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.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Change to Win is losing it
Andy Stern's dream house is collapsing; but he hopes to pick up the pieces. Such is the implication of reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
UNITE/HERE, one of the pillars of Change to Win, the coalition that Stern led out of the AFL-CIO, is being chopped to bits by blows of mutual recriminations between its two warring top leaders. The union had been formed as a marriage, now clearly one of inconvenience, between UNITE, the needle trades union which had loads of money but not enough members, and HERE, the hotel union which had lots of members but not enough money. Bruce Raynor, who invested the needle trades cash into the merger, was awarded the presidency of the new union. John Wilhelm, who invested those hotel workers and is president of the united union's hospitality division, apparently emerged with a majority on the international executive board.
Raynor accuses the Wilhelm forces of too exclusive a concern for the wages and benefits of union members and too little for organizing the unorganized. They, in turn, accuse Raynor of acting like a dictator, one who is willing to trade away union standards to induce employers to accept unionization. On the face of it, this dispute seems like a mirror image of the battle inside the Service Employees between Andy Stern and Sal Rosselli which is now tearing apart the SEIU in California.
Raynor wants to pull UNITE out of the tie with HERE. Fifteen of his supporters on the international executive board are in federal court trying to undo the merger and get their money back. He is chairman of Amalgamated Bank, owned by UNITE, which seems somehow mixed up in this tangle. According to the Wall Street Journal, some believe that Raynor wants to safeguard his control of the bank in case Wilhelm wins out. And so he proposes to amend bank rules to make it difficult to oust its directors in one fell swoop and to require a 75% vote of all outstanding shares to approve any "significant transaction" not initiated by the directors.
Wilhelm apparently insists that unity is still possible, a position he elaborates in an unusual letter distributed to UNITE/HERE members on February 8. What is extraordinary about his statement is its affirmation that the merger can be saved, but only by a thoroughgoing democratization of the union constitution. ”Our constitution,” he writes, “is not a governing document that can withstand the test of time.”
Wilhelm opposes "President Raynor’s insistence on greater centralization of power” and he wants “reasonable checks and balances.” The General Executive Board should “become more active.” He wants to end the practice of electing GEB members at large and make possible a greater distribution of power by substituting election by industry and region “in a way that …the voice of the minority is always heard.” Trusteeships should be established and local elected leaders removed “only where absolutely necessary.” Local per capita taxes should be reduced so that “affiliates can keep the resources they need to operate and remain financially independent.” Most important perhaps, “The constitution should protect rank and file members, affiliate officers, and IU officers from retaliation for expressing their opinions, voting, or running for office.”
Realizing that the UNITE-HERE merger has failed, Stern proposes that the fractured union (or perhaps the fragments) simply solve the problem by affiliating with his huge Service Employees International Union. For Wilhelm and HERE it could be an offer they can't refuse. But it is difficult to see how either of the warring factions could find peace in the SEIU. If the charges against Raynor have merit, his entry into the SEIU could pit Raynor, one accused authoritarian, against another: Andy Stern. If Wilhelm is serious about the need to democratize, he would find the regime in the SEIU at least as distasteful as what he wants to change. Some of the issues that have erupted in the battle between Raynor and Wilhelm have been raging inside the SEIU itself, with disastrous consequences. Stern has used his authoritarian powers as SEIU international president to trustee the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers and to destroy the influence of its leader, Sal Rosselli, Stern's most outspoken critic.
Even before the explosion of these new events, it was obvious that the Change to Win coalition, led out of the AFL-CIO in 2005 by Stern, was on the edge of extinction. Now, in unexpected fashion, Stern’s overture to UNITE/HERE calls into question the whole rationale for creating a new separate labor federation. Change to Win zealots justified their split from the AFL-CIO by two basic arguments: 1. By freeing themselves from limits presumably imposed on them by AFL-affiliation, they could embark upon a unified campaign to organize the unorganized, and 2. to fulfill that objective, it was imperative to get rid of the general type of union that tried to organize anyone anywhere and to direct each union to concentrate upon its “core” industry.
Now, less than five years later, the validity of both these principles has been exploded. Neither the AFL nor C to W can report any massive gains in membership. (Raynor charges that the two unions organized more workers when they were independent than after the merger.)
Coming from the SEIU, the stricture for other unions to limit themselves to their "core" was a classic example of "do what I say, not what I do." The SEIU is a typical conglomerate of three disparate main divisions: building service, healthcare, and public employees. If Stern succeeds in harvesting UNITE/HERE, he will add many more unrelated sectors to his Austria-Hungary type empire: the entertainment industry via HERE and another conglomerate in its own right, UINTE, with its needle trades, laundry and what not workers.
Even before the UNITE/HERE debacle and Stern's latest ploy, the demise of Change to Win was already in sight. Immediately after the split, locals in Change to Win internationals remained affiliated with AFL-CIO city and state federations. In July last year, Change to Win negotiated joint political action with the AFL-CIO and began tentative discussions on reuniting. In January, this year, twelve international unions, including the major C to W unions, called for an end to the split. It is obviously only a matter of time, a short time, before Change to Win goes down as an abortive footnote in labor history.
UNITE/HERE, one of the pillars of Change to Win, the coalition that Stern led out of the AFL-CIO, is being chopped to bits by blows of mutual recriminations between its two warring top leaders. The union had been formed as a marriage, now clearly one of inconvenience, between UNITE, the needle trades union which had loads of money but not enough members, and HERE, the hotel union which had lots of members but not enough money. Bruce Raynor, who invested the needle trades cash into the merger, was awarded the presidency of the new union. John Wilhelm, who invested those hotel workers and is president of the united union's hospitality division, apparently emerged with a majority on the international executive board.
Raynor accuses the Wilhelm forces of too exclusive a concern for the wages and benefits of union members and too little for organizing the unorganized. They, in turn, accuse Raynor of acting like a dictator, one who is willing to trade away union standards to induce employers to accept unionization. On the face of it, this dispute seems like a mirror image of the battle inside the Service Employees between Andy Stern and Sal Rosselli which is now tearing apart the SEIU in California.
Raynor wants to pull UNITE out of the tie with HERE. Fifteen of his supporters on the international executive board are in federal court trying to undo the merger and get their money back. He is chairman of Amalgamated Bank, owned by UNITE, which seems somehow mixed up in this tangle. According to the Wall Street Journal, some believe that Raynor wants to safeguard his control of the bank in case Wilhelm wins out. And so he proposes to amend bank rules to make it difficult to oust its directors in one fell swoop and to require a 75% vote of all outstanding shares to approve any "significant transaction" not initiated by the directors.
Wilhelm apparently insists that unity is still possible, a position he elaborates in an unusual letter distributed to UNITE/HERE members on February 8. What is extraordinary about his statement is its affirmation that the merger can be saved, but only by a thoroughgoing democratization of the union constitution. ”Our constitution,” he writes, “is not a governing document that can withstand the test of time.”
Wilhelm opposes "President Raynor’s insistence on greater centralization of power” and he wants “reasonable checks and balances.” The General Executive Board should “become more active.” He wants to end the practice of electing GEB members at large and make possible a greater distribution of power by substituting election by industry and region “in a way that …the voice of the minority is always heard.” Trusteeships should be established and local elected leaders removed “only where absolutely necessary.” Local per capita taxes should be reduced so that “affiliates can keep the resources they need to operate and remain financially independent.” Most important perhaps, “The constitution should protect rank and file members, affiliate officers, and IU officers from retaliation for expressing their opinions, voting, or running for office.”
Realizing that the UNITE-HERE merger has failed, Stern proposes that the fractured union (or perhaps the fragments) simply solve the problem by affiliating with his huge Service Employees International Union. For Wilhelm and HERE it could be an offer they can't refuse. But it is difficult to see how either of the warring factions could find peace in the SEIU. If the charges against Raynor have merit, his entry into the SEIU could pit Raynor, one accused authoritarian, against another: Andy Stern. If Wilhelm is serious about the need to democratize, he would find the regime in the SEIU at least as distasteful as what he wants to change. Some of the issues that have erupted in the battle between Raynor and Wilhelm have been raging inside the SEIU itself, with disastrous consequences. Stern has used his authoritarian powers as SEIU international president to trustee the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers and to destroy the influence of its leader, Sal Rosselli, Stern's most outspoken critic.
Even before the explosion of these new events, it was obvious that the Change to Win coalition, led out of the AFL-CIO in 2005 by Stern, was on the edge of extinction. Now, in unexpected fashion, Stern’s overture to UNITE/HERE calls into question the whole rationale for creating a new separate labor federation. Change to Win zealots justified their split from the AFL-CIO by two basic arguments: 1. By freeing themselves from limits presumably imposed on them by AFL-affiliation, they could embark upon a unified campaign to organize the unorganized, and 2. to fulfill that objective, it was imperative to get rid of the general type of union that tried to organize anyone anywhere and to direct each union to concentrate upon its “core” industry.
Now, less than five years later, the validity of both these principles has been exploded. Neither the AFL nor C to W can report any massive gains in membership. (Raynor charges that the two unions organized more workers when they were independent than after the merger.)
Coming from the SEIU, the stricture for other unions to limit themselves to their "core" was a classic example of "do what I say, not what I do." The SEIU is a typical conglomerate of three disparate main divisions: building service, healthcare, and public employees. If Stern succeeds in harvesting UNITE/HERE, he will add many more unrelated sectors to his Austria-Hungary type empire: the entertainment industry via HERE and another conglomerate in its own right, UINTE, with its needle trades, laundry and what not workers.
