SEIU

Another bloody budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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6
Another bloody budget

rebeccab@sfbg.com

In the days since June 1, when Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposal for San Francisco’s $6.48 billion budget for the next fiscal year, public sector employees and community organizations have been poring over the hefty document to determine how their jobs, services, and programs survived cuts made to close a $483 million shortfall.

For police and firefighters, a key Newsom constituency, the news is good. There were no layoffs to San Francisco firefighters, and while members of the Police Officer’s Association gave up $9.3 million in wage concessions under the lucrative contract Newsom gave them a few years ago, police officers will still receive a 4 percent wage increase on July 1.

For others, the release of the mayor’s budget signified a tough fight looming before the Board of Supervisors, one with high stakes. Cuts to homeless services, mental health care, youth programs, and housing assistance, along with privatization proposals, have raised widespread concern among labor and liberal advocacy organizations. Public input on the budget will continue at the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee until July 15, when the amended document is considered by the full board.

At a June 1 announcement ceremony, Newsom asserted that the budget was balanced “without draconian cuts,” saying, “We were able to avoid the kind of cataclysmic devastation that some had argued was inevitable in this budget.”

Nearly a week later, Board President David Chiu told the Guardian that sort of cataclysm wouldn’t be staved off for long if the city continues on the course of repeatedly making deep budget cuts without proposing any significant new sources of revenue.

“Now that the smoke has cleared, it is clear that the mayor’s proposed budget is perfect for a mayor who is only going to be around for the short term, but it does not address the long-term fiscal crisis that our city is in,” Chiu said. “Next year, we’re looking at over a $700 million budget deficit. The year after that, we’re looking at almost an $800 million budget deficit. The budget proposal that Newsom put out balances the … deficit on many one-time tricks and assumptions of uncertain revenue.”

Meanwhile, advocates said even the cuts proposed this time would bring serious consequences, especially with unemployment on the rise, state programs being cut in Sacramento, and families feeling the pinch more than ever.

“Poor and working class families, and families of color in San Francisco, are facing kind of an assault on funding and on safety net services on multiple levels,” said Chelsea Boilard, family policy and communications associate for Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “I think a lot of it is that families are concerned about their ability to stay in the city and raise their kids here.”

 

“NO NEW TAXES”

During the budget announcement, Newsom emphasized the positive. He found $12 million in new revenue simply by closing a loophole that had allowed Internet-based companies to avoid paying that amount in hotel taxes. He said 350 currently occupied positions would be cut, but noted that it was less than a cap of 425 that public sector unions had agreed to. Cuts were inevitable since the ailing economy inflicted the city’s General Fund with significant losses, particularly from business and property tax revenues.

Nonetheless, Newsom’s budget is already coming under fire from progressive leaders. For one, there are no new revenue-generating measures in the form of general taxes, which could have averted the worst blows to critical safety-net services and might help remedy the city’s economic woes in the long-term.

“There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom declared. “I know some folks just prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

Yet Chiu said many of Newsom’s assumptions for revenue were on shaky ground, prompting City Controller Ben Rosenfield — Newsom’s former budget director — to place $142 million on reserve in case the projected revenues don’t pan out.

“These budget deficits continue as far as the eye can see,” Chiu noted. “Even if those amounts come in, something like 90 percent of them are one-time fixes. So even if the mayor is right, it doesn’t solve next year’s problem, or the year after. Which is why many of us at the board believe that we have to consider additional revenue proposals to think about the long-term fiscal health of the city.”

Sup. John Avalos, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, described Newsom’s budget as “pretty much an all-cuts budget,” noting that he and Chiu planned to introduce revenue-generating measures. They were expected to introduce proposals — including an increase in the hotel tax and a change in the business tax — at the June 8 board meeting.

Because despite Newsom’s rosy assessment, many of his proposed cuts are deep and painful: the Recreation and Park Department would be cut by 42 percent (with its capital projects budget slashed by 90 percent), Economic and Workforce Development by 34 percent, Ethics Commission by 23 percent (basically eliminating public financing for candidates), Department of the Environment by 14 percent, Emergency Management by 10 percent, and the list goes on.

 

CUTS TO SOCIAL SERVICES

Progressives say Newsom’s budget reflects skewed priorities. While relatively little is asked of public safety departments, health and human services programs face major staffing and funding losses. “Poor people are being asked to shoulder the burden,” noted Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

Nearly $31 million would be slashed from the Department of Public Health, and more than $22 million would be cut from the Human Services Agency under Newsom’s proposed budget. While this reflects only 2–3 percent of the departmental budgets, there’s widespread concern that the cuts target programs designed to shield the most vulnerable residents.

Proposals that deal with housing are of special concern. “We have more and more families moving into SRO hotel rooms. We have families in garages. We have a really scary situation for many families,” Friedenbach said.

Affordable housing programs within the Mayor’s Office of Housing would get slashed from $16.8 million currently down to just $1.2 million, a 92 percent cut. Other cuts seem small, but will have big impacts of those affected. Newsom’s budget eliminates 42 housing subsidies, which boost rent payments for families on the brink of homelessness, for a savings of $264,000. Meanwhile, a locally funded program that subsidizes housing costs for people with AIDS would be cut, for a savings of $559,000.

Transitional housing would be affected, too, such as 59 beds at a homeless shelter on Otis Street, which Friedenbach says would be lost under Newsom’s budget proposal. “We’ve already lost more than 400 shelter beds since Newsom came to office, so that’d be a huge hit,” she said. Since the recession began, she added, the wait-list at shelters has tripled. The Ark House, a temporary housing facility that serves LGBT youth, would also be closed.

Overall, homeless services delivered by HSA would take a $12 million hit in Newsom’s budget, or about 13 percent, offset slightly by homeless services being increased by $2 million within the Mayor’s Office budget, a 71 percent increase.

Outpatient mental health services, such as Community Behavioral Health Services, would also be affected (See “Cutting from the bottom”), in violation of current city law. Several years ago, then-Sup. Tom Ammiano introduced legislation establishing a “single standard of care” to guarantee access to mental health services for indigent and uninsured residents.

“If timely, effective, and coordinated mental health treatment is not provided to indigent and uninsured residents who are not seriously mentally ill, those residents are at risk of becoming seriously mentally ill and hence requiring more expensive and comprehensive mental health care from San Francisco,” according to the ordinance, which was passed in June of 2005. Newsom’s budget proposes changing this legislation to enable cuts to those services, which would result in 1,600 people losing treatment, according to Friedenbach.

Unfortunately, advocates for the poor has gotten used to this ritual of trying to restore cuts made by Newsom. “There are some sacred cows that seem to survive year after year, and then we’re left fighting over what we can get,” said Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC).

The Central City SRO Collaborative, which supports tenants living in single-room occupancy hotels in the mid-Market Street area and is operated through THC, is slated to be cut by 40 percent along with three other similar programs — a replay from last year when the mayor proposed eliminating funding and the Board of Supervisors restored the cut.

“I think you’d see more fires, more people dying from overdoses. You’d see really bad conditions,” Jeff Buckley, director of the program, told us of the potential consequences of eliminating the inspections and resident training that is part of the program.

Funding was also eliminated for THC’s Ellis Eviction Defense Program, the city’s only free legal defense program with capacity to serve 55 low-income tenants facing eviction under the Ellis Act.

 

THREAT TO RENTERS

One of the most controversial proposals to emerge from Newsom’s budget is a way for property owners and real estate speculators to buy their way out of the city lottery that limits conversion of rental properties and tenants-in-common (TICs) to privately-owned condos if they pay between $4,000 and $20,000 (depending on how long they have waited for conversion), a proposal to raise about $8 million for the city.

“I went back and forth because I know the Board of Supervisors can’t stand this,” Newsom said as he broached the subject at the June 1 announcement. “I still don’t get this argument completely. Except it’s a big-time ideological discussion. It’s so darn ideological that I think it gets in the way of having a real discussion.”

Yet Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said the argument is quite clear: making it easier to convert rental units into condos will accelerate the loss of rental housing in a city where two-thirds of residents are tenants, in the process encouraging real estate speculation and evictions.

“It will encourage TIC conversions and evictions because it makes the road to converting TICs to condos that much easier,” Gullicksen said. “It’s going to be a huge gift to real estate speculators.”

Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker disputes that impact, saying that “these units were going to convert anyway, whether next year or six years. This merely accelerates that conversion without altering the lottery to protect jobs and services.”

But Gullicksen said the proposal obviously undermines the lottery system, which is the only tool tenant advocates have to preserve the finite supply of rent-controlled apartments, noting that even if the condos are later rented out, they will no longer to subject to rent control. That’s one reason why the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly rejected this idea, and why Newsom probably knows they will do so again.

Avalos said he and other progressive supervisors will oppose the proposal, despite the difficulties that will create in balancing the budget. “It’s kind of like putting a gun to our heads,” Avalos said of Newsom’s inclusion of that revenue in his budget.

To offset that revenue loss, Avalos has proposed a tax on alcohol sold in bars and Gullicksen is proposing the city legalize illegal housing units that are in habitable condition for property owners willing to pay an amnesty fee.

Some housing advocates were also struck by the timing of proposing condo conversion fees while also eliminating the Ellis Eviction Defense Program. “We’re really the only ones doing this,” Shaw noted. He said the program is crucial because it serves low-income tenants, many of whom are monolingual Chinese or Spanish speakers who lack the ability to pay for private attorneys to resist aggressive landlords.

 

PRIVATIZATION PROPOSALS RETURN

The Department of Children, Youth. and Families budget would be reduced by 20 percent under Newsom’s budget, with the greatest cuts affecting after school and youth leadership programs. Roughly a $3 million cut will result in the loss of around 300 subsidized slots for after school programs, said Boilard of Coleman Youth Advocates. Another $3 million is expected to come out of violence-prevention programs for troubled youth; an additional $1 million would affect youth jobs programs.

Patricia Davis, a Child Protective Services employee who lives in the Mission District with her two teenage sons, said she was concerned about the implications for losses to youth programs, particularly during the summer. “You can imagine what’s going to happen this summer,” she said. “I feel that a lot of kids are going to do a lot of things that they have no business doing.”

Davis, who says she’ll have to look for a new job come Sept. 30 because the federal stimulus package funding that supports her position will run out, said she was not happy to hear that police officers would be getting raises just as that summer school programs are being threatened with closure. “Couldn’t the 4 percent [raise] go somewhere else — like to the children?” she wondered.

Meanwhile, privatization proposals are causing anxiety for SEIU Local 1021 members, who recently gave millions in wage concessions and furloughs along with other public employees to help balance the budget. A proposal to contract out for jail health services cropped up last year and was shot down by the board, but it’s back again.

“When you make it a for-profit enterprise, the bottom line is the profit. It’s not about the health care,” SEIU Local 1021 organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “It isn’t the same quality of care.”

Haaland said he believes the mayor’s assumption that the proposal could save $13 million should be closely examined. Other privatization schemes would contract out for security at city museums and hospitals.

Institutional police in the mental health ward at SF General Hospital and other sensitive facilities are well trained and experienced with difficult situations so, Haaland said, “the workers feel a lot safer” than they would with private contractors.

Regarding Newsom’s privatization proposal, Avalos said the board was “opposed last year and the year before, and we’ll oppose [them] this year.”

In the coming weeks, Avalos and other members of the Budget and Finance Committee will carefully go over Newsom’s proposed budget — which is now being sized up by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose’s office — and solicit input from the public. Chances are, they’ll get an earful.

“People are scared. They are scared to death right now,” Boilard said. “As it is, people’s hours are being reduced. And it’s getting harder and harder to find a job because so many people are out of work that the level of competition has gotten really fierce. This is the time that we need to invest in safety net services for young people and families more than ever — and all those services and programs and relationships that people depend on are disappearing.”

Steven T. Jones and Kaitlyn Paris contributed to this report.

Ethics boss finally ousts Luby, a crusading public advocate

Sasha Cuttler
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13
Ethics boss finally ousts Luby, a crusading public advocate

Oliver Luby has long been the most public-spirited employee of the San Francisco Ethics Commission, the one person in that office who repeatedly exposed powerful violators of campaign finance rules and blew the whistle on schemes to make the system less transparent and effective, drawing the ire of Director John St. Croix and Deputy Director Mabel Ng in the process.

St. Croix repeatedly tied to silence and punish Luby, who fell back on civil service and whistle-blower protections to save his job as a fines collection officer and continue doing it properly. But it appears St. Croix has finally succeeded in ousting Luby, who this week was notified that his last day will be June 11.

