm argues that Stern’s Unite “takeover” could leave Unite Here devastated.
We sat down with Stern last week for a conversation at the offices of his Nevada local, which had just organized 800 home care workers, a first in the state.
While Stern is now signaling a truce with the Culinary, he sent a different message to Wilhelm and Unite Here: Told you so.
The following is a condensed version of his remarks, edited for clarity and space.
You’ve taken a lot of heat for interfering in the Unite Here civil war.
Unite Here is a marriage that has gone bad. Unite had a right to reconstitute itself as Workers United, and affiliate with SEIU.
This reorganization should have happened five years ago. Unite and Here should have joined with SEIU because we both represented workers with the same employers. We were already representing janitors and security guards in some of the same properties where they had members too.
We said it was nuts to have three unions overlapping in the same industries. We even proposed different ways for Unite and Here to join with SEIU but still operate their own organizations. Their leaders decided differently. These workers should all be in the same union.
One of John Wilhelm’s biggest complaints is that he won’t be viable as a union with 200,000 members nationally (after the separation from Unite). That’s probably true. But he would be a powerhouse as part of SEIU, with our geographic reach and political power. He could have the autonomy to create a hotel division or food service division, something that would be run by the locals, not the international union. It makes all the sense in the world.
But I appreciate that people like to be presidents, and not necessarily vice presidents or executive vice presidents. It’s been a historical failure of the labor movement, that egos get in the way of what’s best for the membership.
This deal has created major turf fights between Unite Here and SEIU. Workers United, your new affiliate, sent letters to Unite Here employers across the country — including casino operators in Las Vegas and Atlantic City — asking for equal organizing rights. Doesn’t that set up direct competition for new members?
Let me say that if there is a settlement between SEIU/Workers United and Unite Here, I don’t think there’s much dispute about gaming.
The Culinary is a terrific union. It is going through really tough economic times, and we should not be disrupting their efforts to bargain their next contract (in Atlantic City) and to do their best to keep people employed.
We have decided that we would no longer interfere where Unite Here membership is uncontested, which means all of Las Vegas.
Still, the problem in gaming is that there are 600,000 tribal gaming workers, virtually none of them organized. Unite Here hasn’t spent time on them. They have spent much more time in Mississippi and other places where gaming is expanding. And I think people believe that, given the work they have done in the gaming industry in general, that should be part of their mission as well.
But SEIU and its new affiliate are challenging Unite Here on the hotel front.
There is a turf question in the hotel industry, as well as food service.
Both Unite and Here have had involvement in those industries. There is a logical discussion about who’s strong where and who already has members in what union. It would make no sense for SEIU and Workers United to organize in Nevada, Los Angeles, Boston or New York City, where Unite Here is strong. On the other hand, workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and upstate New York are now part of Workers United.
Like John Wilhelm says, SEIU has an obligation to organize in our core areas. That means hospital and home-care workers. But we now have an affiliate, Workers United, that has strong hotel locals as well.
If there is going to be disagreement over who should represent which workers, let’s narrow it to those places around America where both SEIU and Unite Here can each make a case for themselves. And then, in places like Texas or South Carolina where there is no union, it becomes a question of what we’re going to do. It’s not as if there aren’t enough workers to organize in this country.
This will not be resolved by a public debate about who’s right and who’s wrong any more than most marriages that go astray will ever be resolved by the two parties. Let’s take this to arbitration.
Unite Here leaders say SEIU is after money — that your assets are half what they were four years ago and your liabilities have doubled. They say you want Workers United because it claims ownership of a bank with $500 million in assets.
We have an affiliation agreement that is crystal clear. Workers United wasn’t going to let us anywhere near their Amalgamated Bank and we didn’t want to be near that bank. This is an asset that’s been in Unite’s control for 50, 60 years. Workers United’s assets are not SEIU’s assets. They brought it to the relationship and it’s theirs.
As for SEIU, every four years, two things happen: our union’s convention and our country’s presidential election. For four years we save our money and then on the fourth year we spend it all. If we were trying to be a bank and not an advocate for our members’ interests, our members would be really disappointed. We are not a savings institution.