Even before the UNITE/HERE debacle and Stern's latest ploy, the demise of Change to Win was already in sight. Immediately after the split, locals in Change to Win internationals remained affiliated with AFL-CIO city and state federations. In July last year, Change to Win negotiated joint political action with the AFL-CIO and began tentative discussions on reuniting. In January, this year, twelve international unions, including the major C to W unions, called for an end to the split. It is obviously only a matter of time, a short time, before Change to Win goes down as an abortive footnote in labor history.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Hybrid Unionism: Dead End or Fertile Future?
Excerpt from a recent article by Herman Benson published in Dissent Magazine
--
SOME YEARS ago, when it became obvious that the labor movement was in trouble, when membership figures were dropping, academics came up with novel ideas to provide some measure of protection for unorganized workers. Only one suggestion was rooted in unionism as we know it. That was the idea first advanced by Clyde Summers, popularized by Alan Hyde and others, and most recently revived at book length by Charles Morris in The Blue Eagle at Work.
They urged that, where workers had chosen no exclusive bargaining agent, unions demand that employers recognize them as the bargaining agent for their own members. They argued persuasively that the National Labor Relations Act makes such a demand legal and binding upon employers. This so-called “minority unionism” was viewed as the entering wedge toward full union recognition. Nine international unions have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to promulgate a new regulation that would require employers to bargain with minority unions where no union has won exclusive bargaining rights.
Others also supplied imaginative alternatives to halt the decline. Perhaps ethnic identity could somehow replace class solidarity. Or, why shouldn’t workers be permitted to choose other institutions—law firms, for example—to represent them? Another idea was that if unions can’t overcome employer hostility to outside unions, why not relax the restrictions on management-supported forms of company union representation? Still another: if, in the face of employer hostility, unions are unable to enroll masses of workers at their workplace, why not serve workers directly, not only with problems on their job but with their whole range of individual miseries—legal, compensation, unemployment insurance, housing, and so on. These proposals sought to bestow upon workers the blessings of collective bargaining or other services that they were too weak to win on their own. What they had in common was the notion that, because traditional unionism was obsolete it had to be replaced by some other form of representation or be transformed into a social service or settlement house type of operation. For more than two hundred years, the basic principle that distinguished unionism from all philanthropic means of lifting the downtrodden has been that workers must act for themselves in their own interest and not rely on forms of charity. That principle would erode under the new systems.
Then John Sweeney rose to the top of the AFL-CIO in 1995, promising a return to the days of honor and glory. Years passed, nothing much changed, labor’s decline continued. Promising another new beginning, Andy Stern led his own Service Employees International Union and a consortium of fellow-traveling unions out of the AFL-CIO into a rival federation, Change to Win. He sounded a trumpet call to organize the unorganized, especially the oppressed minorities, the low-paid unskilled, and the super-exploited immigrants. Then, he shook up the labor establishment with running ideas of the month: Organize new millions; abandon old-style confrontational unionism; look to hedge fund managers; cooperate with responsible employers to rebuild the American economy; don’t annoy them with individual grievances; denounce Wal-Mart as a greedy exploiter; stand with it and other big employers for health care for all Americans; merge locals into massive entities and draft their officers and staff into a disciplined cadre to increase union “density”; denounce employers who will not cooperate but treat gently those who do; seek common ground with China and its state-controlled labor organizations to assist workers of the world. Stern won credit for instigating a debate on fundamental issues, even though those issues have never been clearly defined. It was an ideological mishmash, but a challenging and provocative one, and it made him into a media celebrity as the labor leader of the future.
We no longer need academic theorists to create substitutes for unionism. Stern has preempted the field with his own idea of a new kind of unionism. He looks not toward the old-fashioned method of organizing and inspiring workers in a battle for union recognition, but to employers’ cooperation, even their active assistance, in fashioning the modern, and bigger, labor movement. The bigger the employer, the better.
Stern’s twenty-first-century model is not exactly a variety of company unionism, because a real union, not an employer, is the initiating force. But neither is it unionism as we have known it, because it is constructed jointly with employers. Stern is right in one crucial respect. It is a new approach. He is convinced that it is the key to labor’s bright future. Will it, like many hybrids, prove sterile?
read more...
--
SOME YEARS ago, when it became obvious that the labor movement was in trouble, when membership figures were dropping, academics came up with novel ideas to provide some measure of protection for unorganized workers. Only one suggestion was rooted in unionism as we know it. That was the idea first advanced by Clyde Summers, popularized by Alan Hyde and others, and most recently revived at book length by Charles Morris in The Blue Eagle at Work.
They urged that, where workers had chosen no exclusive bargaining agent, unions demand that employers recognize them as the bargaining agent for their own members. They argued persuasively that the National Labor Relations Act makes such a demand legal and binding upon employers. This so-called “minority unionism” was viewed as the entering wedge toward full union recognition. Nine international unions have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to promulgate a new regulation that would require employers to bargain with minority unions where no union has won exclusive bargaining rights.
Others also supplied imaginative alternatives to halt the decline. Perhaps ethnic identity could somehow replace class solidarity. Or, why shouldn’t workers be permitted to choose other institutions—law firms, for example—to represent them? Another idea was that if unions can’t overcome employer hostility to outside unions, why not relax the restrictions on management-supported forms of company union representation? Still another: if, in the face of employer hostility, unions are unable to enroll masses of workers at their workplace, why not serve workers directly, not only with problems on their job but with their whole range of individual miseries—legal, compensation, unemployment insurance, housing, and so on. These proposals sought to bestow upon workers the blessings of collective bargaining or other services that they were too weak to win on their own. What they had in common was the notion that, because traditional unionism was obsolete it had to be replaced by some other form of representation or be transformed into a social service or settlement house type of operation. For more than two hundred years, the basic principle that distinguished unionism from all philanthropic means of lifting the downtrodden has been that workers must act for themselves in their own interest and not rely on forms of charity. That principle would erode under the new systems.
Then John Sweeney rose to the top of the AFL-CIO in 1995, promising a return to the days of honor and glory. Years passed, nothing much changed, labor’s decline continued. Promising another new beginning, Andy Stern led his own Service Employees International Union and a consortium of fellow-traveling unions out of the AFL-CIO into a rival federation, Change to Win. He sounded a trumpet call to organize the unorganized, especially the oppressed minorities, the low-paid unskilled, and the super-exploited immigrants. Then, he shook up the labor establishment with running ideas of the month: Organize new millions; abandon old-style confrontational unionism; look to hedge fund managers; cooperate with responsible employers to rebuild the American economy; don’t annoy them with individual grievances; denounce Wal-Mart as a greedy exploiter; stand with it and other big employers for health care for all Americans; merge locals into massive entities and draft their officers and staff into a disciplined cadre to increase union “density”; denounce employers who will not cooperate but treat gently those who do; seek common ground with China and its state-controlled labor organizations to assist workers of the world. Stern won credit for instigating a debate on fundamental issues, even though those issues have never been clearly defined. It was an ideological mishmash, but a challenging and provocative one, and it made him into a media celebrity as the labor leader of the future.
We no longer need academic theorists to create substitutes for unionism. Stern has preempted the field with his own idea of a new kind of unionism. He looks not toward the old-fashioned method of organizing and inspiring workers in a battle for union recognition, but to employers’ cooperation, even their active assistance, in fashioning the modern, and bigger, labor movement. The bigger the employer, the better.
Stern’s twenty-first-century model is not exactly a variety of company unionism, because a real union, not an employer, is the initiating force. But neither is it unionism as we have known it, because it is constructed jointly with employers. Stern is right in one crucial respect. It is a new approach. He is convinced that it is the key to labor’s bright future. Will it, like many hybrids, prove sterile?
read more...
Thursday, February 05, 2009
A discussion of Ray Marshall’s decision to justify a trusteeship over SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers-West
SEIU President Andy Stern used findings by Raymond Marshall to justify his takeover of UHW-W. "We're acting on Ray Marshall's recommendations," he told the Wall Street Journal.
Stern had hired Marshall, a professor and former secretary of labor, to conduct hearings and make a recommendation for the disposition of his trusteeship charges against Sal Rosselli and UHW. But he didn’t need Marshall to comply with federal law, because the LMRDA authorizes the imposition of a prompt trusteeship by an international, which can hold hearings and ratify its own decision later. However, in the tense atmosphere surrounding these events, and in the face of widespread public criticism, Stern obviously felt he required the aura of extended due process to justify his actions.
After six days of testimony and a 105-page report, Marshall hesitated only a vernier micrometer reading short of ordering the imposition of an instantaneous trusteeship. However, he did authorize a trusteeship if Rosselli's local filed to comply "fully" with six conditions within five days. Marshall's report was dated January 21. The SEIU international executive board, trigger ready, authorized the trusteeship on January 22. Rosselli offered to negotiate conditions of compliance, but Stern was not interested in diplomatic fine points; he plunged ahead.
In the end, Marshall gave Stern 99.9% of what he had asked for and more than 100% of what he could use to justify a trusteeship. In the text of his decision, Marshall upheld the validity of every criticism leveled by Stern against Rosselli. Oddly, he gratuitously justified in retrospect trusteeship action that Stern might have taken in the past but did not!