During budget season last year, at a time when St. Croix was trying to punish Luby for sounding the alarm about a new campaign finance database would effectively delete important data (something St. Croix defended but the vendor, NetFile, later corrected), St. Croix quietly removed a special condition for Luby’s job that required at least 12 months campaign finance experience.

So when Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered more than 400 layoffs of city employees to balance the budget, Luby’s job was just another 1840 level position, subjected to being taken by someone from another department with more seniority, which is what happened when Ernestine Braxton, a junior management assistant with the Department of Public Works, took the job.

When I asked St. Croix about why he removed the special condition from Luby’s job and whether it was retaliation for his battles with Luby, St. Croix told me, “You want me to talk about a personnel matter and I’m not going to talk about it.”

Yet Luby says its clear the St. Croix targeted him for removal. “Once that condition was removed, it was only a matter of time before I was bumped by someone in the same civil service job class but with greater seniority,” Luby wrote in a message to supporters, adding that he’s still figuring out what his options are.

Luby first got on the wrong side of Ethics Commission management back in early 2004 when he and fellow employee Kevin DeLiban accidentally were sent a memo from the office of campaign attorney Jim Sutton, treasurer for the Newsom for Mayor campaign, detailing a scheme to illegally pay off campaign debts with money laundered through Newsom’s inauguration committee.

Ng and then-director Ginny Vida ordered them to destroy the document, but they saved a copy and exposed the scheme, which Sutton then backed away from implementing (the pair was publicly honored for their efforts). But Luby continued to have professional differences with Vida’s replacement, St. Croix, often over the favorable treatment given the clients of Sutton, who runs the most expensive and deceptive campaigns on behalf of powerful downtown corporations and organizations (and whose hiding of a late PG&E contribution to defeat a 2002 public power measure resulted in a largest fine Ethics ever ordered).

For example, in 2007, Luby wrote a memo showing how enforcement actions by Ethics disproportionately targeted small campaigns (often by progressive candidates) and ignored serious violations by the most powerful interests in the city (which, if pursued, would have resulted in big fines, money the city desperately needs). We at the Guardian obtained the memo and wrote a story, causing St. Croix to order Luby to not longer write memos recommending way to improve operations at Ethics. And in November 2008, Luby wrote an op-ed in the Chronicle showing how St. Croix had ignored and covered up campaign finance law violations at City College of San Francisco that later led to the criminal indictment of former Chancellor Phil Day (whose trial is expected to begin later this year).

With each of these battles, Luby was threatened by St. Croix and had to seek support from his union, SEIU Local 1021, and the protection of civil service and whistleblower laws. But now, it appears that San Franciscans are losing the only person in the Ethics Commission that could be trusted to act in the interests of the city and the public.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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0
Muni reform that might actually work

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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7

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

John Ross: To stop is to die

Zelda Bronstein
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1
John Ross: To stop is to die

Editors note: John Ross is finishing up a book tour across the United States, and sending us his impressions of Obamalandia. You can read some of his previous posts here, here and here.

  

I. Baltimore/Washington

 

The Amtrak rumbles into the back end of Baltimore past block after block of abandoned, boarded-up row houses ripe for burning. This city of such magnificent renegades as Edgar Allen Poe, John Wilkes Booth, and Billie Holliday is mapped by grimy pocket ghettoes that made Baltimore a perfect stage-set for “The Wire.” When contrasted against the gleaming, refurbished downtown, these crime-scene neighborhoods incubate urban uprising.  Red Emma’s is one of a skein of anarcho bookstores with names like Sedition, Monkeywrench, and Bluestockings that have welcomed me on this grueling odyssey across the underbelly of Obamalandia. I’m enlivened by the energies these oases exude. Contemporary anarchists seem to have little time for the crippling ideological jousting that drained the lifeblood of my generation. Those bad old days of Marxist Leninist Maoist Trotskyist Stalinesque backbiting seem an absurd nightmare on the barricades of change these days.  

Tiffany, a tenor saxophonist who day gigs at OSHA over in D.C. and puts in after hours at the bookstore-cafe, and I pitch in to unload a busload of Bread & Puppet props for a zany, Zen show at a cavernous performance space Red Emma’s maintains in a vacated church. I get to trundle in the head of Ben Franklin, the villain in B&P’s latest mini-extravaganza in which $100 bills are the most pertinent puppets. A half century after its founding even before Vietnam caught fire, the puppeteers are still serving bread and aoeli to grateful audiences.

In D.C., I speak at the Institute for Policy Studies, a perennial leftist sounding board four blocks north of the White House and a billion light years from power, about how Washington has hooked Mexico on drug war. It is my first visit to the nation’s capitol with a black president in residence in the house that slaves once built. The Capo de Tutti Capos of the most grotesque criminal conspiracy on earth is too overwhelmed by swelling catastrophe offshore in the Gulf that will make Katrina look like a summer squall, impending car bombs in Times Square, and an economy that continues in freefall, to take time out for a chitchat.

On the day I speak in Washington, Teabaggers and their ilk are massing across the Potomac in an open-carry anti-Obama rally — newspaper photos depict white American males with what look like rocket launchers slung over their shoulders. The threats of this nativist scum are not idle ones. The economic collapse has stoked the bumfires that burn fiercely in the dormant craters of the American volcano.

 

 

II. New York
My roots on the North American landmass snake under the lower east side of Manhattan. The Ross (nee Grossinsky) DNA is imprinted everywhere on these mean streets. My grandma Mamie Zief (Ellis Islandese for “Jew”) relocated from Poland to a Rivington Street tenement at the turn of the 20th Century. Although I grew up in the West Village, I went east at an early age; after fleeing the family nest I squatted in the Shastone Monument building on Essex and Houston before escaping to Mexico in the late 1950s. Two of my kids grew up on Second Street and Avenue A, and my son the hiphop mogul still lives 500 yards away from the old homestead (Dante and I are working on a book that bounces off our mutual addictions to black music.)  

My presentations in the Big Apple fit neatly into this geographical schema. I lecture at NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center, once the site of concrete basketball courts where I expanded oodles of adolescent energies. I talk to the Friends of Brad Will at the Sixth Street Community Center where the slain Indymedia journalist, a lower east side rabble-rouser during the darkest days of the Giuliani dictatorship, regularly practiced yoga. Justice for Brad Will remains undone.
And I am lured into Amy Goodman’s state-of-the-art lair for 20 minutes of fame. Democracy Now even sends a car to fetch me up to Chelsea and I induce the stern goddess of left radio to smile — but perhaps it was merely a grimace.  

New York is chockablock with “I Love/Hate New York” minutes. One morning I descend from Dante’s sixth story inferno for a double espresso and the Lowisaida is infested with cops. I approach one of New York’s Finest, an amiable Caucasian, and inquire about the blue plague: “it’s the Will Smith show,” he smiles mischievously. Just then a motorcade of 50 bullet-proofed black vehicles swings off Houston with their lights flashing and sirens screaming and heads down the Bowery to Cooper Union where our commander-in-chief is to make a major speech addressing financial “reform” (in Mexico, we call this “plugging up the hole after the baby has drowned.”)

Goldman Sachs vultures in dark suits and furrowed brows listen intently but go mum to the press when they deadhead downtown back to Wall Street to continue fleecing the public’s pocket.

I step around the corner onto Houston, where a large enigmatic Shepard Fairey montage that references climate change has just been tagged (Dante who is well-versed in such iconography, speculates that the culprit is a tagger named “Nah” who is dedicated to dissing the public art of the stars of this genre.) Gallery slaves have been bussed in to erase the offending stains.  I am wearing my Mexican Electricity Workers tee-shirt, whose black and red colors and clenched fist logo match Fairey’s throw-up, and I am suddenly surrounded by a bevy of documenterians, at least one of whom is just off the boat from Andalusia. They pose me against Fairey’s wall for a thousand-click fashion shoot. New York New York!

Ironically (a word that doesn’t have much scratch here in Gotham), the Banksy flick “Exit Through The Gift Shop” is playing at a grind house across Houston, a cheese ball mockumentary that destroys this world-famous outlaw’s once-pristine reputation for thumbing his nose at power. Indeed, the best thing about the movie is that it is playing right next door to the Yonah Schimmil knishery. I order a kasha knish and sign the guest book with Subcomandante Marcos’s rubric.  

Also a mandatory dining stop in the old neighborhood: the immortal Katz’s (“Send a salami to your boy in the Army”) where pushy New Yorkers of the Hebraic persuasion scuffle to be next in line at the counter of this now 100% Puerto Rican-run deli. The brisket is still to die for.

New York City and environs is now home to a half million Mexicans, mostly from Puebla state, whose slow country drawls are a foil for the tropical machine-gun accents of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. The Poblanos work in the kitchens of yupped-up food palaces (16 Oaxaquenos were burnt to a crisp walloping pots up in “Windows On The World” on the 108th floor of the Twin Towers on 9/11 day) or slave in 24-hour grocery stores run by Arabs and Hindus and Koreans.  

Mexican elites who have fled here from their imploding fatherland do not much rub elbows with their impoverished compatriots, except when they employ them as maids and babysitters One of the few upsides of the new Arizona Breathing While Brown law is that former pundit and Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda might be jailed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his storm troopers and forced to don pink underwear if he were to be stopped without papers in Maricopa County.

III. BOSTON

The new Boston Tea Party that catapulted Scott Brown into the suddenly Kennedy-less Senate is not an anomaly in a city where the name of Charles Stuart (Google him up) still rings a bell.  

I speak at the Harvard Coop to a handful of bedraggled Harvard Square denizens who have found sanctuary from a driving rainstorm in this hallowed readery. I am invited to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies to rant at the future leaders of Latin America — but none show up. I spend an engaging evening with Jack Womack, whose “Zapata & The Mexican Revolution” is still the definitive text on the struggle of the incorruptible revolutionary. Jack, now emeritus in Harvard Yard, recently rebuked the Mexican government by turning down a literary prize because of President Felipe Calderon’s role in the firing of 43,000 workers in an undisguised ploy to privatize electricity generation in Mexico, and is currently chipping away at his life work, a history of working class struggle in the state of Veracruz. Jack and I converse in an argot stippled with so many arcane references to social upheaval south of the border that FBI eavesdroppers could surmise we are planning a new Mexican revolution — which, 100 years to the date of the last one, is not such a bad idea.    

I warm up for May 1st rallies by urging attendees at community meetings at the UNITE building in Chinatown and a U-U church in Jamaica Plains to join the protests. There are two marches and rallies set for International Workers Day in Beantown, the bitter fruit of a split in the movement the seeds of which I could not divine.  

On the Boston Commons, I spiel about the first May 1st back in 1886 when 80,000 immigrant workers stomped through Chicago to demand the eight-hour day, a day of solidarity and struggle around the world everywhere except in the country where it was birthed. The Haymarket Martyrs join us for a stroll through the streets of downtown Boston, held aloft by the ubiquitous Bread & Puppet comrades.  

All across Amerikkka, immigrant workers, incensed by the enactment of a law that makes inhaling the air of Arizona a jailable crime if you are a person the color of the earth, were on the march, perhaps a half million (high end estimates) strong — as many as 200,000 in Los Angeles and another 100,000 in Chicago; 25,000 more in Dallas and significant turnouts in New York and Washington but only 6,000 or so in Boston to which Mexicans have migrated in smaller numbers.  

This year’s surge, which was dwarfed by the gargantuan outpourings of 2006, featured a marked absence of Mexican flags as undocumented workers chose to cloak themselves in the Stars and Stripes in response to the feeding frenzy of the Fox News lynch mob.  

Although the condemnation of Arizona Goddamn was vibrant, it must be noted that there have been as many ICE raids under the Obaminators as under Bush and the crackdown on employers is targeting union-organized janitors. David Bacon, whose reportage remains a light in this darkness, recently noted that 175 SEIU janitors are about to be fired in San Francisco, once a sanctuary city for labor.

The People the Color of the Earth rolled through the streets of east Boston with gusto. “No One Is Illegal!” Sandra, my displaced Chilanga guardian angel, and I yodeled in unison with the compas.  “Do I Look Illegal?” read the homemade banner draped around the shoulders of a skinny pre-teener. Many high schoolers wore caps and gowns to highlight the prohibitions on financial aid that doom their college educations to MacDonald’s Hamburger U.

