SEIU Local 1000, the state's largest union of state employees has authorized their leaders to call a strike. If you recall, Republicans held up the union's agreement with the Governor, which included cost-saving provisions. It even included one furlough day per month. However, now that the Governor has basically unilateral authority to call a furlough day, I suppose he doesn't much need that. For whatever strange reason, the ratification of the contract requires a 2/3 vote, and no Republican votes were coming despite (or perhaps beacause) of the Governor's support for the deal.
"This is about our contract," SEIU President Yvonne Walker said in a press statement announcing the vote. "Whether it is through litigation, negotiations or any other actions that are necessary, we're in this for the long-haul to right this wrong to our members. We negotiated in good faith, we have offered cost-saving solutions, and we need our contract to be ratified." (SacBee 8/1/09)
Needless to say, the impact of a state strike would be very significant. However, the way the Governor has played this is rather shocking. He negotiated this deal, and then essentially dropped it when the going got the slightest bit difficult.
The local has gone out of its way to stay quiet up until now. During the May 19 Debacle, they stayed neutral while most of the rest of the SEIU locals went no. They have worked diligently to get this through with a minimum of fuss, and when it comes down to it, that's what they should of got. But, this is just one more piece of the stink-laden manure of Arnold's legacy.
Rumors ran rampant yesterday that state employees, pushed too far by yet another salary cut (totaling 20% over the course of the year), would potentially strike.
Doug Crooks, Director of Communications with the Service Employees International Union's local 1000, which represents more than 95,000 state employees, declined to confirm the rumor but said any decision would be made by the employees through an authorization vote.
"In the first place, that decision hasn't been made yet," said Crooks about the plan to strike. "That decision hasn't been made yet. We are definitely going to strongly oppose and do everything we can to prevent the governor from imposing a fourth furlough day. But check back with me Monday."
"The bottom line is we negotiated with this governor in good faith and we agreed on a contract that would save $340 million dollars immediately, and if applied to all state employees it would save the state a billion dollars. That's billion with a 'B.' And for the governor to undermine that contract now is beyond irresponsible. He's made the state employee a pawn" in the state budget negotiations.
"Well actually, it's a five percent cut on top of those three furlough days," explained Alicia Trost, a spokesperson for Senate leader Darrell Steinberg. "It's simply a scare tactic by the governor, yet another, and we feel the state workforce has already paid their fair share. What's worse is that it would have a horrible effect on the economy if state workers were to lose up to 20 percent of their buying power."
By the way, Mr. Stogie just lost a furlough case, with a judge tentatively ruling that he cannot furlough the legal staff of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, which has emboldened the larger pool of workers in SEIU. But more to the point, in the world of Arnold Antionette and the Yacht Party, workers making a median income getting 20% salary cuts while the largest corporations doing business in the state get a massive corporate tax break is considered "everyone paying their fair share."
Speaking of which, Lenny Goldberg offers the text of an initiative to repeal the negotiated-in-secret corporate tax cuts and save the state $2.5 billion dollars a year. Opponents typically respond with race-to-the-bottom rhetoric about businesses leaving the state, which isn't true, by the way.
UPDATE: Here's a study out TODAY from the PPIC confirming that the whole "the rich are leaving California" line is a flat-out lie.
Finally, a federal appeals court ruled that California cannot cut Medi-Cal reimbursements, in an opinion written by a George W. Bush appointee. The familiar pattern of breaking the law to cut the budget often runs up against judicial review, and so the criminals in Sacramento - considering what they're attempting, I don't consider that hyperbole - will have to try something else to achieve their long-sought destruction of the social safety net.
Per reports from Randy Shaw from the UNITE-HERE convention in Chicago, the entire labor movement has allied with UNITE-HERE in opposition to SEIU's raids into UNITE-HERE's jurisdictions.
Laborers President Terrence O'Sullivan described SEIU's conduct as "deplorable," and said "we didn't join Change to Win to raid and hijack another union's members." Change to Win leaders James Hoffa of the Teamsters and Joe Hansen of the United Food and Commercial Workers also pledged support, while Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (one of the only two international presidents that SEIU claimed back its position) now supports UNITE HERE. UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm defiantly castigated SEIU as "the bosses union," and said that his workers are now in a "two headed fight: a fight with the boss and a fight with the boss's lackey union." Wilhelm said there has been "real widespread revulsion" throughout the labor movement against SEIU's conduct, and the UNITE HERE convention has announced a new labor movement unity, with SEIU alone on its own.