Marshall ruled "I recommend that the IEB NOT [his emphasis] establish a trusteeship on the basis of the specific issues raised in the Amended Notice but establish a trusteeship if the UHW refuses to abide by and cooperate with the January 2009 decision of the IEB to have California LTC [long term care] workers unite into a single local union." This kind of ruling is, or should be, an unbelievably impermissible decision in any truly impartial court. The complex issue of long term care workers was not included in the charges presented to Marshall by Stern in September 2008. The IEB decision on long term workers came on January 9, 2009, months after the trusteeship hearings had opened. It is as though a judge found a defendant cleared of the charges actually included in an indictment but sentenced him for an offense not listed for trial. Appalling as such a conclusion may be, it stands as a mere procedural peccadillo compared to the rest of Marshall's decision. Not only here, but in every critical respect, his findings lack credibility.
On Retaliation
A single one of Marshall's main "conclusions" is enough to reveal the full flawed flavor of his whole work. "The Hearing and the IEB's Jurisdiction Decisions [on cutting 65,000 members out of UHW: HB]," he writes, "were not Initiated to Retaliate against the UHW for its Aggressive Criticism of International Leaders' Policies and Strategies." [his caps]
What strikes one at first is that this statement is uncalled for. To authorize a trusteeship, Marshall was required to find only a single valid basis for trusteeship even if all the others were flawed. (Which is what he actually did. In the end, he based his operative decision on Rossellli's resistance to losing 65,000 members.) But Marshall went out of his way to legitimize all of Stern's motives. There are subtle PR implications to this finding on "retaliation." Back in May 2008, 47 top SEIU leaders, including members of the IEB, protested that they would never approve a "retaliatory" trusteeship. Whether he intended it or not, Marshall's statement takes them off the hook for voting unanimously for this trusteeship.
But all this, however depressing, is only secondary. The essential point is that Marshall's denial of any retaliatory intent flatly contradicts a record familiar to anyone who has followed recent events in the SEIU. That record reveals a relentless drive to destroy the UHW and Rosselli after his sharp public criticism of Stern's evolving ideology:
In January 2007, Rosselli circulated an internal union memo sharply criticizing an agreement negotiated by Stern with a big association of nursing home chains in California. The agreement, according to Rosselli, created SEIU units that "may come close to becoming … company unions." After Rosselli's UHW submitted petitions denouncing the agreement signed by 20,000 SEIUers, Stern backed off and decided not to renew the deals.
Rosselli had been president of the SEIU California State Council. In January 2008, exercising his overweening power as international president, Stern dissolved the council, ordered elections to a newly organized council, and made sure his handpicked selection got the job. (P.S. Stern's choice now stands accused of misappropriating union money.)
In February 2008, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU international executive committee so that he could feel free to criticize the official line. As expected, and as natural, Stern loyalists responded with a flurry of counterattacks in which they denounced Rosselli not only for what he said but for the very act of straying off the line. The SEIU was adopting a policy that forbade any elected officer, staff employee, or local to criticize official policy before the membership. The whole apparatus, top to bottom, was to appear as one monolithic block. Rosselli and the UHW obviously would not submit to that principle.
In March, Stern made his first trusteeship threats against Rosselli and the UHW.
The June SEIU convention authorized a California reorganization plan that would strip Rosselli's local of 65,000 members.
In August, Stern instituted formal proceedings against UHW-W as the first step toward imposing a trusteeship; in the interim, he appointed two "monitors" to oversee local affairs and control all expenditures. Hearings were adjourned until after the presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Stern's followers instituted two separate federal suits against Rosselli and members of the UHW executive board. The first, filed by the SEIU itself, was dismissed by the federal judge. The second, filed by two individual members of UHW-W, may still be pending. In both cases, the firm of Bredhoff and Kaiser was the complainants' attorney. The complaint in one suit was explicit in seeking "an injunction prohibiting defendants from using UHW-W funds for their defense....."
California SEIUers were asked to vote in an "advisory" referendum: Shall all long-term healthcare workers --- as in nursing homes --- be transferred into one local; or shall all healthcare workers ---including hospitals --- be combined into a single big local of all healthcare workers. For Rosselli's UHW, a Hobson's choice. In one case, UHW-W would lose 65,000 members; in the other, it would be liquidated as a local, and Stern would appoint the officers of the new local.
Two sets of formal internal union charges were suspended over Rosselli. Two UHW-W members charged the Rosselli camp of harassing them for supporting Stern's program. In a second set of internal union charges, two international executive vice presidents charged Rosselli and UHW-officers of offenses already leveled against them in the trusteeship hearings. In both cases, Stern exercised his ample powers to assume jurisdiction and appoint the committees to try the critics whom he detests.
A third threat never reached the level of formal charges. In a letter to Rosselli in July, SEIU General Counsel Judy Scott demanded that he reply to "some evidence" that his staff had turned over an SEIU membership list to the California Nurses Association in Iowa.
Marshall had to shrug off this whole record of attacks on Rosselli to deny any hint of retaliation.
Those 65,000 long term care workers
Of UHW's 150,000 members, some 65,000 worked in "long term care" facilities like nursing homes; the others in acute care facilities like hospitals. The SEIU national office argued that in California all long term care workers, now distributed in several locals including UHW, should be united into a separate local and toward that end, those 65,000 should be cut out of UHW. Rosselli and the UHW opposed this move, insisting that instead of separating long term workers from the others, all health care workers in California should be united into a single local with a democratically elected leadership.
Now, these are hotly contested issues, more than ordinarily complex. They are additionally complicated by devious tawdry implications: Stern insists upon appointing the officers of all new locals. His first obvious candidate to head up any long term local was Tyrone Freeman, whom he had appointed as president of the one existing long term local. But that fell through when Freeman had to be expelled on charges of misappropriating about a million dollars of union money.
There was no valid reason for Marshall to give much weight to any of this, certainly none to make it the key issue in his finding. He was presumably authorized to conduct hearings on specific charges related to a trusteeship demand, and the topic of those 65,000 was never the subject of charges; it was not even mentioned in Stern's original list of charges. It was thrown in only later as a kind of afterthought and even then not as the justification for disciplinary action. Stern called attention to the dispute over the 65,000 to portray the dispute with Rosselli as a fairly routine organizational dispute over how best to organize long term care workers. It was Stern’s effort to portray Rosselli's criticism as simply driven by a narrow desire to hold on to dues payers. In short, Stern's references to the dispute over 65,000 members was not a charge against Rosselli intended to justify a trusteeship; it was an effort to derogate Rosselli's motives.
Marshall not only swallowed Stern's bait hook, line and sinker -- "the basic problem," he wrote, "appears to be the local union's reluctance to accept the IEB's jurisdiction decision that would cause the UHW to lose its 65,000 LTC members." -- he went further, much further. He transformed an almost totally irrelevant complaint into a most serious charge and then used the charge he himself had created as a justification for trusteeship, the main justification.
The funds
One last word on an issue that dominated long hours of the proceedings but which finally had no bearing on the final decision. It has some significance, however, as an indication of Marshall's state of mind. When the danger of a repressive trusteeship loomed, UHW established two separate funds apart from its regular treasury: one was intended as a tax exempt fund to be charted as an IRS 501(c)(3) educational organization. The other was an escrow fund deposited with the local's law firm for future legal action. Stern argued that the real but concealed purpose of the funds was to set aside money to defend the local officers if a trusteeship was established. (When a local is trusteed, its officers can be removed or suspended and the international takes over control over all its resources, including money.) Ironically, Stern threatened a trusteeship because, he said, local officers sought to use local money to fight a trusteeship. Rosselli and the UHW denied the charge and insisted that it set up the funds as a more efficient way of conducting educational and political-type activities. (Full disclosure by HB: On my internet blog, I commented favorably that these funds hopefully could be used to defend the local against an improper trusteeship and to defend the rights of members under a trusteeship. The blog became a minor debated issue before Marshall.)
Actually the issue was mooted before the hearings ever opened because the local yielded, dissolved the funds, and simply restored the money to the local treasury. After hearing the arguments, and obviously recognizing that fact, Marshall concluded , "Although I do not recommend trusteeship for the reasons stated above …" but he had to end the thought with "I believe a trusteeship would have been appropriate to prevent further transfers and recover UHW money already transferred had the trusteeship been imposed at the time of the transfer."
But Marshall had presumably been called upon to assess the validity of charges that would justify this trusteeship, not what might have justified a hypothetical trusteeship that was never imposed. Here too he strained to go beyond the call of duty.
Stern had hired Marshall, a professor and former secretary of labor, to conduct hearings and make a recommendation for the disposition of his trusteeship charges against Sal Rosselli and UHW. But he didn’t need Marshall to comply with federal law, because the LMRDA authorizes the imposition of a prompt trusteeship by an international, which can hold hearings and ratify its own decision later. However, in the tense atmosphere surrounding these events, and in the face of widespread public criticism, Stern obviously felt he required the aura of extended due process to justify his actions.
After six days of testimony and a 105-page report, Marshall hesitated only a vernier micrometer reading short of ordering the imposition of an instantaneous trusteeship. However, he did authorize a trusteeship if Rosselli's local filed to comply "fully" with six conditions within five days. Marshall's report was dated January 21. The SEIU international executive board, trigger ready, authorized the trusteeship on January 22. Rosselli offered to negotiate conditions of compliance, but Stern was not interested in diplomatic fine points; he plunged ahead.
In the end, Marshall gave Stern 99.9% of what he had asked for and more than 100% of what he could use to justify a trusteeship. In the text of his decision, Marshall upheld the validity of every criticism leveled by Stern against Rosselli. Oddly, he gratuitously justified in retrospect trusteeship action that Stern might have taken in the past but did not!