Speaker after speaker in a park down by the harbor  — where, indeed a few hundred years back down the pike the original Boston Tea Party was staged — raged against a system that still consigns immigrant workers to the lowest step on the American food chain. “Justicia! Justicia!” they clamored and their cries were no less relevant than those uttered by the “Martires de Chicago,” as the Haymarket martyrs are known throughout Latin America. By the time I took the mic, all the words had already been spoken but I finished up with the chant of the pensioners’ movement in Mexico City in whose ranks I am enrolled: “Parar Es Morir!” — To Stop Is To Die!

Me and the Monstruo have come to the end of our three month 66 performance journey through Obamalandia but there’s one thing you can count on: “Parar Es Morir.”  I’m not planning on stopping (or dying) any time soon.
  
John Ross will be returning to Mexico in mid- May to begin work on a new book, “From Bebop To HipHop – Fathers & Sons.”  You can consult him on particulars at johnross@igc.org  
        

Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

Mary Magee
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Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

I almost visited Arizona once.
I was in Nevada, visiting the Hoover Dam which crosses the border between Nevada and Arizona and took a photo next to the Arizona state sign.

But I didn’t cross the line. I already suspected that Arizona was groundzero for wingnuts, thanks to the decision of Arizona U.S. senator, Republican John McCain, to choose then Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.


At least, Democrat Janet Napolitano was still governor of Arizona at the time, and so was able to veto similar attempts to pass racist immigration laws in the state of


But now Republican Jan Brewer, a former Maricopa County supervisor, is governor of Arizona and has signed Arizona’s SB  1070, I think I’ll follow San Francisco city Attorney Dennis Herrera’s advice and implement a sweeping boycott of all things Arizona.


Citing San Francisco’s “moral leadership against such past injustices as South African apartheid, the exploitation of migrant farm workers, the economic oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and discrimination against the LGBT community,” Herrera offered the services of his office’s contracts, government litigation and investigations teams to work closely with city departments and commissions to identify applicable contracts and to aggressively pursue termination wherever legally tenable.


“Arizona’s controversial new law makes it a state-level crime for someone to be in the country illegally, and even criminalizes the failure to carry immigration documents at all times by lawful foreign residents,” Herrera’s April 26 press release observed. “It additionally imposes a requirement for police officers to question those they suspect may be in the United States illegally. Civil libertarians have sharply criticized the law for being an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against all Latinos, regardless of their citizenship. It has also been rebuked by the nation’s law enforcement community, with the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, San Jose Police Chief Robert Davis, reiterating his organization’s 2006 policy statement that requiring local police to enforce immigration laws “would likely negatively effect and undermine the level of trust and cooperation between local police and immigrant communities.”


“Arizona has charted an ominous legal course that puts extremist politics before public safety, and betrays our most deeply-held American values,” said Herrera, who is the son of an immigrant from Latin America. “Just as it did two decades ago when it refused to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Arizona has again chosen to isolate itself from the rest of the nation. Our most appropriate response is to assure that their isolation is tangible rather than merely symbolic. San Francisco should lead the way in adopting and aggressively pursuing a sweeping boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses until this unjust law is repealed or invalidated. My office is fully committed to work with San Francisco city departments and commissions to identify all applicable contracts, and to pursue termination wherever possible.  And my office stands ready to assist in any legal challenges in whatever way it can.”


Meanwhile, Napolitano, who is serving as Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary, joined Obama in calling Arizona’s new immigration law “misguided.”


Appearing on ABC News, Napolitano said of the bill: “That one is a misguided law. It’s not a good law enforcement law. It’s not a good law in any number of reasons.”
She also warned that Arizona’s law could get other states trying to pass similar legislation, which could create a patchwork of immigration rules, instead of an an overall federal immigration system.


“This affects everybody, and I actually view it now as a security issue,” Napolitano said. “We need to know who’s in the country. And we need to know, for those who are in the country illegally, there needs to be a period under which they are given the opportunity to register so we get their biometrics, we get their criminal history and we know who they are. They pay a fine. They learn English. They get right with the law.”


Here on the streets of San Francisco, immigrant advocates are asking folks to march on May Day in solidarity with the immigrant communities of Arizona.


“In 2006, the immigrant community took to the streets in huge numbers,” a press release from the May 1st coalition stated. “Millions of undocumented working people and their families sought a pathway to legalization and to a life without fear of work-place raids or middle-of-the night deportations that tear families apart. In 2010, conditions have only worsened as hate crimes have increased exponentially; intolerance has been legitimized by the rhetoric of the Tea Party; and governments (like Arizona) have instituted harsh policing and employment practices that terrorize our communities. The federal government has failed to solve the crisis of undocumented workers in this country. In San Francisco, thousands of workers face losing their jobs because of a flawed employment verification process. Our children are deported without due process and now we must fear the codification of racial bigotry in Arizona.  State and federal governments have ineffectively solved the budget crisis on the backs of the lowest paid workers.  We march in solidarity with Arizona’s immigrants; immigrants everywhere; and the hard-working people of San Francisco who’ve unfairly endured the burden of this economic crisis.


The May 1st Coalition invites the community to join them for an April 28 poster-making party at 10 a.m, City College Mission Campus at 1125 Valencia Street in preparation for a May Day march at which Olga Miranda, President of SEIU Local 87, Jane Kim, SFUSD school board president, and Pablo Rodriguez, city college faculty, will speak.


My favorite comment on this unfunny situation comes from Daily Kos contributing editor and Las Vegas resident Jed Lewison.


“What do you call a bunch of people who not only don’t see anything wrong with Arizona’s new hate law, but blame federal inaction on immigration reform for “forcing” Arizona to enact the law while simultaneously trying to block federal immigration reform legislation?” Lewison asks. “You call them conservatives.”


 

Andy Stern to quit SEIU

Sasha Cuttler
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Andy Stern to quit SEIU

Just days after a San Francisco trial aired the ugly battle between Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and some of his former top aides in the Bay Area, Stern has confirmed that he’s resigning after 38 years in the movement, 14 as head of SEIU.

Stern was once thought of as a rising figure in the progressive movement, but in recent years he has become a polarizing figure within the labor movement, prone to undemocratic power-building and starting fights with other unions. He was criticized as too close to corporations and the Democratic Party, but he doesn’t endear himself to either in an exit interview with the Huffington Post.

The fight between SEIU and the National Union of Healthcare Workers has created bad feelings on both sides, as indicated by the comments section every time we write about it, and I can’t help but think that Stern’s decision can only help the labor movement. But I suppose we’ll see.

BTW, there’s more on the SEIU-NUHW fight here at Spot.us, which we partnered with on this week’s story.

An inconvenient war

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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An inconvenient war

By Christopher D. Cook

news@sfbg.com

For two weeks, in the marble-walled modernist grandeur of the Ninth Circuit U.S. District court in San Francisco, I watched nearly a dozen well-dressed lawyers for the Service Employees International Union — long my favorite union and one I’ve written about and marched with over the years — sue the bejeezus out of two-dozen former SEIU comrades-in-arms, some of labor’s most committed soldiers.

Judge William Alsup’s courtroom was packed and tense every day for two weeks, patrolled watchfully by U.S. marshals as former coworkers shot glares across the aisle and rushed by each other in the hallway outside. “This is like a bad family reunion,” one told me. Indeed, there’s a painful, often quite personal fight inside the family of labor — a fight one can only hope will lead to strong, deep democratic unionism down the road.

In the latest chapter of a saga that’s simmered to a boil over four years, SEIU sued 24 former staffers of its powerful 150,000-member Bay Area local, United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), alleging they used the union’s money and resources to create a rival organization. Since SEIU took over the old local in a bitter trusteeship fight in January 2009, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), led by former UHW president Sal Rosselli, has been organizing workers in droves, challenging SEIU’s hold on health care workers in California.

In the end, following grueling testimonies and cross-examinations, it came to this: on April 9, the jury hit NUHW and 16 of its leaders with a $1.5 million penalty (which might be reduced to $737,850 depending on Alsup’s interpretation of the jury’s intent). It’s a lot of money, but far less than SEIU’s original claim seeking $25 million, and the appeals are likely to drag on into next year.

After dozens of interviews and whispered conversations in the hallways outside Alsup’s courtroom, I was left wondering: how could this be happening? At a time of historic lows in union membership (7.2 percent in the private sector last year) and a recession that may never end for workers, how could SEIU, once the darling of the progressive labor movement, be embroiled in a brutal war with one of its flagship former locals? How could these two unions be tearing each other apart, exchanging ugly accusations that threaten to further tarnish labor’s tenuous reputation? All at a time when California unemployment sits stubbornly at 12.5 percent and more than 90 percent of workers remain unorganized. Hospital executives who are accustomed to tangling with a unified labor front must be thanking their lucky stars.

But this isn’t some union corruption story or simply a scuffle for personal power. Beyond the name-calling lie crucial questions about how unions function, about whose voices are heard both in union offices and on the shop floor. How much voice will workers have in union decisions, not just about break rooms and arguments with the boss, but in the shape and direction of the labor movement?

Ultimately this fight won’t be decided by any jury or judge: despite the verdict, NUHW and its volunteer organizers are pressing on with SEIU for the right to represent California’s health care workers, 400,000 of whom currently pay dues to SEIU. Over the past year, more than 80,000 of those dues-payers have signed petitions to join NUHW, which has won seven of nine elections of health care workers called so far. With more big elections coming soon, most notably among 47,000 Kaiser Permanente workers this June, the stakes are only getting higher.

In a nutshell, the two sides argue thus: SEIU contends that Rosselli and company flouted the will of President Andy Stern, and ultimately its members, by refusing to abide by Stern’s decisions on a union consolidation. That led to a trusteeship of Rosselli’s local, with its leaders allegedly using SEIU resources to form their own union. Rosselli and NUHW insist they were boxed into an untenable corner by Stern’s centralization of power in Washington, D.C., at the expense of locals and workers and that they tried many times to resolve disputes internally, and only broke away to form a new union after they were forced out by Stern.

To convince a jury of its claims, SEIU amassed a formidable legal team drawing from four firms at a cost of roughly $5 million, according to SEIU spokesman Steve Trossman. (An expert witness hired by SEIU testified the union paid him roughly $300,000 just to prepare testimony for the case; defendants say the trial cost SEIU closer to $10 million.) Whatever the number, it’s an awful lot of time and money that could be spent organizing new workers and winning strong contracts instead.

Asked if he thinks the trial is worth the expense, Trossman said, “I think members of the union, when this is over, are going to get the truth of what happened — that they directly used union resources … to hold onto personal power.”

Dan Siegel, NUHW’s chief attorney, casts it differently: “This case is about punishing the defendants and sending a message” to other union dissidents across the country.

 

A LONG-TERM BATTLE

The rift that ended up in federal court has its roots in a 2006 move by Stern to consolidate California’s long-term health care workers, such as home care and nursing home employees, into a single statewide local — a move that would peel away 65,000 long-term care workers from Rosselli’s union.

The most likely beneficiary of the consolidation was the Los Angeles-based Long-Term Care Workers Union, local 6434, headed by Tyrone Freeman, who had been fending off corruption charges (allegedly stealing more than $1 million in union funds for personal gain) since 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Nowhere else but in California did SEIU attempt splitting long-term care and acute care workers into different unions,” said John Marshall, an SEIU strategic researcher who resigned in protest of UHW’s trusteeship, but who remains active in the labor movement. “But it’s worse than that — here SEIU proposed forcing long-term care workers into a local that was widely known to be corrupt, that had contracts with substandard wages and benefits. And on top of it all Stern and SEIU refused to allow those workers to vote on whether or not the transfer should occur.”

When Freeman’s alleged corruption became front-page news in the Times in 2008, and even after SEIU put the L.A. local in trusteeship later that year, Stern continued to push the consolidation. Rosselli resisted, arguing the shift would weaken workers’ voice and standards; wages for workers in Local 6434 were often far lower than those for their counterparts up north, and the mounting corruption charges didn’t bode well for union bargaining power or democracy.

SEIU’s Trossman insists union leaders were not aware of the Freeman allegations until they appeared in the L.A. Times, though one of those stories quotes an unnamed inside source saying Trossman knew of the charges as early as 2002. But Trossman said the issue was not Freeman. “The proposal was to create a new long-term care local in California, and by the time that decision was made in January 2009, Tyrone Freeman was already long out of the picture,” he told us, insisting the long-term care decision was made after hearings and an “advisory member vote.”

Yet 15 months after the takeover of UHW, the consolidation of long-term care workers remains on hold.