Yesterday I was excited to announce that the SEIU California State Council has endorsed me in my race to represent California's 10th Congressional District, a Northern California district encompassing parts of Contra Costa, Solano, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. With 700,000 members, SEIU is the largest labor union in California, and their ranks include a broad cross-section of working Californians, including social workers, nurses, classroom aides, security officers, college professors, homecare workers, janitors, and more.
Why I'm motivated to lead on single-payer health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, and green-collar jobs over the flip...
Today represents the official count of the ballots cast by Fresno homecare providers in an election that took place between June 1st and 15th in.Fresno County. The outcome of this election will determine whether NUHW or SEIU represents 10,000 Fresno homecare providers...
As the state's budget woes grow it is increasingly difficult to gauge what the public wants (or even understands.) The information channels are stuffed with corporate/conservative propaganda and astroturf like the "tea parties" but there is little comprehensive, accurate and truly objective information available to help the public understand what is happening. For example, few stories about the budget explain that a minority of only 1/3 of the legislature is blocking the passage of a budget, or that a budget was passed by the legislature in January and was vetoed by the Governor. Few stories explain the extent of budget cuts the state has already made.
The uninformed public isn't helping solve this. Turnout for the special election was only about 28 percent of our 17.1 millionregistered voters, which is about 20% of the 23,385,819eligible voters. So the election didn't tell us what about 80% of our citizens want to do. It did show that a solid majority of 20% of us didn't want those particular ballot initiatives. But what does this mean? While 31% of Los Angeles County voters were for proposition 1a, just this last November 68% voted for the Measure R sales tax increase. This corresponds with other gauges of the meaning of the special election. So the special election provides little guidance for policymakers.
During the special election, I had the opportunity to work with the SEIU state council to reject the Governor's crazy Prop 1A. Even after the election, they, along with other coalition partners, have been working to fight the Governor's talking points of cuts-only budget. The coalition presented facts showing that Californians do not want the drastic cuts that Arnold was claiming they did. In fact, they are willing to raise a bit of revenue. But, there is always another fight in this budget mess.
Today they released a new TV ad along with a website, CommonSenseForCA.org. This message needs to go out far and wide: A Cuts-only budget is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to be last in the nation in education spending or to slash HIV/AIDS funding. It is not ok to take away Health Families coverage. There are options available to us, options that are supported by wide majorities of the state.
As the ad says, the Legislature and the Governor need to apply some common sense before they set the state back any further.
UPDATE: Apparently SEIU will be spending a million bucks to air this around the state. Well, that will bring some attention. SacBee.
Dave Regan, executive vice-president of SEIU and appointed trustee of SEIU-UHW gave a speech last night to hundreds of SEIU organizers who have been shipped into Fresno from around the country.
Dave Regan is the public face of SEIU in Fresno County where 10,000 homecare workers are voting in an election to leave SEIU and join their own union, NUHW. Here's a sample of what SEIU's top spokesperson in Fresno had to say:
Local California blogger Adios Andy has a great post up about how workers from all over California are volunteering in the upcoming June election in which 10,000 Fresno County homecare workers are seeking to leave SEIU and join NUHW.
In his latest act of madness, Arnold is now proposing a five percent cut across the board for all state employees:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to propose a 5 percent across-the-board pay cut for state workers to save nearly $500 million in next year's budget, a spokesman said Thursday.(SacBee 5/28/09)
The thing is that these "across the board" cuts are simply lazy. Resources aren't as important in one place as they are another. That's why we don't simply grow or scale back the budget by a percentage each year. There are some programs that are more important than others.
At this point, it is imperative that progressives work to provide some visiblity for these crazy cuts. One such group who is doing that is SEIU, whose workers just wrapped up their 48-hour Sacramento vigil to avoid the drastic cuts in in-home support services (IHSS). Yesterday, I spoke to Eliseo Medina, about the situation here in California.
While it wasn't surprising to hear that this situation was really only different from other situations in other states by the willingness to work together by the governor, the bigger issue that grabbed my attention was the way the issue was sort of blown off. Before the May election, SEIU leaders had a sit-down with the Governor, and reached out to work together for solutions to the budget situation. But once the election passed, there was silence on the other end of the line. No word from the Governor or his nominally Democratic CoS Susan Kennedy. It was straight to the "cut to the bone rhetoric."
The thing about IHSS is that there really isn't a cost-efficient way to cut. Here are the alternatives:
1) Cut wages from $12 to minimum wage, $8. You lose a slew of IHSS workers to other service sector jobs, even in this economy. These people are generally reliable people, and that's always in demand. And when you get more money working at In 'N' Out, why do we expect the dedicated IHSS workers to stick around?