Marshall ruled "I recommend that the IEB NOT [his emphasis] establish a trusteeship on the basis of the specific issues raised in the Amended Notice but establish a trusteeship if the UHW refuses to abide by and cooperate with the January 2009 decision of the IEB to have California LTC [long term care] workers unite into a single local union." This kind of ruling is, or should be, an unbelievably impermissible decision in any truly impartial court. The complex issue of long term care workers was not included in the charges presented to Marshall by Stern in September 2008. The IEB decision on long term workers came on January 9, 2009, months after the trusteeship hearings had opened. It is as though a judge found a defendant cleared of the charges actually included in an indictment but sentenced him for an offense not listed for trial. Appalling as such a conclusion may be, it stands as a mere procedural peccadillo compared to the rest of Marshall's decision. Not only here, but in every critical respect, his findings lack credibility.
On Retaliation
A single one of Marshall's main "conclusions" is enough to reveal the full flawed flavor of his whole work. "The Hearing and the IEB's Jurisdiction Decisions [on cutting 65,000 members out of UHW: HB]," he writes, "were not Initiated to Retaliate against the UHW for its Aggressive Criticism of International Leaders' Policies and Strategies." [his caps]
What strikes one at first is that this statement is uncalled for. To authorize a trusteeship, Marshall was required to find only a single valid basis for trusteeship even if all the others were flawed. (Which is what he actually did. In the end, he based his operative decision on Rossellli's resistance to losing 65,000 members.) But Marshall went out of his way to legitimize all of Stern's motives. There are subtle PR implications to this finding on "retaliation." Back in May 2008, 47 top SEIU leaders, including members of the IEB, protested that they would never approve a "retaliatory" trusteeship. Whether he intended it or not, Marshall's statement takes them off the hook for voting unanimously for this trusteeship.
But all this, however depressing, is only secondary. The essential point is that Marshall's denial of any retaliatory intent flatly contradicts a record familiar to anyone who has followed recent events in the SEIU. That record reveals a relentless drive to destroy the UHW and Rosselli after his sharp public criticism of Stern's evolving ideology:
In January 2007, Rosselli circulated an internal union memo sharply criticizing an agreement negotiated by Stern with a big association of nursing home chains in California. The agreement, according to Rosselli, created SEIU units that "may come close to becoming … company unions." After Rosselli's UHW submitted petitions denouncing the agreement signed by 20,000 SEIUers, Stern backed off and decided not to renew the deals.
Rosselli had been president of the SEIU California State Council. In January 2008, exercising his overweening power as international president, Stern dissolved the council, ordered elections to a newly organized council, and made sure his handpicked selection got the job. (P.S. Stern's choice now stands accused of misappropriating union money.)
In February 2008, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU international executive committee so that he could feel free to criticize the official line. As expected, and as natural, Stern loyalists responded with a flurry of counterattacks in which they denounced Rosselli not only for what he said but for the very act of straying off the line. The SEIU was adopting a policy that forbade any elected officer, staff employee, or local to criticize official policy before the membership. The whole apparatus, top to bottom, was to appear as one monolithic block. Rosselli and the UHW obviously would not submit to that principle.
In March, Stern made his first trusteeship threats against Rosselli and the UHW.
The June SEIU convention authorized a California reorganization plan that would strip Rosselli's local of 65,000 members.
In August, Stern instituted formal proceedings against UHW-W as the first step toward imposing a trusteeship; in the interim, he appointed two "monitors" to oversee local affairs and control all expenditures. Hearings were adjourned until after the presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Stern's followers instituted two separate federal suits against Rosselli and members of the UHW executive board. The first, filed by the SEIU itself, was dismissed by the federal judge. The second, filed by two individual members of UHW-W, may still be pending. In both cases, the firm of Bredhoff and Kaiser was the complainants' attorney. The complaint in one suit was explicit in seeking "an injunction prohibiting defendants from using UHW-W funds for their defense....."
California SEIUers were asked to vote in an "advisory" referendum: Shall all long-term healthcare workers --- as in nursing homes --- be transferred into one local; or shall all healthcare workers ---including hospitals --- be combined into a single big local of all healthcare workers. For Rosselli's UHW, a Hobson's choice. In one case, UHW-W would lose 65,000 members; in the other, it would be liquidated as a local, and Stern would appoint the officers of the new local.
Two sets of formal internal union charges were suspended over Rosselli. Two UHW-W members charged the Rosselli camp of harassing them for supporting Stern's program. In a second set of internal union charges, two international executive vice presidents charged Rosselli and UHW-officers of offenses already leveled against them in the trusteeship hearings. In both cases, Stern exercised his ample powers to assume jurisdiction and appoint the committees to try the critics whom he detests.
A third threat never reached the level of formal charges. In a letter to Rosselli in July, SEIU General Counsel Judy Scott demanded that he reply to "some evidence" that his staff had turned over an SEIU membership list to the California Nurses Association in Iowa.
Marshall had to shrug off this whole record of attacks on Rosselli to deny any hint of retaliation.
Those 65,000 long term care workers
Of UHW's 150,000 members, some 65,000 worked in "long term care" facilities like nursing homes; the others in acute care facilities like hospitals. The SEIU national office argued that in California all long term care workers, now distributed in several locals including UHW, should be united into a separate local and toward that end, those 65,000 should be cut out of UHW. Rosselli and the UHW opposed this move, insisting that instead of separating long term workers from the others, all health care workers in California should be united into a single local with a democratically elected leadership.
Now, these are hotly contested issues, more than ordinarily complex. They are additionally complicated by devious tawdry implications: Stern insists upon appointing the officers of all new locals. His first obvious candidate to head up any long term local was Tyrone Freeman, whom he had appointed as president of the one existing long term local. But that fell through when Freeman had to be expelled on charges of misappropriating about a million dollars of union money.
There was no valid reason for Marshall to give much weight to any of this, certainly none to make it the key issue in his finding. He was presumably authorized to conduct hearings on specific charges related to a trusteeship demand, and the topic of those 65,000 was never the subject of charges; it was not even mentioned in Stern's original list of charges. It was thrown in only later as a kind of afterthought and even then not as the justification for disciplinary action. Stern called attention to the dispute over the 65,000 to portray the dispute with Rosselli as a fairly routine organizational dispute over how best to organize long term care workers. It was Stern’s effort to portray Rosselli's criticism as simply driven by a narrow desire to hold on to dues payers. In short, Stern's references to the dispute over 65,000 members was not a charge against Rosselli intended to justify a trusteeship; it was an effort to derogate Rosselli's motives.
Marshall not only swallowed Stern's bait hook, line and sinker -- "the basic problem," he wrote, "appears to be the local union's reluctance to accept the IEB's jurisdiction decision that would cause the UHW to lose its 65,000 LTC members." -- he went further, much further. He transformed an almost totally irrelevant complaint into a most serious charge and then used the charge he himself had created as a justification for trusteeship, the main justification.
The funds
One last word on an issue that dominated long hours of the proceedings but which finally had no bearing on the final decision. It has some significance, however, as an indication of Marshall's state of mind. When the danger of a repressive trusteeship loomed, UHW established two separate funds apart from its regular treasury: one was intended as a tax exempt fund to be charted as an IRS 501(c)(3) educational organization. The other was an escrow fund deposited with the local's law firm for future legal action. Stern argued that the real but concealed purpose of the funds was to set aside money to defend the local officers if a trusteeship was established. (When a local is trusteed, its officers can be removed or suspended and the international takes over control over all its resources, including money.) Ironically, Stern threatened a trusteeship because, he said, local officers sought to use local money to fight a trusteeship. Rosselli and the UHW denied the charge and insisted that it set up the funds as a more efficient way of conducting educational and political-type activities. (Full disclosure by HB: On my internet blog, I commented favorably that these funds hopefully could be used to defend the local against an improper trusteeship and to defend the rights of members under a trusteeship. The blog became a minor debated issue before Marshall.)
Actually the issue was mooted before the hearings ever opened because the local yielded, dissolved the funds, and simply restored the money to the local treasury. After hearing the arguments, and obviously recognizing that fact, Marshall concluded , "Although I do not recommend trusteeship for the reasons stated above …" but he had to end the thought with "I believe a trusteeship would have been appropriate to prevent further transfers and recover UHW money already transferred had the trusteeship been imposed at the time of the transfer."
But Marshall had presumably been called upon to assess the validity of charges that would justify this trusteeship, not what might have justified a hypothetical trusteeship that was never imposed. Here too he strained to go beyond the call of duty.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Statement to the SEIU Ethics Commission
After three prominent leaders of the Service Employees International Union were charged with misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars from their local union treasuries, the SEIU set up an ethics commission to recommend measures that the union might take to guard against such misdeeds. The commission includes representatives of the union itself and eminent individuals independent of the union. Herman Benson, for AUD; and Ken Paff, for TDU were asked to submit suggestion to the commission. Benson submitted the following statement to the commission and was interviewed by a commission sub-panel on November 12.
To: Members of the SEIU ethics commission
From: Herman Benson
Since I am unable to attend the meeting in Washington and I know the limits of participating by phone, I herewith transmit my thoughts and suggestions. I would like to thank the commission for this opportunity to participate in its deliberations.