Friction between Stern and Rosselli — over the merger, leadership, and labor movement strategy — heated up throughout 2007 and 2008; Rosselli was unanimously booted off of Stern’s “kitchen cabinet” of labor leaders, and removed from his post as president of SEIU’s California State Council.

Then on Jan. 22, 2009, an SEIU-commissioned report by former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall recommended trusteeship — if Rosselli’s union didn’t abide by the transfer of its long-term care workers. A few days later Rosselli and the UHW executive board sent Stern a letter saying they would abide by the merger — if the UHW rank and file could vote on it first. No deal: on Jan. 27, UHW was put into trusteeship: its buildings were locked up, security guards patrolled the perimeters, and many of the deposed union staff camped out on the floors of their old offices.

On the afternoon of the 27th, Rosselli, who had been reelected UHW president earlier that month, spoke to cheering supporters: “[It’s] your right to determine what union you want to be in!”

NUHW members insist it’s never been about Rosselli or the other defendants. “We are not just a bunch of lemmings — we do what we believe,” said Tonya Britton, a Fremont convalescent home worker. “They couldn’t make it this far if there weren’t all of us members … When I heard about the trusteeship, I wanted a union that was for members, not top-down. We were making gains. Now it seems we’re doing nothing but fighting.”

 

Christopher D. Cook is a former Bay Guardian city editor. He has written on labor for Mother Jones, Harper’s, The Economist and others. This story was funded in part by spot.us.

Verdict leaves SEIU-NUHW fight unresolved

Sasha Cuttler
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Verdict leaves SEIU-NUHW fight unresolved

By Christopher D. Cook

In a mixed ruling this morning (April 9), a nine-member U.S. District Court jury awarded $1.5 million to the Service Employees International Union in its ongoing campaign to stymie a rival union created by former SEIU staffers, in a mixed ruling that’s unlikely to resolve the unions’ protracted battle over members and leadership in the labor movement. 

Coming after a tense and bruising two-week trial and several days of jury deliberations, the verdict includes a $724,000 penalty against the insurgent National Union of Healthcare Workers, led by Sal Rosselli, former long-time president of SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers West (UHW). Rosselli and 15 of his NUHW colleagues were also hit with smaller penalties ranging from $30,000 to $74,000.

The SEIU lawsuit originally sought $25 million in damages for an array of allegations that its former staffers, who launched NUHW a day after the local was put in trusteeship, had stolen union funds and used SEIU resources and staff time to build their rival organization.

In the process of litigating the case, SEIU deployed four law firms at an expense of $5 million, according to SEIU-UHW communications director Steve Trossman (NUHW’s attorneys estimate the figure at closer to $10 million)—so if the award is upheld, SEIU stands to lose at least $3.5 million on the case. 

“It’s absolutely worth it,” said Michelle Ringuette, SEIU’s strategic affairs director.  “There’s no price tag on justice.”  She called the verdict “an enormous slam-dunk victory for SEIU members, who wanted to hold [NUHW] accountable…they are exhilarated today.”

But in an interview a few hours after the verdict, Rosselli said he and NUHW are undaunted by the ruling.  “Their goal was to destroy NUHW, and they failed,” he said.  “They wanted us to walk away from NUHW, that’s what this is all about…This will go on for more than a year before they can try to see a dime” of NUHW money, Rosselli added, noting NUHW’s attorneys will ask Judge William Alsup to set aside the verdict, and if he doesn’t they’ll press on to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

According to Rosselli, SEIU “said I was in jail, they said that I stole $3 million, and it hasn’t resonated…This has the potential to backfire on them—what we got dinged for is fighting the trusteeship, fighting for democracy, and fighting for a voice.”

Meanwhile, on the ground, where the two unions are locked in a tough fight for members, a different verdict is playing out.  In nine hospital elections over the past year, NUHW has won seven, mostly by resounding margins. The new union has won elections for more than 3,000 workers so far, while more than 100,000 have signed petitions requesting NUHW representation. The biggest organizing prize is Kaiser, where 50,000 workers will decide which union they want in an election this June.  “Once we win the Kaiser election, it’s going to be all over for SEIU healthcare,” Roselli said.

Rosselli said there are 100 union elections pending, and SEIU has moved to block all but 30 elections at nursing homes where staff turnover has been nearly 100 percent in the past year.  “The only reason they’re blocking is because they think they’re going to lose,” he said.

As the ruling came down, prominent California leaders such as United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and former California State Senate pro tem John Burton issued statements supporting NUHW. “Tens of thousands of healthcare workers are organizing with NUHW for a real voice at work and a democratic voice in their union, and that will continue in spite of this verdict,” Huerta said. “These reformers stood up for workers’ right to vote when SEIU tried to take it away, and that’s the only thing they’re guilty of.”

Workers rally against Newsom’s layoff scheme

Sasha Cuttler
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By Jobert Poblete

Dozens of workers at San Francisco General Hospital rallied March 25 to protest layoffs there and throughout the city as ordered by Mayor Gavin Newsom. More than 17,000 city workers received layoff notices in the last few weeks, including hundreds at the hospital. The protest was organized by SEIU Local 1021, which represents around 12,000 city employees, 9,000 of whom have received pink slips. 

Many of these workers are expected to be re-hired as part-time employees, working 37.5 hours a week or less. The move is expected to shave $50 million from a more than $500 million budget deficit. The Mayor’s Office is calling this a “reorganization” that will minimize the impact on services and maintain employment. But the plan, which was proposed by Newsom last month without first consulting with the city’s unions, has met fierce resistance from employees and their labor representatives and is now the subject of negotiations between the mayor and 41 city employee unions.

SEIU acknowledged the city’s fiscal troubles but is upset about what it calls a unilateral change in its members’ wages and benefits. “Essentially what they’re doing is unilaterally cutting wages and benefits without negotiating it,” SEIU organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “It’s not a question of whether we’re willing to sacrifice, but that choice has been taken away.”

Hospital workers, carrying signs that read “Patient Care is Not Part Time,” also raised concerns about the layoff-rehire scheme’s potential effects on the quality of services at the hospital. “It can’t work in the emergency room and it can’t work in the rest of the hospital,” said Ed Kinchley, a social worker who works in the hospital’s emergency room.

Shari Zinn, an X-ray technician in the hospital, said her department already runs below minimum staffing levels, forcing patients to wait two to four hours for X-rays. Since X-ray technicians are hard to retain, she is not being laid off, but clerks and aids in her department are. “If there isn’t a clerk or aid,” Zinn said, “then an X-ray tech has to stop what they’re doing. Fewer patients can be served.”

Hospital officials would not comment on the layoffs.

At the rally, speakers called on the city to come up with revenue measures and other ways to balance the budget. “The city has really pushed us too far,” Sin Yee Poon, SEIU’s chief elected officer, told the assembled workers. “They’re balancing they’re budget on us, just us.”

SF leaders condemn SEIU tactics

Sasha Cuttler
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SF leaders condemn SEIU tactics

San Franciscans seem to be turning against Service Employee International Union and its national President Andy Stern this week, first with the vote by SEIU Local 1021 members to oust Stern’s leadership team, and now with a letter signed by a broad array of top political officials condemning SEIU tactics against the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

As the Guardian reported last year, NUHW President Sal Rosselli and his management team broke away from SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers after a protracted conflict that culminated in a hostile SEIU takeover of the local, placing it under a Stern-controlled trusteeship. NUHW had criticized Stern’s autocratic leadership style and undemocratic methods while SEIU accused Rosselli of using union funds to undermine Stern’s decisions.

Since then, a majority of SEIU-UHW workers statewide has filed petitions asking to decertify with SEIU-UHW and affiliate with NUHW, which has won seven of the nine elections that have been held so far. So SEIU filed various complaints with the National Labor Relations Board to try to block those elections, while NUHW has complained of worker harassment and ballot meddling by SEIU.

Earlier today, SEIU-UHW sent out a press release touting an NLRB ruling that clears the way for elections at 51 facilities around the state covering 6,845 voters, blaming NUHW for “violating members’ democratic rights” in opposing those elections.

But NUHW leaders say SEIU-UHW has been “cherry-picking” selected sites where they think their chances of winning are good and keeping their NLRB complaints in place to block other sites, often dividing up bargaining units in the process to raise fears in workers that they might lose bargaining clout if they switch unions. NUHW is a relatively small organization compared to the massive SEIU.

NUHW leaders say they want a fair, up-or-down vote among all of the SEIU-UHW members statewide who have asked for elections, and they’ve asked SEIU to sign a Fair Election Agreement to prevent harassment and intimidation, something that SEIU often asks employers to sign.

Supporting that request is an open letter signed by 116 San Francisco political leaders from across the spectrum, including every member of the Board of Supervisors except Sup. Carmen Chu, Assembly members Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma, Sen. Mark Leno, Democrat Party chair Aaron Peskin and nine other members of the DCCC, all four major candidates for the Dist. 8 Board of Supervisors seat, United Educators of San Francisco President Dennis Kelly, and representatives from a board array of unions and grassroots organizations, including UNITE-HERE, POWER, Young Workers United, Chinese Progressive Association, Coleman Advocates, and many others.

Interestingly, in addition to his critics on the left within the labor movement, Stern is also being criticized by conservatives right now after President Barack Obama appointed him to his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

The Guardian has forwarded the letter and allegations to SEIU-UHW officials and is awaiting a response, which I’ll post in the comments section when I hear back.

 

The letter reads:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED community leaders of San Francisco, are deeply troubled by allegations that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) committed multiple, serious violations of state labor law during the union representation election between SEIU United Healthcare Workers – West (SEIU-UHW) and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) for 10,000 Fresno County homecare workers this June.

These allegations, made in sworn testimony before the California Public Employment Relations Board, include that SEIU officials directed staff to open, mark, and alter workers’ ballots; threaten the deportation of immigrants; and tell workers they would suffer the loss of wages, benefits and hours to scare them into voting for SEIU. The complaint alleges further that SEIU organizers physically removed ballots from workers’ mailboxes and homes.

Caregivers in San Francisco have complained of similar intimidation and harassment at the hands of SEIU officials trying to block union representation elections requested by them and tens of thousands of other California healthcare workers who have petitioned to join NUHW.

Over the next year, as thousands of San Francisco homecare workers, private sector nursing home workers, and private sector hospital workers make their choice for union representation between SEIUUHW and NUHW, we are committed to see that these workers can make their decision democratically, without intimidation, harassment, threats or coercion of any kind, from any party.

NUHW officials have communicated to us their willingness to enter into Fair Election Agreements, which are common in California’s healthcare industry, and which SEIU officials have long championed throughout the nation, to govern their campaign conduct and protect caregivers’ freedom of choice in their upcoming union representation elections.

Therefore, we are asking that you and San Francisco’s healthcare employers join NUHW in negotiating Fair Election Agreements to establish ground rules for these elections and guarantee that workers can choose their representatives for themselves. Please know that regardless of your decision, we will stand united to ensure that San Francisco’s healthcare workers have the fair elections they deserve.

SEIU members oust the old guard

Sasha Cuttler
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SEIU members oust the old guard

In a stunning repudiation of the union leadership installed by Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern – whose autocratic style, aggressive expansion, and friendly relationships with big employers has caused a rift in the national labor movement – members of SEIU Local 1021 have voted overwhelmingly for a reform slate of new leaders.

As we wrote recently, the stakes were high here in San Francisco, where the old guard leaders threatened to undermine the union’s progressive tendencies just as Mayor Gavin Newsom is threatening mass layoffs and pay cuts for city employees, and the San Francisco Labor Council’s ideological balance was being tipped by the pro-development push of the building trades.

But the results couldn’t have been more clear in the first local election since Stern installed the Local 1021 after merging 10 union locals together, including the former Local 790, which represents most city employees. Stern’s whole slate was voted out by a substantial margin, including current President Damita Davis-Howard, who had 1445 votes to the 2141 votes garnered by Sin Yee Poon, who now takes over the top spot after having led SF Human Services Agency workers.

Also pushed out was James Bryant, a political ally of Newsom and enabler of Pacific Gas & Electric and other downtown power brokers, who was defeated in his run for Political Action Committee Chair. Alysabeth Alexander, who is in her 20s, beat him by a vote of 2552-1506.

The vote will certainly strengthen the hand of progressives in San Francisco going into what’s expected to be a tough budget fight with Newsom, as well as helping progressive supervisorial candidates in the November election against what is expected to be a strong push by downtown to break the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors.

In addition, it could roil SEIU’s internal politics after a turbulent year, in which Stern created divisive clashes with his own local health care workers (causing Sal Rosselli to create the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers), UNITE-HERE, and the California Nurses Association.

