SF Labor Council to Purple Plague: Get Bent!

Maybe it's just something in the water that comes out of Crystal Springs, but it seems that the labor bigwigs in San Francisco just aren't interested in tugging at their forelocks whenever any of the cloven-hooved minions of Our Glorious Maximum Leader open their traps...

In a further sign of SEIU’s growing estrangement from the labor movement, the San Francisco Labor Council has rejected SEIU’s threat to withdraw 40% of its Council funding unless UNITE HERE Local 2 drops its support for NUHW’s decertification campaign against SEIU’s home health care workers. At an August 21 Executive Board meeting, representatives of several unions took turns castigating SEIU-UHW Trustee Dave Regan for threatening the Council’s funding, while praising Local 2’s historic commitment to worker rights. Although Regan had threatened the “immediate withdrawal” of SEIU’s $17,000 monthly Council contribution during an August 15 meeting with Local 2 officials, he now denied that SEIU had decided to withdraw funding. Instead, he said that he had requested to meet with Local 2 to see how SEIU-UHW could help UNITE HERE in its contract fight against San Francisco’s hotels. Most striking about the meeting was the widespread criticism of SEIU’s bullying tactics, and the strong defense of Local 2’s efforts to help NUHW decertify SEIU’s local home health care workers.

As the epicenter of labor’s internal wars shifts to San Francisco, SEIU now finds itself in deep trouble with the powerful San Francisco Labor Council. Labor officials were angered by SEIU’s threat to withdraw its Council funding, and did not respond well to what Teachers Union President Dennis Kelly described as “the two faced-ness of (Dave) Regan’s presentation and by the threats and bullying.”

Thug Regan described as a "bully"? As "two-faced"? Somehow, I think we've seen that before...

The Council was brought into the SEIU-UNITE HERE fight after Dave Regan told Local 2 officials that SEIU was withdrawing its monthly per capita contributions “effective immediately” in retaliation for Council President Mike Casey’s support for NUHW’s campaign to decertify SEIU’s local home health care workers. Although Regan denied at the Council meeting that any decision to withdraw funds had been made, I confirmed with Local 2’s Northern California Organizing Director Tho Do that her notes of the Regan meeting confirmed that he said SEIU’s dues would be withdrawn “effective immediately.”

Translation: THUG REGAN IS A LYING SACK OF CRAP.

Not wanting to have his individual union’s decisions negatively impact the Council, Casey began the August 22 meeting by offering his resignation as President. It was unanimously refused, with much of the Council irate over SEIU’s tactics. John Ulrich, of United Food and Commercial Workers 101, told the Council, “for SEIU to continue to try and extort CLC’s (Central Labor Councils) over issues is terrible.” Ulrich stated that he “belongs to four Labor Councils, and SEIU has pulled this kind of threat in three of those councils many times over the years over different issues.”

Casey made it clear that he felt that NUHW “is the true voice of homecare workers in California,” and that “it was Sal Rosselli, former UHW staff and the union’s rank-and-file leadership, not SEIU, who did the work on behalf of homecare workers in San Francisco.” In an ominous sign for SEIU’s relationship to the broader labor movement, nobody criticized Local 2’s support of NUHW’s de-certification. Nor did any dispute Casey’s crediting Rosselli’s team for the gains of the home health care workers who will soon be choosing between SEIU and NUHW as their representative.

To the Purple Plaguers: The above passage is what is known as "Solidarity." It is the end result of actions taken in the past which are consistent with your values, and which help others while helping yourself. This is what you utterly lack, having cast your fate to the winds of corporate look-a-like "unionism."

And like I've said before, Mike Casey is a stand-up guy.

In order to protect its finances, the Labor Council has initiated a “Solidarity Pledge” whereby unions are being asked to agree to provide additional funding to that if SEIU leaves their will not be a shortfall. Plumbers chief Larry Mazzola, who announced at the end of the August 22 meeting that his union would “step up” to fill any funding gap, kicked off this strategy.

According to Labor Council Vice-President Conny Ford, since Mazzola got the ball rolling the solidarity pledges are “going great.” Ford told me that in response to her single e-mail message about the pledge, “people are either signing up or saying that they are awaiting ratification of the proposed dues increase from their executive boards.” Ford said she had not heard from a single union that they did not want to pledge higher dues to protect the Council from SEIU’s withdrawal.