We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we’re proud of it.
This infighting within labor can’t help the labor movement’s drive to reunify.
When you are as high profile and in the public eye as much as we are, everybody writes about your disputes. But it’s just not part of our private conversations. The truth is there are many disputes that go on in the labor movement. I could tell you about the disputes between the Machinists and the Teamsters or the Teamsters and the mass transit workers.
How has labor fared in President Obama’s first 100 days?
There were some pretty significant problems on the agenda when Barack Obama arrived. We had an economy that was tanking. Had he not stepped in and did the stimulus plan, our state workers, our health care workers would be dramatically less employed and have far less opportunity.
But clearly there have been a number of appointments that have been enormously important to labor and more are coming. Patrick Gaspard, for one, is White House political director. He comes from SEIU.
In the long run, setting up the health care debate to where it is, dealing with fair pay, and having a president who says unions are part of the solution, are huge things.
But labor’s No. 1 priority, legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize, seems to be sidelined.
The only reason we’re still in the game with the Employee Free Choice Act — despite the onslaught from corporate America — is because we have a president and vice president and leaders like Harry Reid who believe in it. They do know it’s part of the economic recovery plan and they do want to get it done.
Card check is alive and well. But 60 votes are required to open and close debate. Without Al Franken, one vote is getting to mean a lot more. Arlen Specter switching parties is a positive trend. And with Congressman Joe Sestak considering a Democratic primary challenge, there’s a lot of incentive for Specter to worry about where his labor endorsement is coming from. He has to deal with the party’s progressive left. And if he’s red on card check, I couldn’t get my members to vote for him. That’s like being against universal health care.
The president continues to send signals to every senator who asks that he’s not walking away from this bill. But he, like everybody else, would like to find a compromise that works for everybody.
What’s an acceptable compromise?
There are issues about majority sign-up, including possible worker confusion over union cards serving in lieu of an election. Senators also worry about unions coercing people and ask if workers could instead mail in the cards, so there’s not an issue of someone standing over them.
Regardless of whether there is card check, we all agree this election process is broken and workers shouldn’t have to wait months to get an election. Employers shouldn’t have better access to workers than unions have. We’ve also looked at public and state statutes where arbitration has existing for 50 years to ensure arbitrators can’t make some huge decision outside the realm of economic realities.
We organize workers more than anybody else so we’re going to know whether this bill is a hoax or an opportunity and we’re going to judge it when it comes out.
Organizing Director Resigns From SEIU
From: Dana Simon
Sent: Wed 5/6/2009 12:17 PM
To: Maria Castaneda
Cc: Amy Gladstein; Mike Fadel
Dear Sister Castaneda,
Monday we began our campaign inside the Carney Hospital, which has been welcomed with amazement and happiness by workers there. Today we signed the organizing accord with the new non-Caritas hospital and next Monday our organizers begin the campaign inside that hospital. Next week, the St Elizabeth’s newly elected bargaining committee meets for the first time.
Words fail in describing my feelings. I have been several times in the past few weeks moved to tears, knowing the punishment many of those workers have endured over the past years, who are now seeing victory.
But I have also found myself moved to tears by the contradiction of our Union’s role, and therefore by extension my role, in damaging the lives of our sister and brother healthcare workers in California. I wake up each morning and go to sleep each night knowing that I can’t help workers here in Boston organize fast enough to make up for the destruction of the organization, the rights, wages and benefits of other workers along side of whom I had struggle for years for better lives.
3,500 miles away, much of what is being said in California must sound like so much rhetoric. But for me it is deeply personal:
I was the negotiator for UHW’s last two contracts at Alameda Hospital. Years ago the workers struck to win fully employer paid health for workers and their families. We had won it as a pattern that, until just days ago, had very few exceptions in UHW hospitals. In recent weeks, in an apparently politically motivated rush to pre-empt the filing of a petition, SEIU gave that away to win a settlement. They tricked the members into a ratification vote without telling them that many or most now will have to pay $1000 a year for insurance. I have seen the leaflets that dishonestly hide the give back, which have been emailed to me by SEIU. I have seen the internal memo from the hospital’s negotiators to their board, crowing over the concession, which is now on the web. The hospitals have always considered UHW bargaining to be pattern bargaining. The pattern is now set for employers all over the state to demand the same concession in one of the most important contract guarantees that workers have fought and struck for.