 

The press release from the winning reform slate follows: 

Reformers Sweep in SEIU 1021 Election; Members Vote for Transparency and Democracy for Northern California’s Largest Public Sector Union 

On Friday, thousands of public sector votes were counted to determine the future leadership of one of the largest unions in Northern California.  This is the first election for SEIU 1021, formed only three years ago after the merging of 10 locals.

The reform slate, Change 1021, swept the elections taking a clear majority of the executive leadership seats. This all-member slate easily defeated the former administration-appointees by the International SEIU.  Some candidates won by a 3 to 1 margin while others enjoyed a comfortable 2 to 1 lead on their opponents. See attached list of election results.

“We are excited about the opportunity to give the leadership of this Union back to the membership,” stated Karen Bishop, the San Francisco County Area Representative Elect.  Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President and current Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party  Aaron Peskin agreed, affirming, “It is very heartening to see that real democracy has prevailed.”

Change 1021 campaigned on a platform for reform, seeking a stronger union that would prioritize member representation at work sites; fiscal transparency; and an internal democratic structure. “Members spoke with their votes, sending a clear message about priorities,” said Roxanne Sanchez, President Elect.

The challenges for the new board are daunting-they must reunite and reinvigorate a membership hit hard by the economic downturn, with thousands to receive lay-off notices this week.  The Board Elect is ready to make the budget fight a priority to fight layoffs and preserve important public and non-profit services for our communities.

 “Our members have spoken, loudly and clearly, that business as usual is absolutely no longer tolerable and that a fundamental change in the focus of our union towards the needs and priorities of our members are in prompt order,” says Sin Yee Poon, Chief Elected Officer Elect. For now, there is cause for celebration as the congratulatory calls have been flooding across California from members, elected officials, labor leaders, and community partners.

Newly  elected members will assume office at the next Executive Board meeting, March 9th.   International Union leaders are expected to be in attendance.           

Change 1021 Candidates who were elected are: Chief Elected Officer, Sin Yee Poon; President, Roxanne Sanchez; First Vice President, Gary Jimenez; Second Vice President, Crawford Johnson; Third Vice President, Larry Bradshaw; Secretary, Pamela Morton; Treasurer, Kathy O’Neil; Political Action Comm. Chair, Alysabeth Alexander; Social & Economic Justice Comm. Chair, Gladys Gray; Capital Stewardship Comm. Chair, Harry Baker; Cities Industry Chair, Renita Terry; Counties Industry Chair, Ken Tam; Special Districts Industry Chair, Saul Almanza; Schools Industry Chair, Mynette Theard; Sacramento County Rep, Ken Bloomberg; Registered Nurses Industry Chair, David Fleming; City & County of SF Industry Chair, Kathy Basconcillo; San Francisco Area Reps- Karen Bishop, David Turner, Jacqueline Sowers; Alameda County Area Reps,- Amy Dooha, Eric Stern, Gregory Correa; Sonoma County Area Rep, Nancy Atwell; Budget & Finance Comm Region 3, Michael Tong; and Budget & Finance Comm. Region 4, Mary Jane Logan.

An open letter to the Transit Workers Union

David Talbot
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An open letter to the Transit Workers Union

 

By Gabriel Metcalf

OPINION Last week, the Transit Workers Union refused to accept a deal with San Francisco that would have modestly reduced major service cuts and eliminated another increase in discount fares at least for this year. The proposal would have involved two things: first, a one-time contribution by drivers to their own pension plans (worth $8.9 million for next year, almost precisely cancelled by the automatic raise of $8 million the drivers will receive next year); and second, a change in work rules that would have required drivers to actually work 40 hours in a week before earning overtime, which would have saved $3.8 million over the next 14 months.

Muni is facing a deficit of at least $17 million in the current fiscal year and around $55 million next year. Future years will be worse. Given these pressures, the TWU is getting ready to re-vote. I presume that, eventually, union members will accept the deal. But either way, given how utterly marginal this deal is for the riders, progressives need to begin a public conversation about what responsibility the union has for making Muni work better.

The problem is not that TWU salaries are too high. The problem is the work rules. These include: drivers not having to let their managers know how long they will be absent from work, making it impossible to set schedules; drivers earning overtime pay before actually working 40 hours a week; and perhaps most significantly, a set of rules that makes it virtually impossible to hire part time drivers. Currently, Muni is forced by the work rules to pay drivers at full hourly rates to sit around between the morning and afternoon peaks. That rule costs MTA about $11 million each year.

If the TWU is willing to give on just the overtime and part-time driver rules, MTA would save $12.4 million in next year’s budget — and this savings would grow in the future. Other work rule changes could save much, much more, while dramatically increasing service to riders.

Probably the underlying cause of Muni’s work rules is the fact that the TWU, unlike other bargaining units in the city, has its salary and benefits set by formula in the City Charter — which means that management has nothing to offer during labor negotiations. Friends of mine in the labor movement argue that TWU is just doing its job in trying to get a good deal for members. I would argue that TWU needs to do more than that, and needs to begin taking responsibility for building a transit system that works well and can grow over time.

Maybe this public sector union needs to take a page from the Swedish labor movement.

Early into the post World War II economic boom, the Swedish unions learned that, since they controlled the government and increasingly controlled the boards of directors of the corporations they had organized, they were essentially always going to get their major demands met. This forced a big shift in their culture, causing them to have to take responsibility not just for cutting a good deal for their members, but for ensuring the profitability of the companies. Labor could easily “win too much” and drive the companies out of business, thereby returning its members to unemployment. Once labor controlled the businesses, it had to come up with a proactive agenda for how to run them successfully.

Closer to home, we’ve seen the teachers union accept cuts and changes to their equivalent of work rules in order to prevent teacher layoffs. And we’ve seen the Service Employees International Union at the national level put immense resources into passing health care reform — something that will benefit all Americans, not just SEIU members.

Something similar needs to happen now at Muni.

Muni workers deserve a good wage. It’s a hard job under the best of circumstances. And as Muni tries to keep service on the streets without enough money for equipment and maintenance, workers on the front lines will bear the brunt of the bigger problems. But a lot of people resent the things the union has chosen to ask for in addition to a good wage.

Muni’s troubles are multifaceted. They involve bad management, bad street design, bad land use planning, and certainly insufficient funding. But work rules are undeniably part of the issue as well. It cannot be progressive for the TWU, in the middle of the worst financial crisis to hit our country since the Great Depression, to cling to the same work rules it has had in the past. Muni needs TWU to help it be successful.

Gabriel Metcalf is executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

California healthcare workers spar over medical facility rallies

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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By Rebecca Bowe

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is holding a series of rallies today at eight different Bay Area medical facilities to “mark the approval of their new contract and organize to enforce it; and throw out an outside organization that is trying to undermine their progress,” according to a press release.

The “outside organization” refers to the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), a young union formed early last year in the wake of a deep rift created when SEIU brought UHW workers under its representation through a trusteeship. NUHW later decried the move as a “hostile takeover.”

Workers at the hospitals, which include five medical centers in the Daughters of Charity Health System, are expected to vote soon on whether they would rather remain under the SEIU-UHW umbrella or break away to join NUHW. The eight medical centers employ roughly 3,500 SEIU-UHW members. SEIU-UHW also plans to deliver an open letter to NUHW tomorrow, Feb. 19, at NUHW’s offices in Emeryville.

In conversations with the Guardian about the events, representatives from SEIU-UHW and NUHW each charged that the other side was engaged in spreading lies.

Richard Gutierrez, a member of SEIU-UHW who has been working as a physical therapy aid at the Seton Coastside facility in Moss Beach for a little more than two years, said the rallies were meant to signal to management and NUHW “that we are a united front … united to work against management.”

Gutierrez said he’d been involved in contract negotiations for 18 months, but worried that the newly secured contract would be undermined by pending votes on union representation. “It’s not as strong, because management can drag their tail, and say that right now we’re not going to deal with it,” he said.

Kathleen Blocher, a union member who has worked in the radiology division at Seton Medical Facility in Daly City for more than 30 years, said she didn’t think much of SEIU-UHW’s rallies. “I don’t understand why we’re spending money on a picket when we already have a contract,” she said. “They’re picketing against NUHW, which is not the union of record — yet.” Blocher believes there is strong support for NUHW, in part because she said it is more member-driven than SEIU.

Blocher also took a dim view of the contract secured by SEIU-UHW, because she said certain provisions that were previously in place had been given up.

“To hear that is a slap in the face,” Gutierrez said when we shared this viewpoint. “97 percent of our membership voted to ratify the contract.” He said he believed the contract was strong, pointing to a provision that grants part-time workers eligibility for healthcare benefits, a rare perk in this economy and job market.

According to Gutierrez and Adriana Surfas, who handles communications for SEIU-UHW, NUHW has been trying to delay the vote on union representation because they fear a lack of support for transitioning to NUHW. “I hope it’s done soon,” Gutierrez said. “The sooner it is, the sooner it shows that we are actually SEIU-UHW.”

Blocher dismissed this charge as completely false. “That makes absolutely no freaking sense to me,” she said. “We should’ve had our vote more than a year ago. And SEIU has put up roadblocks the whole way.”

For more on local labor shakeups, read this week’s report.

Labor’s love lost

Andrew Lam
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Labor’s love lost

Note: This file has been corrected from an earlier version.

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Two recent events could have major implications for Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — San Francisco’s largest public-sector union and an important ally for progressives — for better or for worse. And this union’s fate seems closely tied to that of the progressive movement in San Francisco.

The first event was likened to a “nuclear bomb in the morning paper” by one observer, and might be interpreted as the kickoff to a fierce budget battle. Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that he is considering a plan to help solve next year’s budget deficit by laying off 10,000 full-time city workers and rehiring them at 37.5 hours, which would amount to a sweeping 6.25 percent pay cut for workers and an estimated $50 million in savings for a fiscally impaired city.

Though it was framed by Newsom spokesperson Tony Winnicker as one preliminary cost-saving option among many, the proposal received prominent front-page coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, even before official discussions were called between the mayor and public sector unions. Since SEIU Local 1021 represents 17,000 members in San Francisco and a majority of the city’s 26,000 total employees, it would likely absorb the greatest impact if such a plan went through.

At the same time the mayor’s startling announcement hit newsstands, SEIU was in the midst of mailing out ballots to its membership for union elections. “I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence, or if the city is taking advantage of the fact that SEIU is absorbed in its elections,” Sin Yee Poon, an SEIU chapter president for Human Services Agency workers, told us while pointing out that the events happened simultaneously.

With three separate slates of candidates vying for control of SEIU Local 1021, grudges between warring internal factions have intensified into bitter sparring matches. The timing is unfortunate — just as SEIU’s internal turmoil is coming to a head, one of its greatest battles is pending over an unprecedented $522 million budget shortfall that looms like a dark cloud over the city. The deficit will surely result in job losses, and the public sector union’s ability to mount resistance even as it wrestles with internal strife is shaping up to be a key question.

This pivotal moment carries wider political implications considering that the progressive organization has in the past helped seal an alliance between San Francisco’s left-leaning leaders and organized labor through the San Francisco Labor Council.

With SEIU besieged by infighting and soon to be hurting from wage slashes and layoffs, more conservative factions of the labor community, such as the San Francisco Firefighters Union and the Building and Construction Trades Council, have recently been butting heads with progressive members of the Board of Supervisors.

At the same time, forces on all sides are beginning to eye the coveted seats up for election in June at the Democratic County Central Committee, a Democratic Party hub that is a cornerstone of local political influence, as well as the seats that will open up on the Board of Supervisors in November. Negotiations between unions and the mayor are ongoing, and mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker was quick to note that Newsom is open to options, other than reconfiguring 10,000 city jobs, that organized labor brings to the table. At the same time, the Guardian heard from numerous sources that city workers felt outraged and blindsided by Newsom’s decision to air the plan in the Chronicle instead of bringing stakeholders to the table.

SEIU Local 1021 President Damita Davis-Howard told us she thinks the idea of taking $50 million out of the pockets of working people in a rocky economy is wrong-headed.

“This was devastating,” said Davis-Howard, who is running for a newly created union position called chief elected officer, which is different from the union president, and similar to an executive-director post. “The mayor might as well have raised their taxes, because if you decrease their pay by 6.25 percent, they will still have the same amount of work, they will still have to pay the same mortgage, they will still have to buy the same food, the same PG&E, and they’ll be doing it with a lot less money. If any idea like this were to go through, it would actually remove the very fabric or fiber of San Francisco. It would really cut to the core of the very being of San Francisco. … I don’t see how anybody could believe that we could continue being the city that we love being with this kind of action.”