In addition, Local 2’s support among other unions continues to grow. IBEW 1245 Business Manager Tom Dalzell is providing Local 2 with two fulltime organizers to help on its contract fight, and is also providing the services of longtime former SEIU organizing strategist Fred Ross, Jr., who now works for IBEW.

See above regarding the concept of "Solidarity"...

As the AFL-CIO convention opens on September 13, the union unity exhibited at the San Francisco Labor Council over the dispute between SEIU and UNITE HERE could well emerge at the national level. SEIU’s former Change to Win partners at UNITE HERE and the Laborers Union are negotiating to rejoin the AFL-CIO, and the UFCW – whose San Francisco representatives strongly backed Local 2 against SEIU — may not be far behind.

Incoming AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently gave an interview in the Las Vegas Sun in which he vowed to move labor in a different direction than that promoted by SEIU President Andy Stern. Trumka noted “the difference between me and (Stern) is that he believes you can look at that system and play within that box by accommodating employers. I believe that the system has to be changed because it’s designed for employers to win and workers, every time, to lose.”

Whereas Dave Regan told the Labor Council that this “tag line” about SEIU and “top down unionism and corporate unionism” hasn’t “been his experience,” most labor leaders are not happy over SEIU’s vaunted “partnerships” with Wal-Mart, Big Pharma and other corporate interests. Trumka and international union presidents are increasingly joining UNITE HERE and NUHW’s critique of SEIU’s approach, which could soon result in a labor movement with nearly all unions on one page and SEIU on another.

SEIU has been AFL-CIO's best recruiter of late, as well as NUHW's and UNITE/HERE's. However, the Purple Kool-Aid is strong, and it will not be until it is almost too late for SEIU for their "leadership" to realize that Andy Stern is almost single-handedly destroying years of goodwill so painstakingly put up.

Mike Casey: A Stand-Up Guy

Randy Shaw of has once again smacked Our Glorious Maximum Leader upside his potato-shaped head, this time with a story on the president of UNITE/HERE's Local 2 in San Francisco, and how SEIU has, once again, managed to make enemies where none existed before...

A large cadre of Cantonese speaking UNITE HERE Local 2 members, many with family members who are San Francisco SEIU home care workers, are joining NUHW’s efforts to qualify for a decertification election against SEIU this fall. Nearly half of SEIU’s 17,000 member bargaining unit is Cantonese speaking, and the influx of Local 2 members – who have deep roots in the city’s Asian-American community – is a major boost to NUHW’s campaign. Although Local 2 has a long relationship with NUHW’s leadership, and has expressed support for the new union since its January founding, its decision to commit significant resources to NUHW’s San Francisco campaign appears to have been incited by an SEIU flyer produced and distributed over three weeks ago. The flyer features a mug shot-type photo of Local 2’s elected President, Mike Casey, and was only discovered by the union last week. The caption above Casey’s photo states “Beware of the NUHW Liars,” directly attacking the integrity of one of San Francisco’s most respected and popular labor leaders. This attack on Casey has galvanized Local 2 members to defend their leader, escalating the already heated conflict between SEIU and UNITE HERE.

If SEIU President Andy Stern is still optimistic that peace with UNITE HERE is at hand, he might consider visiting San Francisco. Such a trip would show him Cantonese and Russian speaking members of UNITE HERE Local 2 coming out in droves to help NUHW qualify for a decertification election among SEIU’s home health care local, and confirm that SEIU’s California problems in are escalating.

For those of you wondering what this photo looks like, here it is:



The flier does not name specifically Casey, but it does display his image and has a caption of "Local 2 President" (and I do not read Cantonese so I cannot tell what the characters may say). The article goes on...

SEIU has long maintained that UNITE HERE was secretly helping NUHW, as the leadership of the latter union has a long and deep relationship with the hotel workers union. When fourteen hotels locked out Local 2 in 2006, the NUHW leadership went to Kaiser to ensure that hotel workers maintained health benefits, and used their clout in Sacramento to ensure that locked out hotel workers got unemployment funds.

Such actions left Local 2 workers with a great sense of loyalty to NUHW leaders. But despite this loyalty, Local 2 did not publicly join NUHW’s fight when the former leadership of SEIU-UHW broke from SEIU last March to form a new union.