Fresno County’s homecare workers:
I was the co-director of Local 250’s and later UHW’s homecare division during the 9,000+ worker campaign in 2002-2003 to win collective bargaining rights, and to win their first election. I was honored to lead the negotiations for a first contract and the countless demonstrations, arrests, etc. that later led to the first contract. Fresno is one of the most rural, lowest income and – within the power structure – most stridently right wing bigoted places in the United States.
But until recently, those workers had won one of the highest homecare wages in the country with one of the best health plans for homecare workers anywhere (Kaiser) – won through the sweat and tears of their years of struggle and the solidarity of their already Union sisters and brothers.
A few months ago, I was asked by SEIU to come to Fresno to be the sole witness in an arbitration over the employer’s plans to reduce all 9,500 workers’ wages mid-contract. It was during that experience that I witnessed the most morally reprehensible conduct that I have ever seen from people who honor themselves with the name “union leader”:
I saw the deputy trustee of UHW for homecare –one of our own from 1199– bar the workers, about 40 of them, from coming into their own arbitration to even silently witness it. I stood in shock as she told the workers, “I have decided it’s not in the interest of the workers for you to be here.” I walked away in disgust when she turned to me and said, “You know these people. You have to tell them to leave.” It was their own arbitration over their wage.
I did know many of those people. They were my friends and comrades. Several were members of the bargaining committee – the people who should have been called by SEIU as witnesses, who would have helped us win. I felt sick.
At every turn, the trustees placed political considerations above principle and above the tactical decisions that would have helped the workers stave off the pay cut. They excluded the workers from every step in their own arbitration. They made public settlement proposals that accepted the premise of the employer’s incorrect case after the arbitration and before the (negative) judgment. They refused to allow me or, I assume, any of the workers to review the employer’s post arbitration brief or SEIU’s post trial brief. The results could have been predicted.
During the first contract campaign in 2003, the committee went out for lunch after being arrested at the county building. Delores Huerta was with us, and she stood up and said, “I want to ask everybody to answer a question: If this was the first time you got arrested, say how it felt. If it wasn’t, tell the story about your first time.” Homecare worker Flo Furlow (read her op-ed article in the Fresno Bee) stood up and said that her first time was around 1960 at a Woolworths lunch counter in Little Rock Arkansas. Driving home that night, it made me cry, thinking that Flo has let me, of all people, be her leader. Just as it makes me cry right now to think that in March 2009 I was with the people who barred the door when she tried to come to her own arbitration.
There are reports that SEIU has reserved 500 hotel rooms in Fresno for troops to be sent in from all over the country to battle what I believe to be the workers’ choice of a Union.
I hope and I need to know that our local will not be playing a role in this terrible mistake.
In solidarity and respectfully,
Dana Simon
http://www.heritage.org/Research/labor/wm2421.cfm
May 4, 2009
Union Accountability Reversal Breaks Obama’s Transparency Pledge
by James Sherk
WebMemo #2421
Contrary to campaign promises to increase transparency and accountability, the Obama Administration has announced plans to rescind union accountability and financial transparency regulations implemented by the Department of Labor (DOL) during the Administration of George W. Bush.
These regulations make union officials more accountable to union members and deter fraud and embezzlement. The DOL has convicted hundreds of union officials over the past eight years. Rescinding these forms will facilitate fraud and harm union members.
Union Financial Transparency Regulations
On January 21, the DOL published regulations updating the Form LM-2, the annual financial disclosure report unions file with the DOL. Unions collect between 1 and 2 percent of their members’ earnings as dues, and union officers are required to spend that money on the workers’ behalf–they may not use union funds for their personal interest. The LM-2 revisions required unions to:
Disclose the total value of all benefits received by union officers and employees;
Disclose the names of parties buying and selling union assets; and
Itemize union receipts (currently unions must itemize only expenditures).