Winnicker, the mayoral spokesperson, cast it as a plan that could avert hundreds or even thousands of layoffs. “This year the easy decisions are behind us,” he noted in a recent discussion with the Guardian.

Solving last year’s fiscal shortfall was far from easy — budget tussles between frontline city workers and the mayor got ugly, and even then, the city received millions in federal stimulus dollars to cushion the blow. A similar plan of sweeping hourly cuts was floated then too, but it didn’t gain enough traction to move forward.

“The mayor is facing a huge budget deficit, there’s no question about it — but he has not lifted one finger to raise a dime in revenue,” charged SEIU member Ed Kinchley, who works at San Francisco General Hospital. As for how the union might respond if such a proposal went through, he speculated, “I think it’s the kind of thing that could lead to a strike. A big fight.”

While the city charter bars strikes by public employees, Kinchley’s comment indicates the level of frustration among SEIU’s rank-and-file.

 

 

The proposal could present a common enemy and a rallying point for a union in disarray. Internal jockeying for elected positions can be fierce in any organization, but for San Francisco’s service-workers union, the rifts are particularly deep.

The elections, which will be decided Feb. 28, mark the first time since a radical restructuring in 2007 that members will collectively decide who should lead. In 2007, the face of SEIU was changed across California when the international president, Andy Stern, began consolidating dozens of far-flung locals into centralized, beefier entities in a bid to maximize political effectiveness (California comprises roughly one-third of the entire union’s membership).

Local 1021 came into existence when 10 locals were conglomerated into one 54,000-member giant — hence the “10-to-one” label — representing health care and frontline service workers from the Bay Area to the Oregon border. 

In San Francisco, where a large segment of its members are based, the shift was interpreted by some as a power grab, and it triggered a period of ongoing strife between those allied with Stern and the international wing on one side, and those dissatisfied with changes they saw as antithetical to the democratic ideals championed by Local 790, its predecessor, on the other.

In the years following the reorganization, Stern began trying to aggregate members by raiding other unions to consolidate power. But campaigns to bring in members from United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and fend off membership losses to the newly created National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) have consumed money and resources that some members told the Guardian would’ve been better spent bolstering national support for health-care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act. According to one source, SEIU spent $10 million on a Fresno battle against NUHW.*

A fight waged between SEIU Local 1021 and UNITE HERE Local 2, a hotel-workers union that was historically allied with Local 1021’s predecessor, left some members especially stung because it marred a longstanding relationship between two groups of frontline workers.

“Andy Stern has concentrated more and more power into the hands of a group of so-called elite members of the union,” Kinchley told the Guardian. Stern’s top-down leadership style and growth-oriented objectives “run pretty harshly against what many of us believe is in the best interest of our workers locally,” he added.

In recent weeks, divisions have deepened further. A staff person who preferred not to be identified for fear of retribution filed charges with the U.S. Department of Labor against a supervisor, who is aligned with the international faction, for alleged harassment and bullying. Another complaint was filed with union leadership alleging that union bylaws were violated when membership money was authorized, but not spent, to conduct a poll without proper approval.*

“There’s a fiscal rogue-ness about it. [Davis-Howard] does whatever she wants, and she spends our dues money without authorization from anybody,” Kinchley charged.

Stern appointed Davis-Howard, and now she is running for election on a slate aligned with the international wing. When the Guardian tried to reach her to discuss union elections, spokesperson Carlos Rivera told us that Davis-Howard found it inappropriate to publicly discuss internal divisions.

Sin Yee Poon is running as her opponent on a reform slate, formed by members disaffected by the international’s modus operandi. “For the whole reform group, we’re disappointed with the general direction of corporate unionism,” Poon told the Guardian. Stressing that she believes grassroots, democratic ideals have eroded since the restructuring, she said members in her camp are agitated when they see resources siphoned into raids on other unions such as UNITE HERE and UHW. “We want it to be member-driven,” she said. “The raiding of other unions is absolutely not OK.”

 

 

The internal strife could have a wider ripple effect. SEIU Local 1021 has historically been influential in securing an alliance between the city’s labor community and San Francisco’s progressive leadership. During the last round of elections for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, Sups. John Avalos and Eric Mar campaigned and ultimately were elected with strong fundraising support from the labor council.

Yet in recent weeks, several skirmishes pitted certain factions of the labor community against progressive members of the Board of Supervisors. Outrage bubbled up from the firefighters — and ultimately the labor council as a whole — against a charter amendment proposed by Sup. John Avalos that would have extended the minimum number of work hours for firefighters.

Billed as a cost-saving measure, the proposal might have ultimately resulted in fewer firefighter jobs, but it was designed to spread the pain of budget cuts more equitably by grazing public safety departments instead of just inflicting blows on frontline and healthcare workers.

After Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson came out strongly against it, Avalos abandoned the idea. A source from within the labor council, who spoke on background only, described it as an opportunity for the labor council to come together and unite on class interests.

The political posturing that came out of that fight shook even Sup. David Campos, who vocally called for equitably sharing the pain during last year’s budget debacle. “This isn’t the way to do it,” Campos said when asked about Avalos’ failed charter amendment. “And I worry about the negative impact on labor and the progressive board. There are larger issues at play here. The entire progressive agenda is at stake. We need to think long-term about the specific issues plus the future of the progressive movement.”

Sup. Sean Elsbernd’s bid to reform the pension system to save money has provoked yet another fight with SEIU Local 1021. Union members argue that if they are asked to contribute to their own retirement funds, which would become mandatory under this proposal, then they should be given the same wage increase that other unions were granted when they agreed to similar terms.

But when Sup. Eric Mar tried to amend Elsbernd’s proposal by inserting language guaranteeing that pay increase, Elsbernd said it would cost the city millions more. If Mar’s amended version goes forward, “you’ll be going to the voters by yourself,” Elsbernd told the progressive-leaning supervisor at a Feb. 9 board meeting.

 

 

Another fight has erupted over 555 Washington, a tower proposed to go up beside the TransAmerica Pyramid, which was debated at a joint hearing Feb. 11 between the Planning Commission and the Recreation and Park Commission. For members of the Building & Construction Trades Council, which represents unionized carpenters, plumbers, and other workers in development-related trades, the project represented jobs — the screaming priority in an economy where funding for new construction has trickled to almost nil.

“There is, in general in San Francisco progressive politicians, a knee-jerk reaction to development projects,” Building & Trades Council Secretary Treasurer Michael Theriault told us. As a council representing people whose livelihoods depend on private sector construction, “We have a particular quandary,” he said. “We need politicians who at the same time are friendly to labor and understand that development is an economic tool that can help the city.”

The arm of labor representing Theriault’s council has been slammed with job losses due to the economic downturn, and he’s publicly expressed frustration when projects of this scale are shot down.

“What the mayor did, what Elsbernd did, and what Avalos did are all the same thing: They all staked out a position, put a provocative idea on the table, and forced unions to have a discussion with a gun to their head in a non-constructive way,” Mike Casey, president of UNITE HERE Local 2 and a member of the labor council’s Executive Committee.

A source familiar with the inner workings of the labor council said the tension between building trades and firefighters versus more left-leaning members of the labor community has been in existence for decades, and it isn’t anything new — particularly in the months preceding election season.

Casey challenged the very notion that there is a subculture of the labor council that isn’t progressive, pointing out that labor came together as whole to support Sups. Avalos, Mar, and David Chiu — “and I personally would do it again in a heartbeat,” he added. Internal catfights and struggles for control come with the territory in a democratic, diverse organization, he said. “As a group of working people, I have great regard for the membership [of SEIU Local 1021],” he said. “Occasionally there’s a dustup. In my experience, after the dust settles, more often that not, unions come out stronger for it.”.

*Corrections made to the original file.

Public employees feel blindsided by Newsom’s layoff scheme

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Public employees feel blindsided by Newsom’s layoff scheme

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to lay off 10,000 city employees and rehire them at lower pay is being met with outrage by some public-sector workers. The plan, crafted as a way of saving money to balance the city budget, would amount to sweeping pay cuts across the board for a significant number of city workers.

Formal discussions about it are in the earliest stages, and Tony Winnicker, the mayor’s press secretary, described it as “just one alternative that we’re investigating.” Nonetheless, some members of Service Employees International Union Local 1021 are furious that the mayor unveiled this plan in the San Francisco Chronicle instead of at a meeting with the city’s labor leaders.

“As far as we can tell, an idea he has ended up on the front page of the Chronicle that’s had a devastating ripple affect among the people who work for the city and county,” SEIU Local 1021 President Damita Davis-Howard told the Guardian. “We feel like we got a sucker-punch. … We really wish he had talked to us before he governed by press conference.”


Davis-Howard said she’s been inundated with phone calls from angry union members who read the article. “This is the same proposal he floated last year,” Davis-Howard said. “Most of our members believed that they gave up their holiday pay in order to avoid this very thing.”

The proposal, which was briefly considered last year but never moved forward, serves to illustrate just how hard financial woes are hitting San Francisco. The city is staring down a $522 million deficit, and Newsom’s proposal would make up for a mere $50 million in savings.

Winnicker declined to comment on Davis-Howard’s concerns about being blindsided by news of the layoff plan, brushing it off by saying the mayor did discuss it with “some folks in labor.” Instead, he suggested that Newsom is getting serious about solving the budget crisis while the Guardian is just focusing on irrelevant gripes.

“It is an unprecedented budget shortfall, and it is real,” Winnicker said, stressing that the gaping budget gap will have to be bridged without the infusion of federal stimulus dollars that cushioned the blow last year. “The easy choices are behind us.” This layoff plan could prevent “hundreds, if not thousands, of layoffs,” but the mayor is open to other ideas that labor brings to the table, he said.

“That logic is just flawed,” Davis-Howard said when asked about the assertion that the plan could prevent layoffs. “That’s not the way you re-stimulate the economy, by taking more dollars out of the economy. We can’t continue to balance the budget on cuts, because pretty soon the actual fiber of the city and county of San Francisco will be reeling because of the number of cuts that we sustained.”

When asked how SEIU Local 1021 would respond, she said, “I do believe we need to be open-minded, imaginative, and creative in coming up with some revenue-generating measures here.”

No doubt the mayor will receive plenty of suggestions as negotiations continue in the coming weeks.

Scraping bottom

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Scraping bottom

The job of scrubbing down a city bus after it’s gone out of service is no picnic. At a Jan. 20 Budget and Finance Committee hearing called by Sup. Chris Daly to discuss health and safety impacts related to Municipal Transportation Agency layoffs, supervisors took a virtual tour of a Muni bus that was trashed on multiple levels: tagged inside and out, soiled with vomit, and strewn with garbage. Among the roughly 100 Muni workers who will lose their jobs to midyear budget cuts are 10 “car cleaners” — those unsung heroes who scrub away late into the night, tackling the residue left behind by the Sharpie-wielding, litterbug masses.

“We do send out all of our vehicles clean,” MTA spokesperson Judson True told the Budget and Finance Committee members at the hearing. “We do not send out any of our vehicles with any health issues … and we will not.” Despite his assurances, members of the Board of Supervisors and some Muni staffers voiced fears that with fewer and more overworked car cleaners, the overall experience of riding public transit could suffer.

It’s just one small example of on-the-ground impacts of painful budget cuts inflicted to solve a steep shortfall affecting the city’s transit agency. The fiscal woes aren’t unique to Muni. In coming months, San Francisco city departments across the board will have to contend with revenue shortfalls and find ways to continue providing services with diminished resources.

But with layoffs and other proposals such as raising fares, reducing service, and charging more for discount passes on the table, many are raising objections — including several members of the MTA Board of Directors, a body that is wholly appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. In a rare show of defiance at a Jan. 19 MTA Board meeting, several directors even resuscitated the idea of extending parking-meter hours and raising meter fees to generate new transit revenue, an idea Newsom previously rejected.

$49 MILLION IN THE RED

Muni has lost $180 million in state funding over the last three years due to “the nightmare in Sacramento,” as True put it, and no one seems to believe the fiscal crisis can be resolved without some degree of pain.

