Newsom agrees to meet with Local 1021By Tim Redmond
The members of SEIU Local 1021 have agreed to stand down for a day, suspend their unfair labor practices claim and hold off on sending protesters to Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign events -- and he's agreed to meet with the union tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to discuss their grievances.
Larry Bevan, a Local 1021 shop steward who works as a site tech at Laguna Honda Hospital, told me that Labor Council director Tim Paulson has agreed to mediate the discussion.
"I am told that the mayor will be there personally," Bevan said. "Going through intermediaries doesn't seem to be working."
The union wants to challenge the mayor to live up to his promise during budget season -- that he'd work to find a way to raise new revenue this fall so that 600 union members, most of them women of color, most of them front-line service workers in the Department of Public Health, wouldn't face layoffs.
It's too late for a ballot measure to raise new revenue. That plan fell apart when it became clear that the supervisors would not unanimously declare a state of fiscal emergency -- a move that would have allowed a revenue measure to pass with a simple majority of the vote. WIthout all 11 supervisors, any attempt to raise taxes would require an insurmountable two-thirds majority.
The Oakland City Council agreed unanimously to seek new revenue, but in San Francisco, Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto and Carmen Chu refused. All three were originally Newsom appointees.
Elsbernd told me that the mayor's office tried to get him on board, but he refused to bend. The reforms that the mayor was proposing weren't strong enough to get the relatively conservative supervisor to drop his opposition to new taxes. "Oh, they tried, all right," Elsbernd said. "But the reform was bogus. I said no."
But I have to wonder how serious Newsom was: He never picked up the phone and called Elsbernd personally. His chief of staff, Steve Kava, did that job.
Sorry, Mr. Mayor -- when there are millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs on the line, if you actually want to get a reluctant supervisor who owes his career to you on your side, you talk to him personally. It still might not have worked -- but sending an aide over with the message was clearly doomed to fail. It almost seems as if Newsom was fine with that.
At any rate, the unions will try to get Newsom's support for a new fee on alcoholic beverages, money that could go directly to DPH. Maybe he'll go along; maybe he'll drag his feet. Still, Local 1021 got him to the table, which these days, with this mayor, is quite an accomplishment.
digg •
del.icio.us •
sphere •
google
•
Comments (4)
head over to the SEIU web page and see how they brag about being for every far fetched progressive spending program that any SEIU employee SF supervisor can dream up.
The the budget takes a dump and the SEIU losers get pissed that all those programs are eating up the budget and they have to take some days off?
The SEIU leadership tries to get this city to spend on services every way they can think of, then the rank and file has to take some days off? Too bad. So the answer is to raise taxes, so that the SEIU leadership can lobby for more programs?
That isn't galling to the tax payer in the least. Your SEIU tantrums are so old.
If there are any SEIU monkeys reading this, tell your leadership to stop ordering SEIU employees like Daly, Avalos, Campos, Merkin, and the rest of the gang to stop spending on out of town hobo's and you won't have to take a day off.
Stop blaming the conspiracy and take responsibility for your tragicomic union.
Posted by glen matlock | October 6, 2009 03:11 AM
If the 1021 sell outs would only admit that they have made secret deals with the BOSSES at the expense of healthcare workers, then perhaps those San Francisco workers would realize that SEIU is basically interested in extorting dues from members than they are in representing them.
The purple plague will whine and cry when they don't get their way but again these are only crocodile tears. Healthcare workers should endorse a real and democratic healthcare union like NUHW!
Posted by Francisco | October 6, 2009 07:56 AM
Looks like SEIU 1021 did not get it in writing, trusted Gavin Newsom where there was no basis for trust established, to the contrary, all of the evidence indicated that they would get screwed.
For all of their protestations, should lightning strike and Newsom wins the Democratic nomination for governor, SEIU 1021 will be there, on bended knee for him.
This, while labor is all but sitting on the sidelines as the health insurance corporations are trying to shape the most important workers rights legislation in decades into a captive market that takes people's money and does not provide health care yet maintains insurer profit.
-marc
Posted by marcos | October 6, 2009 08:52 AM
what can NUHW promise to the workers if they join your union? Will there be an immediate solutions regarding the declassification of the CNAs?
Posted by seng | October 6, 2009 11:34 AM