The DOL also updated the LM-30 conflict of interest reporting form that union officers and employees must file. These forms bring to light situations where union officers receive gifts or otherwise benefit from companies that their union does business with. They deter sweetheart deals where companies that give “gifts” to union officers get union business on favorable terms. The revisions required more union officials (such as shop stewards) to report potential conflicts of interest.
These regulations allow members to hold their unions accountable for how their dues are spent. Many union officials resent financial transparency regulations, but union members should know how much their officers pay themselves out of dues. To safeguard against sweetheart deals, union members should also have the ability to see who buys and sells union assets. Union members deserve to know how their unions are run.
Reducing Union Transparency
President Obama campaigned on bringing transparency and accountability to government. However, the DOL recently announced plans first to delay the implementation of updated LM-2 and then to eliminate it entirely. The DOL has also announced that it will not enforce the new LM-30 conflict of interest forms and that unions may continue to file with the old forms.
These actions violate the President’s campaign promise to increase transparency and accountability. Union members will now have less information about how their officers spend their money. The Administration has no compelling public policy reason for keeping workers in the dark about union finances.
Union Corruption Still a Problem
Workers need information to hold their unions accountable, because union corruption remains a serious problem. The vast majority of union officers obey the law. However, a minority of union officers do misuse their position for personal gain. Since 2001, the Office of Labor Management Standards has indicted 1,004 union officials for crimes such as fraud and embezzlement of members’ dues. It has won 929 convictions and $93 million in court-ordered restitution to union members.
Increasing financial disclosure has helped bring this fraud to light. Reporters investigating LM-2 filings found serious corruption that led to the resignation of several top officials within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)[1]:
Tyrone Freeman, president of the 160,000-member SEIU Los Angeles local, resigned after LM-2 filings showed that his union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at companies owned by his family members for little apparent benefit and that he billed the union $8,100 for costs surrounding his wedding in Hawaii.
Annelle Grajeda, executive vice president of the national SEIU, stepped down after investigations revealed that the union paid her boyfriend tens of thousands of dollars.
Rickman Jackson, president of the largest SEIU local in Michigan, stepped down after investigations revealed that he rented his home to a union-sponsored housing nonprofit and that he received $196,000 in compensation from a California local and the SEIU national office while working for the Michigan local.
Transparency Helps Unions
Union financial transparency protects union members from corrupt officers. It also protects the integrity of the union movement itself. Organized labor cannot effectively advocate the interests of workers if its leaders are widely viewed as corrupt and self-dealing. CEOs order regular audits not because they have embezzled money from their firms but to show the world they have nothing to hide. Organized labor should similarly welcome greater financial transparency that removes corrupt officers like Tyrone Freeman to show their commitment to protecting the interests of their members.
Recommendations to Congress
Barack Obama campaigned on accountability and transparency, but as President his Administration is depriving union members of the information they need to keep their union officers accountable. Modernized financial disclosure forms have exposed serious corruption among top union officials. Since 2001, the DOL has convicted hundreds of union officials for embezzlement, fraud, and other crimes. This accountability is essential to protect both union members and the long-term health of the union movement. If the President will not protect transparency and accountability, then Congress must.
Congress should prohibit the DOL from spending taxpayer dollars to implement new regulations rescinding the union financial transparency reforms.
James Sherk is the Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Wall Street Journal
JUNE 10, 2009
Unions in Debt
Big labor has big financial problems it wants to keep quiet.
“We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama,” declared Andy Stern last month, and the president of the Service Employees International Union wasn’t exaggerating. The SEIU and AFL-CIO have been spending so much on politics that they’re going deeply into debt.
That news comes courtesy of federal disclosure forms that unions file each year with the Department of Labor. The Bush Administration toughened the enforcement of those disclosure rules, but under pressure from unions the Obama Labor shop is slashing funding for such enforcement. Without such disclosure, workers wouldn’t be able to see how their union chiefs are managing their mandatory dues money.