I am not completely clear on what this commission is charged with bringing back to the union. If it is asked simply to bring back a code of commandments that should guide the ethical and moral actions of union officers and members, that task would be easy and should not take long. Codes already proliferate throughout the labor movement; the SEIU has a modest code of its own. The existing codes could easily serve as the basis for elaborating and strengthening an even more impressively formulated code. However, the bare existence of even the best of these codes has had an inconclusive effect on actual life in unions. The neglected problem has been enforcement.
If, on the other hand, the commission aims, not only to suggest a new and better code, but to propose the creation of mechanisms and institutions that might enable the union to enforce adherence to high ethical standards, it takes on a heavy responsibility not easily fulfilled.
In episodic situations, unions have occasionally been able to deal with misappropriation of money and "ordinary" corruption (as far as I know, never with organized crime), but there has never been a successful, sustained, effort with lasting results from within the labor movement itself. In 1957, the AFL-CIO tried with its Ethical Practices Committee and Codes. Recently Ed Stier tried in the Teamsters union. Both were failures. Unfortunately, the labor movement has had to depend upon the U. S. Justice Department to police it against massive theft and organized crime infiltration. Why has the labor movement been unable to adequately police itself? I've thought long and hard about this vexing question.
As I see it now, the weakness of any internal union effort stems from two sources: 1.The power relationships within unions make it politically awkward and inconvenient for even well-meaning union leaders to act against suspect elements in the power structure. That reality permits corruption to fester and makes it difficult to eradicate. 2. In resisting corruption, even with the best will in the world, unions lack the weapons routinely available to law enforcement authorities: wire taps, extensive surveillance, FBI etc. files, subpoena powers, threat of contempt charges.
I mention all this, not to disparage or discourage action but only to make clear how big a job this commission, or any body inside the labor movement, faces. It seems to me, you must be ready to propose measures that go beyond what is conventional in the labor movement or may be downright unpopular. As Obama might say: the old way has failed: we might at least consider the new. In that spirit, I offer my own thinking which I would sum up as follows:
1. We need an authority, within the union which can free itself from internal union politics and can rise above the familiar maneuvering and conflicts for power, prestige, and perquisites. We need an appeals or enforcement institution that is completely independent of any union's own administrative structure, not beholden to any established officialdom, and under certain conditions, free to overturn decisions of the union president or international executive board. 2. Lacking the tools of government law enforcement authorities, we can depend upon the hundreds of thousands of good union activists, whose eyes and ears and dedication to the labor movement, can make them effective guardians of integrity. But for that, we need to create the kind of genuine democratic atmosphere within the union that encourages members to speak their mind without fear of denunciation or retaliation.
In that connection, I offer the following observations:
I: The implementing or enforcement body
Here, the commission can begin by considering the Public Review Board of the United Auto Workers. After the ACLU proposed the creation of such boards in the labor movement, the UAW set up its board upon the initiative of Walter Reuther in 1957; it remains an effective functioning body. The remarkable feature of this move is that it represents the voluntary relinquishing by a union leadership of a measure of its authority to a body composed of individuals outside of the union and independent of its power structure. As an authoritative appeals committee, it offers recourse to members against decisions of the union's highest officers, including the president and international executive board. It is limited only by its inability to review UAW official collective bargaining policy. Its decisions are readily available to UAW members and the general public. (See Articles 32 and 33 of UAW Constitution)
To remain effective, any such a review board must be composed of individuals of unquestioned integrity. If its members were chosen for their deference to the union leadership or dependence upon it, the board would lose all credibility. The UAW has passed this test by selecting people who are pro-labor, civil libertarian in outlook, and eminent their own careers. UAW-PRB members are nominated by the international president, subject to approval by the international executive board, and finally elected at the UAW convention. They serve a term of five years. Any vacancy in mid-term is filled from nominations by the board itself.
I would make at least one suggestion to strengthen the board's reputation for independence. The union president should make his selections from a whole roster of nominations submitted by organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, the UAW Public Review Board, the Association for Union Democracy, the Public Citizen Litigation Group. In that case, while the union retains the right to choose the members of the board, it does so from among panel members chosen by pro-labor civil libertarians independent of the ruling union administration.
After 50 years, the UAW Public Review Board remains unique in the labor movement. (The small independent Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers did emulate the UAW, but I don't know if its Public Review Board survived after the union affiliated with the Carpenters.) The labor movement has remained indifferent at best; some unions have been hostile. The UAW attributed the failure of negotiations for its merger with the IAM and Steelworkers to its insistence upon retaining the PRB. If this commission is to recommend a genuine Public Review Board, roughly modeled upon the UAW's, it must be ready to stand against the prevailing prejudices.
II: The content of any code:
To be taken seriously and be effective, any code must make clear that it is just as concerned to protect membership democratic rights as it is to protect the union against corrupt practices and conflicts of interest. Existing codes spell out, in detail and at length, rules for preserving financial integrity. But where they even refer to union democracy, it is only in passing, briefly, perfunctorily. That imbalance reveals what a union considers important …and what it does not.
The court-enforced consent decree that monitors the Teamsters union calls not only for eradicating corruption, but for encouraging democracy in the union. The Independent Review Board which is responsible for enforcing the consent decree, armed with the power of the court and government law enforcement, has done an excellent job in freeing the union from mob control. But it remains indifferent to appeals from members who complain against violation of their rights. Somehow, democracy falls by the wayside. In the interests of integrity, that kind of neglect should end.
We should be concerned with bolstering union democracy, not only because it is a value in itself or because it tends toward a better and more effective labor movement, but because in the context of this discussion it can be a powerful weapon for defending integrity. Local members and local leaders ---all union activists--- can detect what's happening in their unions sooner and far more effectively than any outside formal investigators. But the atmosphere in the union and the receptivity of the top leadership must encourage them to speak out, knowing that their questions and misgivings will be received, and they need not fear intimidation and retaliation.
It would be disingenuous of me not to admit that I feel that this would require a massive change of mood inside the SEIU. The demand that all elected and appointed representatives, top to bottom, speak with "one voice," the heavy-handed denunciation of Sal Rosselli for the very act of criticizing official policy, and the threat to trusteeship his local all run counter to what is required. The need is to change the mood. For this commission to ignore that reality would be to undermine its effectiveness.
III: The scope of any enforcement body's responsibility and authority
Based on what I have learned over the years, I'd like to lay out what I think are the choices.
What should we expect of any enforcement body, public review board or any other? The alternatives, as I see it, are between 1. to act essentially as a review body, authorized to protect due process and fair play in the union by offering appeals recourse against decisions by the union's own officers and committees, or 2. in addition to or instead of the above, to exercise police powers that would require it to initiate investigations, prefer charges, and perhaps to conduct trials and impose penalties on its own authority.
In public government, Federal courts are appeals bodies. The Department of Justice is the policing agency. Inside the labor movement, the UAW Public Review Board hears appeals. In the Teamsters union, the Independent Review Board is a policing body.
As I remember, when the UAW Public Review Board was in formation, --- this was a moment when the McClellan Committee hearings had exposed widespread corruption in the labor movement --- Walter Reuther suggested that the board might take on responsibility for policing the union against corruption. But the prospective board members demurred because they felt it went far beyond their intentions.
The cost of an appeals board is easily within the resources of a union like the SEIU. Retainers for the members, a full time executive director, and a modest supporting staff would do the trick. But to add policing functions would require much more.
The costs of the Teamsters IRB, whose policing responsibilities include investigating, pressing charges, conducting trials, and sentencing, are borne by the union. Because the IRB is appointed by a Federal judge, it has access to government law enforcement and information gathering facilities which would not be available to any SEIU created body.
If the SEIU wanted to set up a special board both to police the union for corruption like the Teamsters IRB and to act as an appeals body to protect members rights, I think it would need an extensive and expensive investigatory and clerical staff. If the commission and the union decided that such a board was necessary, and the union is ready to bear the costs, I would be ready make suggestions for its functioning. However, I am not ready to recommend the creation of an enforcement board with such broad responsibilities. I favor a board more like the UAW PRB.
Obviously, this commission was created because the union felt it proper to respond to the revelations of misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of dollars by officers of some West Coast union locals. But no responsible person I know of charges that the SEIU is systemically riddled with corruption. The SEIU is not the Teamsters union. I am convinced that if union democracy is protected and encouraged such problems could be adequately handled within the union's own constitutional procedures for charges, trials, and penalties, with this addition: a genuinely impartial public review board with ultimate appeals authority. (In California, there must have been some union members who blew the whistle. The point is to encourage and protect member like them.)
IV: Addendum on democracy
Without lengthy supportive explanation, I would like simply to list some of the provisions that should be included in any code of democratic procedures. I realize that many (most?) are quite controversial. However, they will indicate what I feel is necessary to lift any formulations above the level of holiday homiletics:
1. As a minimum, the rights provided in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act with additions and modifications in what follows.
2. Abolish all meeting attendance rules as a qualification for running for office when they automatically disqualify 90% of members. Since the reality is that only about 5% of a local's members attend meetings, these rules serve no real purpose except to help entrench a tiny minority in office.
3. End the requirement of 24 months continuous good standing as a qualification for candidacy in local elections. The rule serves to disqualify good, active, long term union members who inadvertently fall a few days in arrears or are disqualified by manipulations of the local financial records. Substitute a requirement for, say, one or two years membership with the right to get in good standing at the time of nominations.
4. Encourage the election of job stewards
5. Establish "battle" pages in union publications and on union websites where opposing and dissenting view can be expressed. Follow the example of the United Federation of Teachers, which provides whole pages to rival slates in local elections.