Now, Local 2 is gearing up for a major contract campaign with the hotel industry. Negotiations begin next week, and Local 2 has tried its best to focus on what will be a tough battle with global hotel corporations in these economically tougher times.

With emotions high as hotel workers prepare for an historic fight, SEIU chose this moment to distribute a flyer attacking Mike Casey’s integrity. It was like lighting a match to a pool of kerosene, and Local 2 workers – who have overwhelmingly voted for Casey in a series of union president elections – decided they could not sit back and allow SEIU to attack their leader, raid their union, and wage war against the NUHW leadership who backed Local 2’s 2006 campaign.

Ringo Mak, a twenty year employee of the Hilton and native of Hong Kong, expressed the sentiments of many of Local 2’s Cantonese activists when he explained to me why he was so committed to helping NUHW: “We are telling workers that SEIU does not work for the workers, but that they work for the bosses.”

With UNITE HERE vigorously attacking SEIU’s raids, I asked an international union staffer how he would respond to charges that Local 2 is now doing the same. He told me, “after eight months of repeated SEIU attacks across all of our industries, not once have we responded with a raid. The final straw in San Francisco came when SEIU printed and distributed what appeared to be a mug shot of Local 2’s elected President, calling him a liar. They haven’t given us any choice but to respond.”

One has to wonder what the "thought process" inside SEIU is. The only thing I can figure is that they are so East-Coast-centric (for want of a better term) that they do not regard any leaders on the West Coast as anything to be worried about. Either that, or they already figured that opposition from Mike Casey during the SF IHSS fight was baked into the cake, and this would serve as an appropriate opening salvo. Either way, the pure tone deafness of this flier bespeaks the lack of integrity that so permeates SEIU in general, and Zombie UHW in particular.

SEIU is running an aggressive “Do Not Sign” campaign in San Francisco, seeking to prevent NUHW from obtaining the 7000 signatures needed to trigger a decertification election. NUHW has until the end of September to get these signatures, and SEIU has put great faith in the ability of Leon Chow, who stayed on with SEIU after the NUHW split to use his contacts in the city’s Chinese-American community.

With a chance to put NUHW on the ropes by preventing decertification, who at SEIU had the brilliant idea of branding Local 2 President Mike Casey a “liar”? Logic dictated that SEIU do everything in its power to keep Local 2 happy at least through the end of August, when the signatures for decertification must be turned in.

Instead, SEIU attacked a labor leader who has proved his popularity over a long period of time among rank and file Local 2 activists. Mike Casey is a key figure in San Francisco labor and political circles, and his union has deep roots among the electorate SEIU is trying to get not to sign.

The great mystery here is how SEIU, which houses brilliant strategic leaders like Eliseo Medina and Stephen Lerner, continues to make mistake after mistake in California.

In Fresno, UHW Trustee Dave Regan foolishly announced that a 52-48% victory would not be good enough, so when SEIU narrowly won it was widely seen as a defeat. Now, SEIU decides to publicly attack Mike Casey’s integrity so as to provoke San Francisco’s most activist and Cantonese-speaking union into making a major commitment of people power to NUHW’s decertification campaign.

And SEIU distributed the flyer attacking Casey at the same time Andy Stern was telling his staff and the general public that his union was “standing down,” and that peace with UNITE HERE was imminent. This creates the impression that one hand of SEIU does not know what the other is doing.

If SEIU does not realize that its attack on Local 2’s Casey will backfire, it will become clear by the end of September when the decertification petitions are submitted. The election between SEIU and NUHW for San Francisco’s 17,000 home health care workers could then occur as soon as October.

It seems that SEIU has put all its eggs in the basket of preventing a vote, because they probably know that a vote in a group as large as SF's IHSS consortium will take up resources several times that of what was spent down at Fresno, with even less likelihood of victory than what was offered down at Fresno.

Given the above, if the signature drive is indeed successful, could it even be possible that SEIU would concede the election?

In short, no. That's not how Andy Stern rolls.

So instead, he will (again) parachute hundreds of paid "volunteers" into SF, put them up in hotels (which are considerably more expensive in SF than in Fresno), and try to track down as many Asian-language experts as possible.

I'm thinking somewhere north of $10M for this upcoming SF IHSS fight, unless SEIU and Andy Stern somehow manage to suppress the vote enough to prevent it from happening.

Not a pleasant choice if you're a SEIU supporter.