Alarm is coming even from inside the AFL-CIO — specifically, from Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who sits on the AFL-CIO’s finance committee. Bloomberg News reports that he is circulating a report claiming the AFL-CIO engaged in “creative accounting” to conceal financial difficulties heading into last year’s Presidential election. As recently as 2000, the union consortium of 8.5 million members had a $45 million surplus. By June of last year it had $90.6 million in liabilities, or $2.3 million more than its $88.3 million in assets. “If we are not careful, insolvency may be right around the corner,” Mr. Buffenbarger warned.
Machinist spokesman Frank Larkin says the report is a private document and declined to share it with us. But he didn’t deny the Bloomberg story, which said that Mr. Buffenbarger cites in particular the AFL-CIO’s reliance on its Union Plus credit-card program. In the mid-1990s, the AFL-CIO struck a deal with Household Bank to market the cards to union members in return for royalties. In the year ending June 30, 2008, the AFL-CIO earned $35 million from Household, about half the $74 million it collects in union dues. The deal has been a windfall for the union, but that may not last amid rising credit-card losses and flat consumer spending.
As for the SEIU, as recently as 2002 total SEIU liabilities were about $8 million. According to its 2008 disclosure form, the union owed more than $156 million, a 30% increase over the $120 million it owed in 2007. Its liabilities now equal more than 80% of its $189 million in assets. Net assets fell by nearly half last year, to $34 million, from $64 million in 2007. The debt includes an $80 million loan the SEIU took out in 2003 to purchase a new headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. But the liabilities also stem from political spending, including at least $67 million last year on political and lobbying expenses, twice what it spent in 2007.
The SEIU added to its debt burden last year with $25 million in new bank loans, including $15 million from Amalgamated Bank of New York. Amalgamated is the nation’s only union-owned bank and its chairman is Bruce Raynor, who until recently was also general president of Unite-Here. Mr. Raynor has been fighting for control of that textile-hotel union, and he helped Mr. Stern conduct a raid on Unite-Here members before bolting to the SEIU.
By the end of 2008, the SEIU also owed Bank of America nearly $88 million, including its headquarters loan and another $10 million for unspecified purposes. This is the same BofA that the union has spent the past months attacking as the face of Wall Street excess. The SEIU has protested outside of Bank of America offices and demanded the resignation of CEO Ken Lewis. We assume no one forced the SEIU to invest in real estate or borrow from a bank to finance it.
An SEIU spokeswoman says the union works on a four-year cycle, in which it goes “all out for the presidential election” and then rebuilds its finances. She adds the union has paid back more than $10 million of the $25 million it borrowed last year. But it’s nonetheless true that the SEIU’s liabilities have continued to climb each year from 2003 to 2008.
One irony here is that the SEIU’s Mr. Stern, the most powerful labor leader in America, loudly broke from the AFL-CIO in 2005 because he said it spent too much in Washington and not enough on organizing. But unions can’t resist the lure of the Beltway precisely because they fare so poorly in the private marketplace. The union red ink helps explain why Mr. Stern and AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney are lobbying so hard for Congress to rig the rules to make it easier for unions to gather more dues-paying members.
The other lesson concerns union governance and transparency. Unions have a long history of corruption in part because they mix large amounts of cash from dues with political purposes and little oversight. Yet the same union leaders who denounce failures of corporate governance bitterly resisted the Bush Administration’s expanded disclosure, and now they want the Obama Administration to water down those rules. The news about rising union debt shows why that transparency is more necessary than ever.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A14
http://www.uniondemocracy.com/UDR/193-Quest_for_democracy_persists_inside_SEIU.htm
Quest for democracy persists inside SEIU
While attention is riveted on the bitter battle in California between the Service Employees International Union and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers, many SEIU members who are not involved in that conflict are convinced that their road to union reform remains inside the SEIU in a continuing campaign to democratize the union. And they can report some successes, notably in Massachusetts Local 888 and in California Local 521. At the SEIU convention in June last year, rank and filers from several locals came together in a reform caucus, SMART — for SEIU Members Active for Reform Today. The caucus organized as a permanent body after the convention.