2) Cut service levels. Even at higher wages, IHSS care is far cheaper than nursing home care. Up to 4 times cheaper. So when the governor threatens to cut both per client services and service availability, what he is really saying is that these people should simply go to nursing homes.
Funny thing about this is that when they get on MediCal, because they will, the state simply ends up paying on the other end. Guess what, there are laws about what you can do to people. Under both California and federal laws, we have commitments to provide care. SEIU has already filed one lawsuit, and plans to bring another. When you are cutting into the bone, it's simply not as easy as Arnold would like to portray.
On the other hand, nothing is really easy these days. SEIU is also facing a fight with the former leaders of UHW who have created their own union, NUHW. NUHW recently won a local election in San Pablo and there's another election in Fresno.
Barack Obama visits California for a couple DNC fundraisers today. I doubt he'll have time to turn on the teevee. But if he does, he will be greeted with a new ad featuring Pauline Beck, the woman who Obama worked with in the SEIU's "Walk A Day In My Shoes" campaign during the Presidential primaries.
The ad is aimed mostly at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who mandated cuts to home health care worker pay, and got the federal government to sign off on them without impacting the flow of stimulus dollars. Basically, Schwarzenegger used the technicality that counties would not be responsible for backfilling worker pay, and therefore burdened with dealing with state cuts, because they always have the option of just cutting the workers completely. It's just another example of the Governor thinking that the message of "the people" is to place the entire burden of the budget deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable members of society.
But a new print ad running in today's LA Times actually addresses Obama directly over the issue.
Dear Mr. President,
I am Pauline Beck - the California home care worker you spent a day on the job with in August 2007. You helped me provide care to Mr. John Thornton, an 86-year old man in a wheelchair who is able to stay in his home because of the care I provide.
I know you are very busy, but Mr. John and I, and my fellow home care workers and their clients, need your help.
You see, Governor Schwarzenegger wants to cut my pay back to $8 an hour. These are tough times, but if my pay gets cut to minimum wage I won't be able to support my family. It's just wrong to pay us so little for taking care of people who have given our communities and our country so much...
I know you are a good man and I am proud of the job you are doing. I hope you and the Governor can work together to help Mr. John, me and the 750,000 of Californians just like us. It would make such a difference in our lives. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pauline Beck
SEIU is right to personalize this crisis and take on the Governor and the political leadership. The President ought to know about how California is seeking to reverse his stimulus package by slashing the salaries and services of those most able to contribute quickly to the economy, forestalling recovery.
...incidentally, at this link you can write a message to the Governor about these home health care worker cuts.
UPDATE by Brian: I was going to write about the 48-hour vigil that SEIU workers are engaging in right now, but it fits with Dave's post quite well. Beginning yesterday at around noon, homecare workers have been set up at Capitol Park to protest wage and service cuts. They'll be testifying about the very real pain these proposed cuts will cause.
SEIU has been focusing on the fact that there was a billion dollar plus corporate tax cut despite the budget mess, and they'll be hitting that note in a number of protests tomorrow.
For the last month, Andy Stern's SEIU has been trying to stop worker activists at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo from organizing to win an election and build their own union, NUHW. Today they counted the votes.
158 workers voted for NUHW.
24 workers voted for SEIU.
There's a story behind this David vs. Goliath victory, and it has implications for everyone who cares about the labor movement and grassroots efforts to build workers' power. Let me tell you why...
When Obama was running as a Presidential candidate in 2007 he spent a few hours working with a home health care worker in Alameda, 61 year old Pauline Beck. Remember, this woman had a union contract:
While Beck's life - struggling to make ends meet with two jobs and regular visits to the food bank - couldn't be more different than the 46-year-old Democratic presidential candidate's, she came away feeling "he just cares about people. ... He wanted to know about me, yes, he did. He really wanted to feel what I did."
I wonder how Pauline Beck feels about the Obama administration helping cut her wage from $12.10 an hour to $10.10 an hour. I guess she can get a third job.
Actually, according to Andy Stern, Pauline and IHSS workers like her will get cut back to $8 an hour. Several bigger bloggers and national groups are picking up on this story today. As Greg Sargent notes, Pauline Beck even spoke at the 2008 DNC. There's video of the then-candidate's visit with Pauline Beck.
Sargent confirms with SEIU that Beck would be hit by this reduction in wages, just two years after Barack Obama walked a day in her shoes. The Administration could have used the power of the purse - and the threat of pulling stimulus money away from California - to get the Governor to back off on these wage reductions. Instead, they acquiesced, and Pauline Beck, Obama's former work buddy, will pay the price.
