SEIU’s Misplaced Priorities Upend San Francisco BudgetRandy Shawbyline‚ May. 18‚ 2009By voting down contract changes last week, SEIU 1021 set the stage for 1000 layoffs and devastating public service cuts. Few workers support such results, so why did 56% reject the contract? The answer is not, as some might suspect, that SEIU’s bargaining team presented a “sellout” proposal. To the contrary, SEIU negotiated a remarkable deal for city workers in a time of economic crisis, capitalizing on Mayor Newsom’s need to keep good relations with the union for his Governor’s race. Instead, what killed the contract was SEIU’s failure to devote sufficient resources toward educating its workers on the merits of the deal, despite knowing that many 1021 workers were angry at the SEIU brand due to its battles with its former UHW leadership (now NUHW), and with UNITE HERE. To address this, SEIU needed to provide additional staff and hire members as “lost timers” to build enthusiasm for the contract. But the union did not do so, despite having routinely taken such actions in the past. SEIU President Andy Stern has prioritized raids against another union over dispatching staff to assist current members, leading even the SEIU 1021 Executive Board and staff union to pass a resolution last week seeking to end this “misusing of scarce resources.” |