6. Allow members to establish their own independent web sites without imposing niggling or repressive restrictions.
7. Give local unions due process and their day in court by permitting the use of locals' own resources to challenge what they feel are the improper imposition of trusteeships.
8. Provide for membership ratification of contracts after full information is afforded to voters with a reasonable period for discussion.
9. Comply with LMRDA Section 105 which requires unions to inform members of their right under the LMRDA.
10. Require exclusively public employee locals to comply with the relevant provisions of the LMRDA.
11. Provide for the voiding of union elections where the violations of fair procedures are so egregious that they make a mockery of the democratic process.
To: Members of the SEIU ethics commission
From: Herman Benson
Since I am unable to attend the meeting in Washington and I know the limits of participating by phone, I herewith transmit my thoughts and suggestions. I would like to thank the commission for this opportunity to participate in its deliberations.
I am not completely clear on what this commission is charged with bringing back to the union. If it is asked simply to bring back a code of commandments that should guide the ethical and moral actions of union officers and members, that task would be easy and should not take long. Codes already proliferate throughout the labor movement; the SEIU has a modest code of its own. The existing codes could easily serve as the basis for elaborating and strengthening an even more impressively formulated code. However, the bare existence of even the best of these codes has had an inconclusive effect on actual life in unions. The neglected problem has been enforcement.
If, on the other hand, the commission aims, not only to suggest a new and better code, but to propose the creation of mechanisms and institutions that might enable the union to enforce adherence to high ethical standards, it takes on a heavy responsibility not easily fulfilled.
In episodic situations, unions have occasionally been able to deal with misappropriation of money and "ordinary" corruption (as far as I know, never with organized crime), but there has never been a successful, sustained, effort with lasting results from within the labor movement itself. In 1957, the AFL-CIO tried with its Ethical Practices Committee and Codes. Recently Ed Stier tried in the Teamsters union. Both were failures. Unfortunately, the labor movement has had to depend upon the U. S. Justice Department to police it against massive theft and organized crime infiltration. Why has the labor movement been unable to adequately police itself? I've thought long and hard about this vexing question.
As I see it now, the weakness of any internal union effort stems from two sources: 1.The power relationships within unions make it politically awkward and inconvenient for even well-meaning union leaders to act against suspect elements in the power structure. That reality permits corruption to fester and makes it difficult to eradicate. 2. In resisting corruption, even with the best will in the world, unions lack the weapons routinely available to law enforcement authorities: wire taps, extensive surveillance, FBI etc. files, subpoena powers, threat of contempt charges.
I mention all this, not to disparage or discourage action but only to make clear how big a job this commission, or any body inside the labor movement, faces. It seems to me, you must be ready to propose measures that go beyond what is conventional in the labor movement or may be downright unpopular. As Obama might say: the old way has failed: we might at least consider the new. In that spirit, I offer my own thinking which I would sum up as follows:
1. We need an authority, within the union which can free itself from internal union politics and can rise above the familiar maneuvering and conflicts for power, prestige, and perquisites. We need an appeals or enforcement institution that is completely independent of any union's own administrative structure, not beholden to any established officialdom, and under certain conditions, free to overturn decisions of the union president or international executive board. 2. Lacking the tools of government law enforcement authorities, we can depend upon the hundreds of thousands of good union activists, whose eyes and ears and dedication to the labor movement, can make them effective guardians of integrity. But for that, we need to create the kind of genuine democratic atmosphere within the union that encourages members to speak their mind without fear of denunciation or retaliation.
In that connection, I offer the following observations:
I: The implementing or enforcement body
Here, the commission can begin by considering the Public Review Board of the United Auto Workers. After the ACLU proposed the creation of such boards in the labor movement, the UAW set up its board upon the initiative of Walter Reuther in 1957; it remains an effective functioning body. The remarkable feature of this move is that it represents the voluntary relinquishing by a union leadership of a measure of its authority to a body composed of individuals outside of the union and independent of its power structure. As an authoritative appeals committee, it offers recourse to members against decisions of the union's highest officers, including the president and international executive board. It is limited only by its inability to review UAW official collective bargaining policy. Its decisions are readily available to UAW members and the general public. (See Articles 32 and 33 of UAW Constitution)
To remain effective, any such a review board must be composed of individuals of unquestioned integrity. If its members were chosen for their deference to the union leadership or dependence upon it, the board would lose all credibility. The UAW has passed this test by selecting people who are pro-labor, civil libertarian in outlook, and eminent their own careers. UAW-PRB members are nominated by the international president, subject to approval by the international executive board, and finally elected at the UAW convention. They serve a term of five years. Any vacancy in mid-term is filled from nominations by the board itself.
I would make at least one suggestion to strengthen the board's reputation for independence. The union president should make his selections from a whole roster of nominations submitted by organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, the UAW Public Review Board, the Association for Union Democracy, the Public Citizen Litigation Group. In that case, while the union retains the right to choose the members of the board, it does so from among panel members chosen by pro-labor civil libertarians independent of the ruling union administration.
After 50 years, the UAW Public Review Board remains unique in the labor movement. (The small independent Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers did emulate the UAW, but I don't know if its Public Review Board survived after the union affiliated with the Carpenters.) The labor movement has remained indifferent at best; some unions have been hostile. The UAW attributed the failure of negotiations for its merger with the IAM and Steelworkers to its insistence upon retaining the PRB. If this commission is to recommend a genuine Public Review Board, roughly modeled upon the UAW's, it must be ready to stand against the prevailing prejudices.
II: The content of any code:
To be taken seriously and be effective, any code must make clear that it is just as concerned to protect membership democratic rights as it is to protect the union against corrupt practices and conflicts of interest. Existing codes spell out, in detail and at length, rules for preserving financial integrity. But where they even refer to union democracy, it is only in passing, briefly, perfunctorily. That imbalance reveals what a union considers important …and what it does not.
The court-enforced consent decree that monitors the Teamsters union calls not only for eradicating corruption, but for encouraging democracy in the union. The Independent Review Board which is responsible for enforcing the consent decree, armed with the power of the court and government law enforcement, has done an excellent job in freeing the union from mob control. But it remains indifferent to appeals from members who complain against violation of their rights. Somehow, democracy falls by the wayside. In the interests of integrity, that kind of neglect should end.
We should be concerned with bolstering union democracy, not only because it is a value in itself or because it tends toward a better and more effective labor movement, but because in the context of this discussion it can be a powerful weapon for defending integrity. Local members and local leaders ---all union activists--- can detect what's happening in their unions sooner and far more effectively than any outside formal investigators. But the atmosphere in the union and the receptivity of the top leadership must encourage them to speak out, knowing that their questions and misgivings will be received, and they need not fear intimidation and retaliation.
It would be disingenuous of me not to admit that I feel that this would require a massive change of mood inside the SEIU. The demand that all elected and appointed representatives, top to bottom, speak with "one voice," the heavy-handed denunciation of Sal Rosselli for the very act of criticizing official policy, and the threat to trusteeship his local all run counter to what is required. The need is to change the mood. For this commission to ignore that reality would be to undermine its effectiveness.
III: The scope of any enforcement body's responsibility and authority
Based on what I have learned over the years, I'd like to lay out what I think are the choices.
What should we expect of any enforcement body, public review board or any other? The alternatives, as I see it, are between 1. to act essentially as a review body, authorized to protect due process and fair play in the union by offering appeals recourse against decisions by the union's own officers and committees, or 2. in addition to or instead of the above, to exercise police powers that would require it to initiate investigations, prefer charges, and perhaps to conduct trials and impose penalties on its own authority.
In public government, Federal courts are appeals bodies. The Department of Justice is the policing agency. Inside the labor movement, the UAW Public Review Board hears appeals. In the Teamsters union, the Independent Review Board is a policing body.
As I remember, when the UAW Public Review Board was in formation, --- this was a moment when the McClellan Committee hearings had exposed widespread corruption in the labor movement --- Walter Reuther suggested that the board might take on responsibility for policing the union against corruption. But the prospective board members demurred because they felt it went far beyond their intentions.
The cost of an appeals board is easily within the resources of a union like the SEIU. Retainers for the members, a full time executive director, and a modest supporting staff would do the trick. But to add policing functions would require much more.
The costs of the Teamsters IRB, whose policing responsibilities include investigating, pressing charges, conducting trials, and sentencing, are borne by the union. Because the IRB is appointed by a Federal judge, it has access to government law enforcement and information gathering facilities which would not be available to any SEIU created body.
If the SEIU wanted to set up a special board both to police the union for corruption like the Teamsters IRB and to act as an appeals body to protect members rights, I think it would need an extensive and expensive investigatory and clerical staff. If the commission and the union decided that such a board was necessary, and the union is ready to bear the costs, I would be ready make suggestions for its functioning. However, I am not ready to recommend the creation of an enforcement board with such broad responsibilities. I favor a board more like the UAW PRB.
Obviously, this commission was created because the union felt it proper to respond to the revelations of misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of dollars by officers of some West Coast union locals. But no responsible person I know of charges that the SEIU is systemically riddled with corruption. The SEIU is not the Teamsters union. I am convinced that if union democracy is protected and encouraged such problems could be adequately handled within the union's own constitutional procedures for charges, trials, and penalties, with this addition: a genuinely impartial public review board with ultimate appeals authority. (In California, there must have been some union members who blew the whistle. The point is to encourage and protect member like them.)