Brian Beutler of TPMDC has more on this, and Andy Stern has sent a message to his supporters asking them to call the Governor and stop the cuts, although the President is implicated in his message as well.
Two years ago, President Barack Obama walked a day in the shoes of SEIU home care worker Pauline Beck.
Today, Pauline and home care workers across California face pay cuts of up to 33% -- from $12.10 an hour down to $8.
Governor Schwarzenegger's belief that solving the state's fiscal problems on the backs of those who take care of the most fragile among us is an absolute disgrace.
Please call the Governor's office and tell him you strongly disagree with his misguided priorities:
916-445-2841
Earlier this week, Californians sent a clear message of no confidence in Governor Schwarzenegger -- soundly rejecting his proposed budget reforms.
He proposed four ballot initiatives, and all four went down to overwhelming defeats.
The L.A. Times noted that some are beginning to write his "political obituary."
It's no wonder why.
Stern intimates that he will "file a challenge" against the Govenror's decision. Maybe Schwarzenegger needs to walk a day in the shoes of these home health care workers- oh, wait, that didn't work either.
Arnold Twitters in that he got "permission" to enact the budget cuts on home health care workers and still qualify for all federal stimulus money in the health care sector. Cap Weekly has more.
The state of California has received permission from the federal government to cut wages of home healthcare workers without fear of losing federal stimulus dollars.
The ruling comes as a victory for the Schwarzenegger administration, and a defeat for the Service Employees International Union which had sought federal intervention to stop the cuts.
Cuts in home healthcare worker pay were part of the budget solution passed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders in February. As part of his May budget revision, Schwarzenegger has proposed further cuts for in-home support workers. The Legislature cut IHSS worker pay by $2 per hour, lowering wages from $12.10 to $10.10 per hour. The cuts saved the state an estimated $74 million.
It's important to note that, while these cuts suck and will really hurt IHSS workers, they are relatively minor compared to the cuts in health care and education Schwarzenegger wants to enact, while still qualifying for stimulus money. So the Administration can still wield some power here. But obviously this is a bad sign. The Governor should not be allowed to essentially reverse the effect of the stimulus on his own. In fact, he ought to just resign.
Schwarzenegger said he received the voters' message "loud and clear: an overwhelming majority of people told Sacramento, 'Go and do your work yourself, don't come to us with your problems...."
"The message was clear from the people, go all out and make those cuts and live within your means," he said.
Voters were so worked up, in fact, that they turned out in the lowest numbers in state history, and they voted down the same borrowing gimmicks and spending cuts for successful programs that will now compose the Governor's agenda. Let me suggest that I don't believe in his message-taking ability.
Marc Cooper actually has a decent column on Arnold's total failure.
Roger Niello has found a use for the special election - to deny the SEIU a contract they bargained in good faith with the Governor. Enough Yacht Party members joined him to delay the deal.
A local Republican on Monday helped defeat an Assembly bill that must be passed to enshrine the new contract the Schwarzenegger administration signed this year with its largest state workers' union.
Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, urged legislators to oppose or abstain from voting on AB 964, saying it was "awfully inappropriate" to vote right now on the agreement with the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000.
Niello said legislators should wait at least until May 19, when Californians vote in a special election on six propositions to shrink the budget gap.
"We should not pre-empt the voters by dealing with this issue today (Monday)," Niello told the Assembly. "It can wait until June or after."
Of course, voters have no say in government labor contracts; they appear nowhere on the May 19 ballot. But Andrew McIntosh explains what's really going on here, something the Sacramento Bee saw fit to put on their website but not in their print edition.
Niello appears to be using Republican clout to offer the governor some leverage - holding out on the contract approval as long as possible so that the SEIU doesn't mount a major attack-ad campaign on propositions he favors, such as 1A.
That proposition would give the governor new power to unilaterally make mid-year cuts in spending to some programs and extend certain tax increases by two years.
That's hardly speculative. Niello voted for the budget and supports the ballot measures that resulted from them. He knows that SEIU has already dropped $500,000 into defeating Prop. 1A, the long-sought spending cap, and has decided to use the leverage of the contract vote to blackmail SEIU into keeping quiet. Even Republicans who don't support the special election have no problem taking time out of their busy day to shit on workers, so they are happy do the Governor's bidding, hoping that, in the aftermath, they can knuckle the union down for more concessions should the measures fail. Which would be absurd - the Governor made a deal, which includes major concessions from the union, separate from the passage or failure of any ballot measure.