At the Jan. 19 MTA Board meeting, transit agency Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose outlined the dismal financial picture, explaining that Muni has been hit hard by declining parking and taxi fees and impacts to the city’s general fund, leaving it about $49 million in the hole for the current budget cycle. After the layoffs, Muni will still face a $17 million problem. To solve it, suggestions include jacking up the historic F Line trolley fare from $3 to $5, charging $30 for discount monthly passes for seniors and passengers with disabilities, and reducing service.

Even against the gloomy fiscal backdrop, the prospect of eliminating jobs to make up for the losses drew serious concerns from MTA directors. “Once somebody’s gone, they’re gone,” Director Shirley Breyer Black noted. “I think moving forward with cuts in these classifications will send us into deeper fiscal crisis.”

All the affected workers — most of them frontline employees — are slated to lose their jobs by May 1, and around one-third of them were dismissed Jan. 22.

Muni Executive Director and CEO Nathaniel Ford emphasized that the decision to cut jobs was not made lightly. But at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting the following day, progressive members of the Board of Supervisors expressed alarm after hearing union members sound off about how the cuts disproportionately affect lower-paid classifications. The majority of layoffs target members of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, San Francisco’s largest labor union, which represents frontline workers across city departments.

“I understand that there are no good decisions,” Daly told the Guardian, adding that a certain group of workers seem to bearing the brunt of the cuts. “What progressive supervisors are calling for is for the budget to be handled more evenly,” he said.

A single Municipal Executives’ Association (MEA) employee — an MTA manager earning between $105,950 and $135,200 per year — was let go during this latest round of about 100 Muni layoffs, according to an agency memo. In the past year, MTA reduced its upper-level management team from 108 to 96 employees. In contrast, 33 members of SEIU Local 1021 — the majority frontline workers earning between $45,656 and $64,272 a year — will be affected by the cuts.

“Unfortunately, when MTA discovered that they had a budget problem, they didn’t bring all parties to the table,” SEIU Organizer Leah Berlanga testified at the Budget and Finance Committee hearing. “The way we got invited was via pink slips. That’s the only time they will talk to people who do direct services.”

When asked whether Muni had assessed mid- and upper-management level jobs to even the scales, True responded that a few mid-level managers were included in the latest round of cuts. One reason the layoffs seem disproportionate, he added, is that there are so many more frontline workers than others. “The budget picture has affected the entire agency,” he said. “No one is happy about these decisions.”

But SEIU Local 1021 characterized the layoffs as misguided, and attempted to identify waste and mismanagement within the agency in a packet of alternative cost-saving measures it submitted to MTA. At the top of the list was the suggestion that the agency eliminate 35 retired Muni employees, who are allowed to work up to 960 hours per year and earn wages in addition to their pensions. And according to the union, there are 21 temporary workers in the agency who’ve exceeded a two-year limit for short-term employment. SEIU recommended that those temps be dismissed too.

SEIU also criticized the decision to lay off 24 parking control officers (PCOs) — uniformed workers who have the unenviable job of issuing parking citations to bring in revenue for the city. “To me, if you do the simple math, it doesn’t make any sense. They make most of the money for the MTA,” said a PCO who testified at the hearing.

According to SEIU’s calculations, eliminating 24 employees who dole out parking tickets could result in a $7.2 million loss for the city in parking revenue. But True said MTA disagrees with this figure, and pointed to an internal memo showing how revenue from parking citations dropped in recent years even as more PCOs were hired. Nonetheless, at the urging of SEIU, the MTA Board agreed to postpone those 24 layoffs until February to buy time to study the impact. For other positions, negotiations between MTA and the union are ongoing. The details on still more layoffs, which will affect transit operators, is yet to come.

Sup. David Campos is asking for a management audit to see if Muni is spending its money efficiently. “I think we should look at best practices and how we’re operating before we finalize any cuts,” he said.

THE PARKING POLITICS

During a round of MTA budget talks last fall, the idea of extending city parking meter hours and raising meter fees was floated as a means of recouping losses — but Newsom balked at the idea, saying higher parking fees could harm small businesses. Now MTA Director Bruce Oka has revived — and endorsed — the concept.

“I can hold my nose and vote on anything, but I refuse to vote on something when I believe we have not looked under a rock for every source of funding,” Oka said at the meeting. “We have to extend the parking meter hours — we have to find dollars. If Room 200 [i.e. Newsom] doesn’t want that to happen, well then … he’s got to come up with a way to do what we need to do. If he’s not going to raise parking meters or extend parking meter time, he’s got to come up with some money.”

Tom Radulovich, executive director of nonprofit Livable City and one of the individuals who helped to create MTA in 1999, summed up Oka’s comments with a note of surprise: “He really called out the mayor,” he said. “I haven’t seen MTA Board members do that — they usually cover for him.”

Radulovich — who is also on the BART Board — says targeting motorists for more revenue instead of transit riders would be more equitable, sustainable, and in keeping with the city’s Transit First goals in the long run. Proposition A, passed November 2007, established “a strong mandate to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions,” he pointed out. But, he noted, with layoffs that could affect the qualify of service and possibly deter people from riding, “We don’t see how MTA is going to get to those voter-mandated transit goals.” *

MUNI MEETINGS

PUBLIC MEETINGS ON SFMTA BUDGET

Saturday, Feb. 6, 10 a.m. to noon

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 20, 10 a.m. to noon

One South Van Ness Ave. at Market Street, 2nd Floor Atrium

SFMTA BOARD MEETINGS

Friday, Jan. 29, 10 a.m.; discussion of FY10 options, including Muni service reductions

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 11 a.m.; public hearing on proposed FY10 budget actions

Tuesday, Mar. 2, 2 p.m.; public hearing and possible board approval of FY10 budget actions

Location: City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 400

Some Muni layoffs postponed for a month

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By Rebecca Bowe

Two dozen Muni parking control officers (PCOs) can hold onto their jobs for another month, the Municipal Transportation Agency Board decided Tuesday. The PCOs are those ever-popular uniformed workers who go around issuing parking citations (maybe you’ve seen the bumper-sticker slogan — “Good people, Tough jobs” — just after getting slammed with an outrageous parking ticket). A round of 24 PCO layoffs was previously scheduled to go into effect at the end of this week, as part of midyear cuts made to balance the city budget. But the MTA Board agreed to push the layoff date back to Feb. 26, according to Steve Stallone, a spokesperson for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the workers. MTA spokesperson Judson True confirmed that the layoffs were postponed.

The PCO layoffs represented a hot topic at last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, when a long line of city employees formed during public comment to raise objections. Abraham Davis, a PCO, told supervisors that each officer issues an average of 30 citations a day, which he said brings in roughly $2,000 for the city. Accounting for all 24 workers, “that’s $960,000 a month,” he said, “and that’s a low average.” He described one of his own bad days: “That’s the day I got spit on, almost run over, and came back to the hall with 60 citations,” he said. “Do the math.”

Stallone says today’s MTA Board decision was made because SEIU Local 1021 presented new figures outlining why cutting city workers who generate revenue for the city is a bad business decision. “We crunched the numbers differently,” he told the Guardian. “[MTA] staff just plain had it wrong.” We haven’t heard back yet on how SEIU’s numbers differ from MTA’s numbers — but it’s clear that the MTA Board is willing to look at what the union brought to the table.

At Sup. Chris Daly’s request, a hearing will be held at Wednesday’s Budget & Finance Committee meeting to discuss Muni layoffs and “the impacts on public health and safety concerns,” according to the meeting agenda. Some of those concerns revolve around the fact that PCOs direct traffic in emergency situations or special events when they aren’t issuing parking tickets, Stallone explained. And since another group of affected Muni workers includes the people who clean the buses, maybe the case will be made that riding around in grimy buses won’t exactly help San Franciscans combat swine flu and other contagious maladies. That’s just a guess. “It’s a good guess,” Stallone said. But he took a broader view, saying, “You’re going to lose ridership if the buses suck.”

Holiday blues

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Holiday blues

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Ethea Farahkhan lost her city job Nov. 29, when a round of city layoffs impacting front-line workers took effect.
Farahkhan, a woman of color who was an administrative assistant at San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families, said she would have a job if it weren’t for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision not to spend money approved by the Board of Supervisors to save people from job losses during the holiday season.

The layoffs rippled through city government as DPH employees with seniority exercised “bumping rights” to replace employees like Farahkhan, who was hired three years ago.

“No one’s in a festive mood. We’re concentrating on making mortgages and buying food to put on our table,” Farahkhan told us when we caught up with her Thanksgiving eve. “I know San Francisco is not exempt from the economic crisis,” she added, “but I feel like our mayor is out of touch. He’s never been in this position.”

If DPH layoff had been covered by existing funds and incoming grant money, as directed by a veto-proof, 8-3 vote of the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 24, she said, “I would definitely have a job to go to.” Instead, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced after the board vote that he was refusing to spend the reallocated funding to halt the 478 DPH layoffs and reassignments.

Farahkhan’s union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, spent months trying to save these jobs, finally winning over the final supervisor needed to overcome a veto, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, shortly before the vote. Then, for the second time in as many months, the head of the executive branch announced that he would simply ignore the legislative branch.

The impasse doesn’t bode well for a city that’s about to wrestle with a record midyear budget deficit again.
In October, Newsom declared that he would ignore the board’s passage of legislation — by the same 8-3 vote that could override a mayoral veto — to prevent deportation of undocumented youth in custody until they are convicted. It was the first of two actions that seemed to answer the question of whether the mayor is willing to work with the supervisors on the toughest problems facing the city.

That was the question raised last summer when the board discussed a budget analyst’s report that Newsom had either cut or refused to spend about $15.6 million of the $37.5 million that supervisors approved in budget add-backs for the 2008-09 fiscal year. With the mayor cutting 42 percent of program funding that the board fought to restore, trust was already eroding.

During budget deliberation, some progressive supervisors unsuccessfully tried to place hundreds of millions of dollars on reserve, which would give the board some leverage to force Newsom to honor his pledge to work with supervisors on midyear budget cuts, but the board ultimately decided not to do so.

The mayor’s latest rejection came after a long, embittered battle with the union. SEIU members resorted to drastic measures — staging protests in traffic intersections, distributing flyers outside Newsom’s PlumpJack restaurants, barging into his office unannounced singing civil-rights era ballads — to pressure the mayor. But neither those media stunts, nor compromise solutions developed by Sups. John Avalos, Bevan Dufty, and Board President David Chiu, could persuade Newsom to go along with revisiting the DPH cuts.

“Mayor Newsom cannot spend funds the city does not have,” Newsom’s press secretary, Joe Arellano, told the Guardian when asked for an explanation. “The board action didn’t provide any new money — it takes dollars already being used to pay other employees’ salaries.”

The money allocated by the board was already destined for salaries and benefits of other DPH employees, but Sups. Avalos, Chris Daly, and Ross Mirkarimi argued that new federal dollars en route to the city via state and federal channels would bring the department budget back into balance. An estimated $34 million in federal funding is expected to flow into city coffers for health services by mid-2010, but Arellano indicated that the mayor intends to use that money to help balance next year’s deficit.

As the city considers midyear slashes to cope with next year’s monstrous $522 million shortfall, the spirit of cooperation that Newsom publicly emphasized at the outset of last year’s budget cycle now seems dead. Chiu told the Guardian that the only way the board was able to achieve a palatable budget back in July was through controversial partnership with the Mayor’s Office. But when supervisors approached Newsom with alternative solutions for restoring the DPH layoffs, “the mayor was not interested in exploring these different options,” Chiu explained.

Now, Chiu said he’s worried by the implications of the mayor’s defiant approach to the board. “We have two branches of government — legislative and executive. Eleven of us are required to set laws for the city, and the mayor is supposed to carry it out. I hope and believe that the mayor would respect the roles of our respective branches,” Chiu said, carefully choosing his words when asked for his perspective on this trend. “I don’t know how we are going to get through next year if we can’t … not just agree to disagree, but figure out where we agree.”

Chiu’s persistent search for common ground stands in contrast to Daly’s more adversarial approach. In July, just before the board signed off on the 2009-10 budget, Daly floated a proposal to place $300 million on reserve — which would require additional board action to spend, thereby giving supervisors some leverage — but it failed to pass.

Daly also proposed a placing a charter amendment on the ballot that would have required the mayor to fund certain board-approved programs that supervisors deemed especially important. But that failed too when only Sups. Mirkarimi, David Campos and Eric Mar supported it. In a recent conversation with the Guardian, Daly indicated that this possibility could be revived. “It doesn’t matter how many supervisors it takes” to pass legislation, Daly said. “[The mayor] wants to govern unilaterally, and that’s not okay.”