IV: Addendum on democracy
Without lengthy supportive explanation, I would like simply to list some of the provisions that should be included in any code of democratic procedures. I realize that many (most?) are quite controversial. However, they will indicate what I feel is necessary to lift any formulations above the level of holiday homiletics:
1. As a minimum, the rights provided in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act with additions and modifications in what follows.
2. Abolish all meeting attendance rules as a qualification for running for office when they automatically disqualify 90% of members. Since the reality is that only about 5% of a local's members attend meetings, these rules serve no real purpose except to help entrench a tiny minority in office.
3. End the requirement of 24 months continuous good standing as a qualification for candidacy in local elections. The rule serves to disqualify good, active, long term union members who inadvertently fall a few days in arrears or are disqualified by manipulations of the local financial records. Substitute a requirement for, say, one or two years membership with the right to get in good standing at the time of nominations.
4. Encourage the election of job stewards
5. Establish "battle" pages in union publications and on union websites where opposing and dissenting view can be expressed. Follow the example of the United Federation of Teachers, which provides whole pages to rival slates in local elections.
6. Allow members to establish their own independent web sites without imposing niggling or repressive restrictions.
7. Give local unions due process and their day in court by permitting the use of locals' own resources to challenge what they feel are the improper imposition of trusteeships.
8. Provide for membership ratification of contracts after full information is afforded to voters with a reasonable period for discussion.
9. Comply with LMRDA Section 105 which requires unions to inform members of their right under the LMRDA.
10. Require exclusively public employee locals to comply with the relevant provisions of the LMRDA.
11. Provide for the voiding of union elections where the violations of fair procedures are so egregious that they make a mockery of the democratic process.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
In search of legal defense against illegal trusteeships
In March 2008, the UHW-W executive board deposited $500,000 into a trust account with its attorney to provide for legal defense of the local's autonomy and of the democratic rights of its members and officers against the imposition of an illegal trusteeship. In scheduling the trusteeship hearings, Stern charged, "This is an inappropriate use of union monies." The charge that local funds may not be used to fight a trusteeship, formulated and reformulated with repetitive emphasis, constitutes Stern's main indictment of Rosselli's local. Catch 22! The UHW faces trusteeship because it established a special fund to defend the local and its elected leadership against an illegal trusteeship!
The puzzling difficulty faced by UHW-W, and which establishing a legal defense fund partially surmounts, lies in federal law which provides that any trusteeship imposed by an international union is presumed to be valid for the first 18 months. Once a trusteeship is established, the international takes over the local treasury so that none of its members or elected officers have access to their own local's funds to defend their rights. Starved of money, they find it almost impossible to mount an effective legal case. Meanwhile, the international officials can dip into the union's ample resources to defend their every action. Unrestrained for 18 months, armed with all the international and local levers of money and power, free to employ fear, favor, propaganda, and persuasion, the international moves to create its own political machine in the local and eliminate its annoying critics. Stern's trusteeship and internal charges are obviously intended to bring down Rosselli and simultaneously to deprive him of any means of effective legal defense.
Is it permissible for a local union to set aside money, safe from seizure by the international, so that it can be guaranteed funds to mount a legal defense against trusteeship? That question has arisen before, not in the SEIU but in the Teamsters union. It has never been adequately resolved.
In 1996, when Ron Carey was still IBT president, some 60 Teamster units had already been trusteed, some by the Independent Review Board and some by Carey. Three big anti-Carey locals, fearing trusteeships, each put money into a kind of escrow fund, totaling $400,000 for all three, held in trust by their attorneys. Like Rosselli's fund in 2008, their fund in 1996 was intended to guarantee that they could pay for legal defense against the trusteeship they feared. Like Stern in 2008, Carey in 1996 charged that the fund violated the union constitution and went to court against it. The controversy was never settled, because the three locals backed off and restored the money to the union treasury. But while the battle was still alive, here is what we wrote in Union Democracy Review [No. 106]:
"...what is involved in this dispute is not the right of the international to impose trusteeships but the right of a subordinate body to an adequate defense against the imposition of a trusteeship that may be improper. By protecting legal defense funds from instant seizure, the local body, at least temporarily, gets its day in court. A valid trusteeship might be delayed, but only to allow for a period of genuine due process.
"What is involved here is a matter of important principle that transcends the immediate situation in the Teamsters union. Carey, we are convinced ... uses the weapon of trusteeship on behalf of integrity and democracy. Even he might err in the future. And anyone is capable sometimes of abusing power, even in a worthy cause. But that's not even the greatest danger. Suppose he is defeated and replaced by an old time dictator. If Carey were to try to defend his local by setting up a legal defense fund for protection against repression by, say, a new gang, surely we would all rise to his defense.
"... the issue goes beyond the Teamsters union to affect the broader labor movement. In most cases that come to our attention... trusteeships are imposed to stifle democracy.... Even with a defense fund initially at its disposal, a local is guaranteed only its first day in court. ... The defense fund makes at least a minimal due process available in trusteeship cases. True, the idea is advanced by a suspect old guard. But if we had thought of it first, it would already have become a minor weapon for union democracy."
Now, twelve years later, while SEIU democracy is endangered, the issue returns.
The puzzling difficulty faced by UHW-W, and which establishing a legal defense fund partially surmounts, lies in federal law which provides that any trusteeship imposed by an international union is presumed to be valid for the first 18 months. Once a trusteeship is established, the international takes over the local treasury so that none of its members or elected officers have access to their own local's funds to defend their rights. Starved of money, they find it almost impossible to mount an effective legal case. Meanwhile, the international officials can dip into the union's ample resources to defend their every action. Unrestrained for 18 months, armed with all the international and local levers of money and power, free to employ fear, favor, propaganda, and persuasion, the international moves to create its own political machine in the local and eliminate its annoying critics. Stern's trusteeship and internal charges are obviously intended to bring down Rosselli and simultaneously to deprive him of any means of effective legal defense.
Is it permissible for a local union to set aside money, safe from seizure by the international, so that it can be guaranteed funds to mount a legal defense against trusteeship? That question has arisen before, not in the SEIU but in the Teamsters union. It has never been adequately resolved.
In 1996, when Ron Carey was still IBT president, some 60 Teamster units had already been trusteed, some by the Independent Review Board and some by Carey. Three big anti-Carey locals, fearing trusteeships, each put money into a kind of escrow fund, totaling $400,000 for all three, held in trust by their attorneys. Like Rosselli's fund in 2008, their fund in 1996 was intended to guarantee that they could pay for legal defense against the trusteeship they feared. Like Stern in 2008, Carey in 1996 charged that the fund violated the union constitution and went to court against it. The controversy was never settled, because the three locals backed off and restored the money to the union treasury. But while the battle was still alive, here is what we wrote in Union Democracy Review [No. 106]:
"...what is involved in this dispute is not the right of the international to impose trusteeships but the right of a subordinate body to an adequate defense against the imposition of a trusteeship that may be improper. By protecting legal defense funds from instant seizure, the local body, at least temporarily, gets its day in court. A valid trusteeship might be delayed, but only to allow for a period of genuine due process.
"What is involved here is a matter of important principle that transcends the immediate situation in the Teamsters union. Carey, we are convinced ... uses the weapon of trusteeship on behalf of integrity and democracy. Even he might err in the future. And anyone is capable sometimes of abusing power, even in a worthy cause. But that's not even the greatest danger. Suppose he is defeated and replaced by an old time dictator. If Carey were to try to defend his local by setting up a legal defense fund for protection against repression by, say, a new gang, surely we would all rise to his defense.
"... the issue goes beyond the Teamsters union to affect the broader labor movement. In most cases that come to our attention... trusteeships are imposed to stifle democracy.... Even with a defense fund initially at its disposal, a local is guaranteed only its first day in court. ... The defense fund makes at least a minimal due process available in trusteeship cases. True, the idea is advanced by a suspect old guard. But if we had thought of it first, it would already have become a minor weapon for union democracy."
Now, twelve years later, while SEIU democracy is endangered, the issue returns.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
California labor intellectuals call on Andy Stern to respect constructive dissent in SEIU
AUD recently received this letter by email:
An Open Letter of Concern to Andy Stern
About United Healthcare Workers-West
From California Educators, Academics, Writers and Worker Advocates
November 9, October 2008
Mr. Andy Stern
Service Employees International Union
1800Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Andy Stern:
On May Day, 2008, more than 100 scholars, writers and activists, many of them longstanding supporters of SEIU, wrote to you and urged reconsideration of any plan to place United Healthcare Workers-West in trusteeship. That public letter said: "Putting UHW under trusteeship would send a very troubling message and be viewed, by many, as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU."
The letter endorsers were told, at the time, that no such plan existed and that UHW statements about this matter were simply not true. Such reassurances were received in a personal message from SEIU EVPs Eliseo Medina and Gerry Hudson and in a letter signed by 47 other SEIU leaders. As recently as July, the threat of an international union take-over of UHW was dismissed as a "myth" by SEIU IEB member Stephen Lerner (in an exchange of views posted on MRZine).
Now, we've learned that you indeed ordered UHW trusteeship hearings. These began in San Mateo on September 26 and 27 and are scheduled to resume and conclude next week in San Jose. Moreover, you have gone ahead despite an enormous outpouring of opposition from UHW members and others, including the protest in Manhattan Beach by 5,000 SEIU members opposed to the arbitrary removal of 60,000 UHW-represented workers to Local 6434 in Los Angeles. More than 8000 members protested at the San Mateo hearings. At the same time, the media has reported very serious allegations of corruption involving Local 6434 President Tyrone Freeman, which have led to his removal by your office and an on-going investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor that could lead to criminal charges against him. It would appear that those home care and nursing home workers faced with the possibility of forced transfer from UHW to Freeman's local have had good reason to resist.