No surprise, by the way, that the Bee doesn't go into this level of detail in their print edition - the editorial board basically threatened SEIU in exactly the same way as Niello a week or so ago, arguing that the passage of their contract should be tied to Prop. 1A's passage. And they have the audacity to call out the SEIU for duplicity, while rooting on legislative blackmail because SEIU's parent organization disagrees with the editorial opinion of the Bee on how to best serve the long-term interests of the state. And this shows in them leaving the underlying reasons for legislative deals out of their news articles.
The SEIU donated $500,000 to the No on 1A campaign, the first truly major expenditure by any group against the ballot measures on May 19. The No on 1A campaign now hold about $1 million in their bank account. While this is dwarfed by the money dumped into the Yes campaign by, among other groups, the CTA, billionaires like Jerry Perenchio, and Chevron, given the attitudes of the electorate even a little money on the No side could be enough to stop the onslaught and tip these measures. Politicos understand this fairly well:
"It just got a lot harder," said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a former Republican strategist.
"The biggest advantage the proponents have had all along is the lack of a well-funded opposition," Schnur said. "Historically, you don't need to outspend ballot measures to beat them, and in a low-turnout election this is a decent amount of money." [...]
"Right now there's a tremendous tendency to reject anything out of Sacramento," said Republican strategist Dave Gilliard.
Good for the SacBee, by the way, for pointing out that Prop. 1A "has a long-term impact and would not directly alter the budget until 2011."
I've been speaking at a lot of grassroots Democratic groups against these measures, purely on the public policy merits, and the overriding sentiment I'm seeing out there lines up with what Dave Gilliard says there. The disconnect between the establishment and the grassroots is truly striking. People don't feel like their concerns have been met, either this year or for the last thirty, really. They see another layer of budget dysfunction forced upon the voters that fails to get at the structural problems. And now, they're starting to see their voices manifested with action, as well as the mother's milk of California politics, money.
I touched on this in Quick Hits, but Kevin Yamamura has now followed up. The SEIU state council, representing 700,000 workers in the state, has teamed with two other unions to oppose Prop. 1A.
Service Employees International Union's California State Council, which says it represents 700,000 workers, has teamed up with the California Faculty Association and the California Federation of Teachers to form a committee opposing Proposition 1A. The ballot measure would limit state spending in good fiscal years, diverting money to a "rainy-day fund." But it also would extend $16 billion worth of temporary tax increases on sales, income and vehicles to 2013.
"Prop 1A won't be able to do what its supporters claim," said Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, in a statement. "This constitutional amendment, supported by the governor and legislators was developed with no public scrutiny and won't stop the budget chaos. Once voters read this proposal with their own eyes, they will see that it is flawed and overly complicated, and will give extraordinary new and unrestricted power to the governor and his political appointees, with no checks and balances."
The response from Budget Reform Now, the Governor's ad hoc group supporting the measures, is unintentionally hilarious, because it frames once again with the same tired doomsaying rhetoric:
"This is disappointing since those who we hurt the most should Propositions 1A thru 1F not pass will be teachers, schools and the hard-working families of SEIU," said Julie Soderlund, spokeswoman for Budget Reform Now, proponents of the six budget-related ballot measures. "During these tough economic times, it is unfair to do anything that will likely cost many people their jobs."
Way to advocate for your position, guys.
...Meanwhile, Arnold can't leave his house to advocate for the ballot measures because everybody hates him. Boy, Misters Brown, Newsom, and Villaraigosa, you've all really hitched your wagon to a star. Way to go.
Sometimes in the midst of a broader organizing effort there's a moment that clarifies exactly what you're fighting for. NUHW activist and union member Eloise Reese-Burns has just such a moment to share with us tonight.
Eloise Reese-Burns has worked as a certified nursing assistant at Cottonwood Healthcare in Woodland California for 39 years. This month, along with 350 of her co-workers, she become one of the first official members of NUHW, a member-led union of healthcare workers formed just this year.
Building NUHW will not be easy. But Eloise Reese-Burns explains why it is necessary...
When Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post noted last Wednesday that this is "an awkward moment for the SEIU," he alerted readers to a reality those following the labor movement have recognized for some time.
Andy Stern, President of SEIU, viewed as "a possible savior of labor" per MacGillis, has led SEIU into a pattern of activity that calls into question whether SEIU's leaders really believe in the principles they claim to stand for.
The simplest way to understand the gap between SEIU's words and its actions is to understand that, for Andy Stern, the consolidation of power has consistently trumped principle. While supporting Stern and SEIU once seemed like 'one stop shopping' for progressives looking to support workers, that support increasingly comes at the price of turning a blind eye to a troubling pattern of hypocrisy.
