SEIU

Anyone interested in the politics of Los Angeles and California -- which are increasingly the politics of labor -- should read Harold Meyerson's piece in today's Los Angeles Times. He lays out one of the internal struggles within labor, involving both SEIU and Unite Here. Meyerson has limited space here, and doesn't draw detailed connections to the state's politics. But he makes the point that the fights (and I blame SEIU for much of the internal strife, which is essentially a policy of self-sabotage) could be very bad for reform in the city and in the state.

In this one passage, he draws a link to how the fighting could spoil an opportunity for crucial budget reform in the state:

In this new ad, from the California state council of SEIU, the country's largest union, clips from President-elect Obama's speeches are juxtaposed with arguments that Sacramento must change and provide revenues to support state spending on education and health. It's an indirect way of using Obama to argue for state tax hikes. One wonders if the president elect, who ran on a pledge to cut taxes for most Americans, appreciates being used to make the case for tax increases here.

An initiative to boost training for long-term health care workers has been put back on the ballot by the Washington State Supreme Court.

The initiative is sponsored by the nation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, as part of a strategy of organizing such health care aides. The idea is that by requiring training and imposing other regulation of such aides, the union can leverage government influence to convince such aides to join the union.

But the initiative had a fundamental error in its drafting. Petitions circulated among voters identified the measure as an "initiative to the legislature" -- what other states might call an indirect initiative, submitted to lawmakers -- instead of a citizen's initiative to be submitted to the people. But all other filings referred to the initiative as a citizen's initiative. The court, without offering a justification for its ruling, said the mistake shouldn't knock the initiative off the ballot. That's a good decision, but it again points out the need to permit mistakes to be fixed during the initiative process in Washington and other states.

Tyrone Freeman, the prominent Los Angeles union leader, has stepped down, at least temporarily, as president of SEIU's large local representing home health care workers. It's the right move. (This was a hot topic on the blog). The LA Times reported more than a week ago on how the union and a related charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by his wife and mother-in-law. If anything, this leave should have come sooner. The Times reports exactly what I've heard -- that union staffers were being pressured to sign statements supporting Freeman. Now we wait for the results of investigations of the union by SEIU itself and the federal government. It's important that all the results of those probes be made public.

And another update: SEIU has sent auditors to look at the local's books, and we're beginning to hear from labor-friendly leaders about the need to take this subject on.

Updating the post below, here's a statement from the SEIU local. The local blames the messenger -- the Los Angeles Times -- and ask the international to look into the finances. All the expenditures, the statement adds, were approved by the union's executive board. Here's a little item on the Sacramento Bee web site expanding on the subject. 

The LA Times today published an excellent investigative story on Tyrone Freeman, the leader of California's largest SEIU local, which represents home health care givers. It's an outrageous tale of self-dealing, with money from union affiliates going to the business pursuits of Freeman's wife and mother-in-law.

Freeman is a young and talented leader; I saw that firsthand as a reporter covering labor for the LA Times in 2006. Freeman is popular within the union movement, and close to SEIU's international president, Andy Stern. (The last time I saw Freeman, he and Stern were sitting down to a meal at the Pacific Dining Car). So this is going to be a difficult test of the union movement in LA and nationallly. But it's a test. Freeman needs to step down and offer a full-throated apology. The union needs to ask for an independent audit of the local. And the public needs to hear immediately from union leadership -- Stern, county labor chief Maria Elena Durazo, other top SEIU leaders such as janitors' union chief Mike Garcia -- about how such conduct must not be permitted in the movement. So far, the silence is deafening. Stern, in the story, refuses to address the conduct in question. That won't cut it.

The country's largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union, has been backing legislation and ballot initiatives around the country to establish standards for home health care workers. The bills and measures are part of a strategy to organize more of those workers. It's a fine strategy. But in Washington state, SEIU appears to have made a major error.

Instead of qualifying an initiative directly for the ballot, the union labeled its petitions as an initiative to the legislature. Washington, like some other blockbuster democracy states, permits citizens to gather signatures on a document and present it to the legislature first, instead of the voters. The union didn't really want that. And it's possible that state officials may allow them to get away with the mistake and put the measure on the ballot.

This piece from Capitol Weekly is a must-read. It profiles Courtni Pugh, the sharpest labor strategist I met during my admittedly brief time covering labor for the LA Times. It also reports that SEIU California may be close to backing the redistricting reform initiative on the November ballot. Such an endorsement could be a game-changer for that initiative, whose political prospects have not been good. And if SEIU is looking at such an endorsement, it's a good bet that the union has a lot of research and numbers that suggest that changing the reapportionment rules might make it easier to elect more labor-friendly politicians to office.

Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents state workers, writes in the Sacramento Bee that her union has changed its mind about Gov. Schwarzenegger's plans to modernize the lottery and borrow against future revenues. Once opponents, she says the union now supports the plan. And she's right. Borrowing against the lottery revenue is not a good thing. But, in the absence of the kind of top-to-bottom tax and budget reform California needs, such borrowing may be the least bad option, as I argued recently in the Los Angeles Times. The lottery, by the way, was established in California by ballot initiative.

In Missouri, the Service Employees International Union, the largest labor union in the country, is backing an initiative to move funding from nursing home care to home health care. SEIU is rapidly organizing home health care workers nationally, and this initiative is designed to produce more workers to organize in the Show Me State.