We in California have, of course, a great deal at stake in the outcome of these disputes. The trusteeship fears of UHW seem to be very well-founded. While a clean-up of 6434 may require outside intervention, we believe that a simultaneous, unjustified take- over of 150,000 member UHW would be a disaster for the California labor movement (and SEIU nationally). It would further disrupt current contract negotiations with major health care
employers, while also impeding much-needed political action to defend state worker jobs in health, education and other public services. As the May Day letter endorsers did last spring, we urge you to "avoid such a tragedy"--by respecting the autonomy and constructive dissent of UHW.
Sincerely,*
Frank Bardacke, Writer, Labor Educator and Founder, Third World Teaching Resource Center
Martin Bennett, Professor of History, Santa Rosa Junior College, Executive Board, North Bay Labor Council
Jeff Blankfort, Radio Host, KZYX, Mendocino Public Radio
Gillian C. Boal, Rare Book Conservator, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Iain A. Boal, Professor of Social History, UC Santa Cruz
Gray Brechin, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Geography, UC Berkeley; Project Scholar of the California Living New Deal Project.
Bob Brenner, Director, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Summer Brenner, Environmental Justice Activist, Berkeley
Charles Briggs, Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
James Brook, poet, San Francisco
Jose Calderon, Professor, Sociology and Chicano Studies, Pitzer College
Jamie Court, President, Consumer Watchdog
Mike Davis, Writer and Professor, Creative Writing, UC Riverside
A. J. Duffy, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Judy Dugan, Research Director, Consumer Watchdog
Barry Eidlin, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Richard Flacks, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
Jack Gerson, Executive Board and Bargaining Team, Oakland Education Association
David Goldberg, Treasurer, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Charlene Harrington, Professor of Sociology and Nursing, UC San Francisco
Dan Hodges Chair, Health Care for All-California
Ramsey Kanaan, PM Press, Oakland
John Kramer, Professor of Political Science, California State University Sonoma
Karl Kramer, Treasurer, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement - San Francisco, Campaign Co-director, San Francisco Living Wage Coalition
Jack Kurzweil, Former President (San Jose State University Chapter),
California Faculty Association, SEIU 1983
Sasha Lilley, Program Director, KPFA
Dr. Arthur Lipow, Center for Global Peace & Democracy, Alameda
Jeff Lustig, Professor, Political Science Dept. CSU Sacramento.
Joseph Matthews, Attorney
Nathanael Matthiesen, Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Tom Mertes, Administrator, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Franco Moretti, Professor of Literature, Stanford University
Claudia Moura, Professor, Social Science, Santa Rosa Junior College
Betty Olson-Jones, President, Oakland Education Association
Raj Patel, Writer, Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Richard Perry, J.D., Ph.D. Professor of Justice Studies
San Jose' State University
Vivian Price, Coordinator, Labor Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Melvin Pritchard, Professor of History, West Valley College
Tom Reifer, Sociology, University of San Diego; Associate Fellow, Transnational Institute
Teri Reynolds, MD, PhD, Past delegate, Alameda County Medical Center Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU
Bill Shields, Chair, Community and Labor Studies, City College of San Francisco
Faith Simon, Mendocino Institute
Norman Solomon, Institute for Public Accuracy, Author, War Made Easy
Vanessa Tait, author, Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below,
Member, UPTE-CWA Local 9119, UC Berkeley
Kay Trimberger, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, California State University Sonoma
Richard A. Walker, Chair, California Studies Center, UC Berkeley
Katharine Wallerstein, Executive Director, The Global Commons Foundation
David Walls, Professor of Sociology, California State University, Sonoma
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley
Cal Winslow, Fellow, Environmental Politics, UC Berkeley, Director Mendocino Institute
Eddie Yuen, Author, editor and radio producer
*affiliations listed for identification purposes only
An Open Letter of Concern to Andy Stern
About United Healthcare Workers-West
From California Educators, Academics, Writers and Worker Advocates
November 9, October 2008
Mr. Andy Stern
Service Employees International Union
1800Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Andy Stern:
On May Day, 2008, more than 100 scholars, writers and activists, many of them longstanding supporters of SEIU, wrote to you and urged reconsideration of any plan to place United Healthcare Workers-West in trusteeship. That public letter said: "Putting UHW under trusteeship would send a very troubling message and be viewed, by many, as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU."
The letter endorsers were told, at the time, that no such plan existed and that UHW statements about this matter were simply not true. Such reassurances were received in a personal message from SEIU EVPs Eliseo Medina and Gerry Hudson and in a letter signed by 47 other SEIU leaders. As recently as July, the threat of an international union take-over of UHW was dismissed as a "myth" by SEIU IEB member Stephen Lerner (in an exchange of views posted on MRZine).
Now, we've learned that you indeed ordered UHW trusteeship hearings. These began in San Mateo on September 26 and 27 and are scheduled to resume and conclude next week in San Jose. Moreover, you have gone ahead despite an enormous outpouring of opposition from UHW members and others, including the protest in Manhattan Beach by 5,000 SEIU members opposed to the arbitrary removal of 60,000 UHW-represented workers to Local 6434 in Los Angeles. More than 8000 members protested at the San Mateo hearings. At the same time, the media has reported very serious allegations of corruption involving Local 6434 President Tyrone Freeman, which have led to his removal by your office and an on-going investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor that could lead to criminal charges against him. It would appear that those home care and nursing home workers faced with the possibility of forced transfer from UHW to Freeman's local have had good reason to resist.
We in California have, of course, a great deal at stake in the outcome of these disputes. The trusteeship fears of UHW seem to be very well-founded. While a clean-up of 6434 may require outside intervention, we believe that a simultaneous, unjustified take- over of 150,000 member UHW would be a disaster for the California labor movement (and SEIU nationally). It would further disrupt current contract negotiations with major health care
employers, while also impeding much-needed political action to defend state worker jobs in health, education and other public services. As the May Day letter endorsers did last spring, we urge you to "avoid such a tragedy"--by respecting the autonomy and constructive dissent of UHW.
Sincerely,*
Frank Bardacke, Writer, Labor Educator and Founder, Third World Teaching Resource Center
Martin Bennett, Professor of History, Santa Rosa Junior College, Executive Board, North Bay Labor Council
Jeff Blankfort, Radio Host, KZYX, Mendocino Public Radio
Gillian C. Boal, Rare Book Conservator, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Iain A. Boal, Professor of Social History, UC Santa Cruz
Gray Brechin, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Geography, UC Berkeley; Project Scholar of the California Living New Deal Project.
Bob Brenner, Director, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Summer Brenner, Environmental Justice Activist, Berkeley
Charles Briggs, Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
James Brook, poet, San Francisco
Jose Calderon, Professor, Sociology and Chicano Studies, Pitzer College
Jamie Court, President, Consumer Watchdog
Mike Davis, Writer and Professor, Creative Writing, UC Riverside
A. J. Duffy, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Judy Dugan, Research Director, Consumer Watchdog
Barry Eidlin, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Richard Flacks, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
Jack Gerson, Executive Board and Bargaining Team, Oakland Education Association
David Goldberg, Treasurer, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Charlene Harrington, Professor of Sociology and Nursing, UC San Francisco
Dan Hodges Chair, Health Care for All-California
Ramsey Kanaan, PM Press, Oakland
John Kramer, Professor of Political Science, California State University Sonoma
Karl Kramer, Treasurer, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement - San Francisco, Campaign Co-director, San Francisco Living Wage Coalition
Jack Kurzweil, Former President (San Jose State University Chapter),
California Faculty Association, SEIU 1983
Sasha Lilley, Program Director, KPFA
Dr. Arthur Lipow, Center for Global Peace & Democracy, Alameda
Jeff Lustig, Professor, Political Science Dept. CSU Sacramento.
Joseph Matthews, Attorney
Nathanael Matthiesen, Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Tom Mertes, Administrator, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Franco Moretti, Professor of Literature, Stanford University
Claudia Moura, Professor, Social Science, Santa Rosa Junior College
Betty Olson-Jones, President, Oakland Education Association
Raj Patel, Writer, Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Richard Perry, J.D., Ph.D. Professor of Justice Studies
San Jose' State University
Vivian Price, Coordinator, Labor Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Melvin Pritchard, Professor of History, West Valley College
Tom Reifer, Sociology, University of San Diego; Associate Fellow, Transnational Institute
Teri Reynolds, MD, PhD, Past delegate, Alameda County Medical Center Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU
Bill Shields, Chair, Community and Labor Studies, City College of San Francisco
Faith Simon, Mendocino Institute
Norman Solomon, Institute for Public Accuracy, Author, War Made Easy
Vanessa Tait, author, Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below,
Member, UPTE-CWA Local 9119, UC Berkeley
Kay Trimberger, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, California State University Sonoma
Richard A. Walker, Chair, California Studies Center, UC Berkeley
Katharine Wallerstein, Executive Director, The Global Commons Foundation
David Walls, Professor of Sociology, California State University, Sonoma
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley
Cal Winslow, Fellow, Environmental Politics, UC Berkeley, Director Mendocino Institute
Eddie Yuen, Author, editor and radio producer
*affiliations listed for identification purposes only
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