In Massachusetts Local 888
By Ferd Wulkan
In an election last year, an insurgent caucus defeated the local administration that had originally been appointed by International President Andy Stern. Author Ferd Wulkan was an SEIU field rep for 13 years, serving non-faculty professional personnel at the University of Massachusetts.
SEIU Local 888 was created in 2003 in a wholesale reorganization of SEIU’s Massachusetts locals. In reducing the number of locals, a new public sector local was created, one that would be unquestionably loyal to the International. Susana Segat, a longtime employee of the International was appointed president. When a new local is created, the appointed leadership can stay in office for three years before an election must be held.
The best organized and most militantly democratic portion of the local were workers at the University of Massachusetts. Fiercely trying to preserve their democratic heritage and practices, and frustrated by the divisive and controlling administration, over 2,000 of them ultimately left SEIU and joined the Massachusetts Teachers Association/NEA. [The 2008 insurgent victory is especially impressive, coming after so many natural opposition supporters had left the local. Ed.]
With all the advantages of incumbency, and with the potential core of the opposition out of the local, the Segat slate easily won in the 2006 election. Her opponent, Bruce Boccardy, ran a pro-democracy campaign, but one that was over-confident, under-financed, and too short. In 2008, however, he defeated Segat by a large majority. [Of the local's 9,000 members, 1,815 voted. Boccardy defeated Segat by 1,025-730. His slate carried all contested positions by similar majorities. Ed.] Ironically, Tony Koumantzelis, his candidate for the #2 spot, is a member of the only UMass bargaining unit that had voted to remain in the SEIU when all the others left. This time, Boccardy and Koumantzelis started their campaign early, hired an experienced campaign manager, used their time effectively, recruited a broad group of supporters, and ran a member-to-member campaign.
They heard member complaints all across the state, many about minimal servicing by the local. This was not surprising, since Segat had eliminated most of the service rep positions. Ironically, this meant she lacked the traditional incumbent-beholden staff to promote her campaign. While democratic-minded unionists are celebrating, the new leadership must overcome some potential barriers to turning Local 888 into a powerful democratic local:
1. The economy. Most Local 888 members work for cities and towns; with the Massachusetts budget crumbling, the local will have its hands full fighting layoffs and cutbacks.
2. Local finances. Units have decertified. Under Segat, the local ran a deficit every year. It is difficult to run a local efficiently when it has 9,000 members scattered in 200 bargaining units.
SMART
SMART first surfaced on the eve of the SEIU international convention in 2008, announcing its aim to “preserve union democracy and member-driven decision-making and involvement.” Larry Bradshaw, elected as a delegate from his paramedic chapter of San Francisco Local 1021, writes of how these “previously unknown and politically unconnected rank-and-file workers” got together at the convention. “For most of us aligned with SMART,” he wrote, “it was our first SEIU international convention. Consequently ‘we’ were rag-tag, clumsy, and easily outmaneuvered.” Yet, when the delegates elected officers, SMART candidates “garnered between 4% and 16% of the vote.” In the year since the convention, they remain active, better organized, and with their own website. They saturate their own e-mail boxes and yours with exchanges of information and comments on day-to-day events in the union.
At the convention and after, SMART supported Rosselli’s UHW-W in its defensive battles, but they were not swallowed up by it. In an Open Letter, SMART denounced Stern’s trusteeship over UHW. When the Rosselli forces were impelled to leave the SEIU and found their own National Union of Healthcare Workers, independent and rival to the SEIU, SMART remained in the SEIU to continue its campaign for democracy within it. That position was made clear in April in a statement submitted by the SMART committee for vote by its membership:
“SMART takes an officially neutral position on whether SEIU members who belong to UHW-W should fight for reform by staying inside SEIU,” it reads, “or by leaving SEIU and fighting for reform from the outside. We recognize the extreme and unusual circumstances members of UHW-W now face….We regret that the rank-and-file are leaving SEIU, and we blame the SEIU administration for that loss.”
