Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 4:26pm.
Aside - Yes the communication staff is not allowed to say "organizing" or "fighting." That's why you hear "uniting" over and over again. The only division where the staff is allowed to sound militant is property services. The other two divisions have to use milquetoast language about partnership and adding value for employers, ad nauseum.
About Colorado-
There's no "collective bargaining" for Colorado state employees. We weren't allowed to use that term either, and what SEIU settled for was far short of it.
This is what happened:
When 2007 started, we had a Democratic governor and a Democratic state house and senate. All three were publicly committed to legislation for full collective bargaining. They also were committed to repealing the law in Colorado that requires a supermajority vote to have a union shop. This was an amendment to the Labor Peace Act. Under the LPA, Colorado is somewhere between being a union state and being a "right-to-work-for-less" state.
The LPA amendment quickly passed the House and Senate. Then the big business press went into hysterics. This was the end of the world, according to them. SEIU was afraid it would kill their deal for state employees, so behind the scenes, they urged Ritter to veto the measure. All the other unions wanted Ritter to sign it. Ritter, reneging on his campaign promise, vetoed it. SEIU, of course cares nothing about the interest of the rest of the labor movement. They were happy to see the pro-labor law vetoed.
All summer long there was an argument between the unions on whether to keep pushing for collective bargaining legislation. Early on, SEIU wanted to give up, arguing against AFSCME, UFCW, Teamsters, CWA and other unions who still thought a law was worth fighting for.
SEIU again went to Ritter and cut their own deal, undermining the other unions. Ritter then issued an executive order for "partnership." In the executive order, there's no arbitration of the agreement, there's no 3rd party arbitration for grievances, and there's no fair share provision. You can bring up economic issues, but there's nothing to make the administration agree to anything. It's not collective bargaining. It's basically what is called in most states "meet and confer" or "meet and beg." And being an executive order, its only a matter of time till the next GOP governor cancels it.
Now the executive order also tried to ban strikes. But then the Republican attorney general issued a legal opinion that said the right to strike for Colorado workers (including state employees) was guaranteed by the Industrial Relations Act, and the governor's order couldn't take the right away. This law was passed in 1915 the wake of the outcry caused by the famous Ludlow massacre. The attorney general was trying to embarass the governor. Despite how shitty the executive order was, the business press was again engaging in a hue-and-cry about it. From all the noise, one would have thought Ritter had declared Colorado a soviet republic.
So SEIU got behind a law to ban state employee strikes, to try to placate big business. CWA and the Teamster testified in opposition, and attempted to at least amend the strike ban to sunset with the executive order (remember executive orders like these are overturned frequently, it happened in Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri just in the last few years). SEIU opposed the sunset amendment. So the strike ban passed.
End result: we now have a temporary executive order for "meet and beg" and permanent legislative ban on state employee strikes. Thanks to SEIU, state employees will end up with fewer rights than they had before. And a once-in-decades chance to get full collective bargaining for state employees was squandered.
While all this was happening, SEIU engineered a forced merger of the state employee organizations into a group controlled from the top by SEIU. Behind the backs of the local affiliates of AFSCME and AFT, those two internationals made a deal with SEIU to set up "Colorado WINS". WINS stands for Workers for Innovation and New Solutions. (More SEIU public-relations-speak in other words.) SEIU gets 50 percent of the per capita, AFSCME 25%, AFT 25%.
The AFSCME Colorado council had very few state employees (there's mostly local government here), so they didn't give up much. AFT had several hundred state employees, roughly as many as the SEIU affiliate. The AFT had for over a year been refusing to give their affiliate any support, while SEIU was raiding their members. Instead AFT cut their budget, while holding closed door talks with SEIU. Then they announced the merger and told their affiliate to accept or be cut off from all support. The AFT state affiliate told AFT to shove it, and they dissolved their organization, and went over en masse to CWA. So CWA now has a small base among state employees. CWA is still committed to winning real collective bargaining, but sees it as a long term struggle.
Incidently, the former-AFT-now-CWA group was the only group of state employees with an elected state employee leadership that actually ran the organization. The SEIU affiliate was a front controlled by the international (used to be an independent union, but they were bankrupt when SEIU affiliated them), and as I mentioned, the AFSCME state employee local was a small minority of a bigger council.
Colorado WINS is a typical SEIU top-down operation. The merger agreement sets up a committee of 4 bureaucrats, 2 from SEIU, 1 from AFT, and 1 from AFSCME to run it. None of these officials actually live in Colorado. An SEIU appointed dictator who lives in Oakland has day to day control. (They should have called it "Oakland WINS.") A convention is supposed to be held next year. But that time, the Stern Gang will have picked the leaders and rigged the elections.
SEIU sent in a hundred organizers to get petitions signed for this bureaucratic frankenstein. There are no local chapters or real organizing committees. Its a bureaucratic staff driven campaign. SEIU, because of its ties to the governor, has been getting support from department managers.
SEIU staff on the campaign has been told that the "partnership" message means that we should support making it easier for managers to fire workers, that "we don't do representation", that workers with grievances are bad workers who deserve to be fired, and that we should get "shiny happy workers" to be the leaders. In other words, SEIU's vision of unionism is not about workers fighting for their rights. It's a lovefest between management and union bureaucrats.
The SEIU locals here are lead by Stern loyalists. Membership meetings are rarely held. Everything is controlled by staff. There's a culture of fear and intimidation. In other words, typical Stern Gang locals.
In over 20 years in the labor movement, I've never met a more cynical, hypocritical, and vicious group of opportunists. They will say and do anything.