The statement goes on to criticize the forcible merger of locals to suppress dissent. While recognizing that “many of our new locals are bureaucratic monoliths,” it reaffirms that “SMART is about reforming SEIU in order to build a strong, democratic, and effective union…. Secession, by itself, does not build member power. While a particular group or local might solve its problems by leaving, it does not address the needs of all other SEIU members.” It asks the new NUHW “to refrain from undermining the efforts of SMART reform activists inside SEIU” and calls for “greater dialog between reform activists within SEIU and reform activists who have left SEIU….”
On “raiding,” the statement projects a position, or a hope, that is admirable in principle but difficult to sustain in practice. It asks NUHW “to cease from raiding SEIU locals or chapters where UHW-W has never represented any of the members….” And it “calls upon the SEIU International to stop raiding UNITE/HERE or any other unions.” Unfortunately, embattled unionists often decide that the best defense is offense.
In Local 521
With its 55,000 members, Local 521 was one of those California mega locals created by Andy Stern (521= five locals into one). As in a new local, he appointed all its officers. Candidates for appointment were required to sign a loyalty oath. Despite all the advantages of their imposed incumbency, the appointed administration ran into trouble. In December this year, after disputes over democracy-related issues in local contests that were unrelated to the big battle between the SEIU and the NUHW, insurgent groups defeated administration candidates in two of the local’s county chapters: in Monterey and Santa Clara counties.
In Santa Clara, a chapter of 11,000 public workers, incumbents had held office for eight years. But in December an insurgent Reform Slate, running under the slogan “It’s our union,” elected Vincent Reyna president and Wren Bradley deputy chair and carried most of the 19 contested spots with about 52% of the votes. In the Monterey Chapter, where 22% of the chapter’s 3,500 members voted, insurgents won most of the 18 contests by a comfortable majority. Ben Franklin was elected president.
So far, encouragement for those who look for reform inside the SEIU. But the plot thickened in April when an NUHW release reported that 2,800 Monterey County workers had signed a petition with the county Public Employment Relations Board seeking to oust SEIU Local 521 as their bargaining agent and replace it with the new NUHW. In an ironic twist, according to the victorious SEIU Monterey insurgents, the old guard, who they had just defeated in their chapter, changed course, switched over to the NUHW, and are backing the decert effort!
CALIFORNIA FURLOUGH FIGHT
Governor Schwarzeneggar appears to be losing the momentum in the fight against the state imposed furloughs. The Sacramento Court has ruled that the venue will not be changed to Sacramento, where the Governor’s lawyers have held a clear advantage. Does this signal that union victories may be on the horizon?
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/the_state_worker/2009/10/a-sacramento-superior-court-ju.html#discovery
October 30, 2009
Tentative furlough ruling now final
In a legal equivalent of waving a white flag, attorneys for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t ask for a chance to change a judge’s mind after he said that several furlough lawsuits filed around the state shouldn’t be pulled into Sacramento Superior Court.
As a result, Judge Timothy Frawley’s tentative ruling Thursday stands: The furlough cases are dissimilar enough to keep in separate courts.
A hearing over whether to coordinate the cases had been scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today in Frawley’s courtroom. But after the judge issued the tentative ruling to keep the cases separate, the governor’s attorney’s didn’t call to confirm that they wanted to argue their side at the hearing. The court gives attorneys until 4 p.m. the day that a tentative ruling is handed down to verify that they still want the scheduled hearing.
That means the ruling stands.
Schwarzenegger’s lawyers had argued that several furlough lawsuits in various superior courts should be brought to Sacramento for the sake of convenience and in the “interest of justice.” State employee unions, led by California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, have opposed the idea. Schwarzenegger has won a few furlough cases in Sacramento. He lost two in San Francisco, where three more lawsuits are pending. Four cases in Alameda County are set for a Nov. 16 hearing. Those cases would have probably been delayed had Schwarzenegger won the coordination argument.
The author of cityoflosangelesseiumembers.com has written an excellent article. You have made your point and there is not much to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not argue with: The number of books in the Trilogy is infinite. Thanks for the info.