Aside - Yes the communication staff is not allowed to say "organizing" or "fighting." That's why you hear "uniting" over and over again. The only division where the staff is allowed to sound militant is property services. The other two divisions have to use milquetoast language about partnership and adding value for employers, ad nauseum.
About Colorado-
There's no "collective bargaining" for Colorado state employees. We weren't allowed to use that term either, and what SEIU settled for was far short of it.
This is what happened:
When 2007 started, we had a Democratic governor and a Democratic state house and senate. All three were publicly committed to legislation for full collective bargaining. They also were committed to repealing the law in Colorado that requires a supermajority vote to have a union shop. This was an amendment to the Labor Peace Act. Under the LPA, Colorado is somewhere between being a union state and being a "right-to-work-for-less" state.
The LPA amendment quickly passed the House and Senate. Then the big business press went into hysterics. This was the end of the world, according to them. SEIU was afraid it would kill their deal for state employees, so behind the scenes, they urged Ritter to veto the measure. All the other unions wanted Ritter to sign it. Ritter, reneging on his campaign promise, vetoed it. SEIU, of course cares nothing about the interest of the rest of the labor movement. They were happy to see the pro-labor law vetoed.
All summer long there was an argument between the unions on whether to keep pushing for collective bargaining legislation. Early on, SEIU wanted to give up, arguing against AFSCME, UFCW, Teamsters, CWA and other unions who still thought a law was worth fighting for.
SEIU again went to Ritter and cut their own deal, undermining the other unions. Ritter then issued an executive order for "partnership." In the executive order, there's no arbitration of the agreement, there's no 3rd party arbitration for grievances, and there's no fair share provision. You can bring up economic issues, but there's nothing to make the administration agree to anything. It's not collective bargaining. It's basically what is called in most states "meet and confer" or "meet and beg." And being an executive order, its only a matter of time till the next GOP governor cancels it.
Now the executive order also tried to ban strikes. But then the Republican attorney general issued a legal opinion that said the right to strike for Colorado workers (including state employees) was guaranteed by the Industrial Relations Act, and the governor's order couldn't take the right away. This law was passed in 1915 the wake of the outcry caused by the famous Ludlow massacre. The attorney general was trying to embarass the governor. Despite how shitty the executive order was, the business press was again engaging in a hue-and-cry about it. From all the noise, one would have thought Ritter had declared Colorado a soviet republic.
So SEIU got behind a law to ban state employee strikes, to try to placate big business. CWA and the Teamster testified in opposition, and attempted to at least amend the strike ban to sunset with the executive order (remember executive orders like these are overturned frequently, it happened in Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri just in the last few years). SEIU opposed the sunset amendment. So the strike ban passed.
End result: we now have a temporary executive order for "meet and beg" and permanent legislative ban on state employee strikes. Thanks to SEIU, state employees will end up with fewer rights than they had before. And a once-in-decades chance to get full collective bargaining for state employees was squandered.
While all this was happening, SEIU engineered a forced merger of the state employee organizations into a group controlled from the top by SEIU. Behind the backs of the local affiliates of AFSCME and AFT, those two internationals made a deal with SEIU to set up "Colorado WINS". WINS stands for Workers for Innovation and New Solutions. (More SEIU public-relations-speak in other words.) SEIU gets 50 percent of the per capita, AFSCME 25%, AFT 25%.
The AFSCME Colorado council had very few state employees (there's mostly local government here), so they didn't give up much. AFT had several hundred state employees, roughly as many as the SEIU affiliate. The AFT had for over a year been refusing to give their affiliate any support, while SEIU was raiding their members. Instead AFT cut their budget, while holding closed door talks with SEIU. Then they announced the merger and told their affiliate to accept or be cut off from all support. The AFT state affiliate told AFT to shove it, and they dissolved their organization, and went over en masse to CWA. So CWA now has a small base among state employees. CWA is still committed to winning real collective bargaining, but sees it as a long term struggle.
Incidently, the former-AFT-now-CWA group was the only group of state employees with an elected state employee leadership that actually ran the organization. The SEIU affiliate was a front controlled by the international (used to be an independent union, but they were bankrupt when SEIU affiliated them), and as I mentioned, the AFSCME state employee local was a small minority of a bigger council.
Colorado WINS is a typical SEIU top-down operation. The merger agreement sets up a committee of 4 bureaucrats, 2 from SEIU, 1 from AFT, and 1 from AFSCME to run it. None of these officials actually live in Colorado. An SEIU appointed dictator who lives in Oakland has day to day control. (They should have called it "Oakland WINS.") A convention is supposed to be held next year. But that time, the Stern Gang will have picked the leaders and rigged the elections.
SEIU sent in a hundred organizers to get petitions signed for this bureaucratic frankenstein. There are no local chapters or real organizing committees. Its a bureaucratic staff driven campaign. SEIU, because of its ties to the governor, has been getting support from department managers.
SEIU staff on the campaign has been told that the "partnership" message means that we should support making it easier for managers to fire workers, that "we don't do representation", that workers with grievances are bad workers who deserve to be fired, and that we should get "shiny happy workers" to be the leaders. In other words, SEIU's vision of unionism is not about workers fighting for their rights. It's a lovefest between management and union bureaucrats.
The SEIU locals here are lead by Stern loyalists. Membership meetings are rarely held. Everything is controlled by staff. There's a culture of fear and intimidation. In other words, typical Stern Gang locals.
In over 20 years in the labor movement, I've never met a more cynical, hypocritical, and vicious group of opportunists. They will say and do anything.