As for the mayor’s latest announcement that he wouldn’t spend the money to restore DPH salaries, Daly said it’s not over yet. “There will be meetings. There will be discussions,” he said. “We’re going to move on this.”

At the same time, midyear cuts are speeding through the pipeline. By Dec. 4, city department heads will have to figure out how to slash their current budgets by 4 percent. By Feb. 20, Newsom is asking for plans to cut an additional 20 percent, plus an extra 10 percent in contingency funding in order to address next year’s gaping deficit.

Those “adjustments,” as they’re called in bureaucratic jargon, promise to be painful. As the next city budget squabble comes into focus on the horizon, the question of revenue measures is still out there and isn’t helped by the current acrimony at City Hall.

Progressive supervisors are also moving to tackle spending areas they deem wasteful, such as a surge in high-dollar management salaries or some of the mayor’s pet projects. Newsom is angling for opening the condo conversion floodgates by letting people buy their way out of the lottery system — a one-time moneymaker that progressives find repugnant because it depletes rental-housing stock.

As the city grows more financially anemic, accusations of mismanagement abound. After the board’s vote on DPH cuts, Newsom was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying that progressive supervisors are in a “reality-free zone.”

But Farahkhan and other SEIU employees who are facing layoffs during the holidays believe Newsom is the one who is living on a different planet. “He’s at the top of the pay scale,” Farahkhan said, “and out of touch with everyday working people.”

——-

MUNI CUTS BACK SERVICE

Service reductions that will affect about half of all Muni routes start Dec. 5, the result of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s early summer deal to close a $129 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year. And that’s just the beginning of the bad news.
Less than halfway through this budget cycle, SFMTA is already looking at an additional $45 million deficit, partly because of the agency’s failure to follow through on plans to increase parking revenue, such as the stalled proposal to extend parking meter hours (see “We want free parking!” Oct. 28).
So additional layoffs and Muni service reductions or even another fare hike are possible, even though Muni fares have already doubled to $2 since Gavin Newsom became mayor. SFMTA officials say midyear budget reduction decisions will be made by the SFMTA Board of Directors over the next two months.
But for now, to find out how this week’s Muni service reductions will affect you, visit www.sfmta.com. (Steven T. Jones)

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

The people aren’t that weird in Oregon. They drink the same coffee we do, and the same beer, and they’re just as surprised as we are that a team from the land of Beavers and Ducks will be playing in the Rose Bowl. It rains a lot, so they don’t worry about water the way we do — in some places, you can actually take a shower with an old-fashioned spigot that pours an unconstrained and luxurious flow that would be illegal in most of California — but generally speaking, it’s not like an alien territory.
But the Oregon government took a radically different approach to the state’s budget problems over the summer. The governor and the Legislature passed measures to raise taxes on households with incomes of more than $260,000 a year and corporations with profits of more than $10 million. The bills also cut taxes on unemployment benefits. The deal would bring in $737 million and avoid deep cuts in essential public services.
Of course, some things don’t stop at state lines: antitax activists have forced a referendum on the new taxes, and in January, in a vote-by-mail ballot, Oregonians will decide whether to reject the tax plan. The newspapers are full of discussions on the impact, and the message is clear: Scrap the taxes and teachers will face layoffs, schools will face serious problems, and other public services will suffer.
I was up visiting over Thanksgiving, and I asked a friend what he thought would happen. He was pretty confident that the taxes would be retained: “I don’t know anyone who makes more than $260,000 a year.”
Of course, they don’t have a two-thirds majority requirement to raise taxes — and while Republicans all over have become little more than obstructionist troglodytes, Oregon Republicans haven’t all signed the “no-new-taxes” pledge required of every GOP legislator in California.
Even so, you have to wonder: Why can’t we do that here?
The answer, I think, is that we can — not necessarily on a statewide level (where anything progressive seems almost impossible today) but right here at home in San Francisco.
A poll commissioned by SEIU Local 1021, which came out while I was away, showed that a majority of San Francisco voters would support a broad range of new taxes, from a five-cent-a-drink tax on alcoholic beverages to a $10 a car tax on motor vehicles to an increase in the hotel tax. The poll didn’t ask about a tax on incomes of more than $260,000, but I bet the results would be about the same.
So what’s headed for the June ballot? Well, at this point all I hear is that the mayor wants to fund the expansion of Moscone Center with $140 million in revenue bonds — and might want to designate a hike in the hotel tax to pay for it. That’s a great way to set priorities — the health care system is in total collapse, Muni lines are getting shut down … and we’re going to use new tax revenue for a convention center expansion.
This comes just after the mayor announced he wasn’t going to spend the money to save critical public health services. Perhaps he’ll find some spiritual guidance on his trip to India.

Supes vote to suspend public health layoffs for two months

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By Rebecca Bowe

Department of Public Health employees who are affected by budget cuts have reason to breathe a temporary sigh of relief after today’s Board of Supervisors meeting. Eight supervisors, the two-thirds majority needed to pass the item, voted to spend roughly $1.8 million in the Department of Public Health to push back pending layoffs until the end of January. Sup. David Campos suggested the compromise move, emphasizing that job loss is particularly bitter when it strikes during the holiday season.

Although the supervisors — excluding Sups. Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, and Michela Alioto-Pier, who all voted no — have expressed their intentions to keep the public health workers in their jobs for now, many questions still remain.

The biggest one: What will Mayor Gavin Newsom do? He could veto the move, or, he could simply decide not to appropriate the money, as Sup. Elsbernd made very clear during the meeting.

In the corridor just outside the Board Chambers, City Controller Ben Rosenfield told the Guardian that he believes the layoffs will still go into effect. “Everything the mayor has indicated to me is that they do not intend to spend the funds,” he said. “This could be seen as partially an academic exercise.”

But several feet away, SEIU spokesperson Carlos Rivera sounded more optimistic: “Right now, we are just going to celebrate this, and hopefully the mayor will come around and not be the Grinch who Stole Christmas,” he said. “I know he has a big heart.”

Supes to vote on restoring DPH cuts (again)

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By Rebecca Bowe

This afternoon, a special meeting of the Budget & Finance Committee will be held to determine whether to take roughly $8 million out of the Department of Public Health reserve — money that’s already spoken for, but that some Supervisors say will be replenished before the next budget cycle — in order to stave off layoffs and salary cuts to front-line city workers in the Department of Public Health. Directly after the special meeting, the item will go before the full Board for a vote at today’s meeting.

SEIU Local 1021, the union representing city workers who’ve been pitted in an ongoing battle with mayor since the budget cuts were announced, has done its best to line up the eight votes needed to restore the cuts, leaning heavily on Sup. Sophie Maxwell to reverse her prior position by robo-calling in her district and encouraging political heavyweights to urge her to support the item.

On a conference call yesterday afternoon, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano said the city should count on stimulus dollars generated by Assembly Bill 1383 to refund the roughly $8 million.

“There seems to be a dispute about those funds, but we took the extra step to get the funding,” Ammiano said, noting that he worked with Assembly Member Dave Jones on the legislation that secures the money for public health services. “They pulled the trigger much too early here,” Ammiano said, referring to the layoffs. Noting that the mayor seemed to be disputing the purpose of the funding, Ammiano said, “I thought the purpose was to prevent layoffs.”

When asked what the Mayor Gavin Newsom thought the money should be used for, his press secretary, Joe Arellano, indicated that Newsom disagrees that it should be applied to stave off immediate layoffs. “The funds will ultimately will be used to prevent layoffs and other cuts, since, assuming it comes to us in time to apply toward next year’s deficit, it will reduce the cuts we need to make in order to balance,” Arellano said.

Check back here later for an update.

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

You can see the city’s next fiscal crisis, and all the bloodshed it will involve, sticking up its ugly head at the Board of Supervisors these days.

The immediate issue on the table is a supplemental appropriation of $7 million to save the jobs of some 500 frontline public health workers who are scheduled to receive pink slips this month. But the deeper issue is how the supervisors are going to deal with the fundamental unfairness of the mayor’s budget — particularly as the issue gets reopened this winter. Because the city’s finances are not improving, and it’s almost certain that there will have to be midyear changes. And — sadly — there’s no indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to be any more willing to work with the board and look for progressive solutions than he was in the summer.

The budget deal the supervisors signed off on in June wasn’t such a good deal at all, in part because it rested on Newsom’s promise to work toward a revenue measure for the November ballot. In retrospect, San Francisco missed an opportunity here — lots of Bay Area cities went to the ballot with tax increases to head off service cuts, and voters approved nearly all of them.

But Newsom never tried very hard to convince his allies on the board to go along with that plan and let the whole thing slide, putting the city in the position where layoffs that will cut deeply into the public health infrastructure are moving forward.

And now seven supervisors — all of the progressives plus Bevan Dufty — are ready to take an emergency step to stop the layoffs. They’re willing to put $7 million in reserve money up front, now. And if they can convince Sophie Maxwell to change her position and join them, the board will put the ball right back in the mayor’s court.

The thing is, the city’s budget crisis never really goes away. It’s a structural imbalance; save for the occasional boom years, San Francisco simply doesn’t bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of services people in this city want and need. It’s much worse in a recession, of course, but it’s always bad. And it’s going to remain an annual problem until the folks at City Hall make some major structural changes.

If, for example, we really want to avoid raising any new taxes — Newsom’s line — then we have to downsize, and the only fair way to do that is to start at the top. There are highly paid management–level people all over this city who don’t do nearly as much work in a week as a typical nurse’s aide does every day. The rampant cronyism slowed down after Mayor Willie Brown left office, but it never went away. A lot of Brown appointees still have cush jobs, and Newsom has added to the list. None of those folks ever get laid off.

With the layoffs scheduled this month, more than 1,000 members of SEIU Local 1021 — the union that represents frontline workers — will have been laid off. How many members of the Management Employees Association? Exactly 25.

And if we’re not going to look at radical restructuring, starting with department organization and management, then we have to bring in more money. That’s taxes, Gavin. In fact, to make this city solvent for the future we should probably do both.

Nobody wants to talk about that, though. So the women who hold the public health system together get canned, the wealthy enjoy low taxes, and the crisis goes one, year after year.

I hope Sup. Maxwell realizes what this is about — because if she votes the right way, it might actually force the mayor to make some of those tough choices he loves to talk about.

Controller, in radical move, defies supes

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By Tim Redmond

In a move that’s unprecedented in modern San Francisco history, city controller Ben Rosenfield appears poised to try to block the Board of Supervisors from approving a $7 million supplemental budget appropriation to prevent 500 layoffs of frontline health department workers.

It’s the latest twist in a convoluted battle that pits SEIU Local 1021 and the progressives on the board against the mayor, who wants to lay off nurses aides and clerical workers.

In a budgetmessage posted today, Rosenfield says that the city is running $53 million in the red, and that “until this shortfall is addressed, the Controller’s Office will not be able to certify funds from the General Fund Reserve for other appropriations.”

Rosenfield, a Newsom appointee, is apparently relying on a very old City Charter section that looks like this:

S.F. Charter Sec. 9.113 (d) “General Fiscal Provisions”

No ordinance or resolution for the expenditure of money, except the
annual appropriation ordinance, shall be passed by the Board of
Supervisors unless the Controller first certifies to the Board that
there is a sufficient unencumbered balance in a fund that may legally be
used for such proposed expenditure, and that, in the judgment of the
Controller, revenues as anticipated in the appropriation ordinance for
such fiscal year and properly applicable to meet such proposed
expenditures will be available in the treasury in sufficient amount to
meet the same as it becomes due.

But in my 25 years of covering City Hall, I have never once seen this happen. There have been bad budget deficits before, and supplemental appropriations, and the controller has never told the supervisors that they can’t spend reserve money.

“About the only thing Rosenfield and I agree on is that this has never been done before,” Sup. Chris Daly told me this evening.

The controller’s report notes that several city departments are running over budget — but interestingly, Human Services and Public Health, the targets of the layoffs, are running a surplus of $8.1 million (exactly what the supervisors want to spend).

Among those departments facing shortfalls: The Sheriff’s Office, which is in the red because of “an increase in jail population” — possibly due to the new police chief’s crackdown on drug dealing in the Tenderloin.

I couldn’t reach Rosenfield tonight, but Daly notes that the same legislation was before the board last week, and Rosenfield didn’t object. “So he’s already certified it,” Daly said. “And I’m not sure how he can decertify it now.”

I’m not going to argue that the city has money to burn, but there are always mid-year budget changes in bad times. The supes and the mayor are going to have to make some budget adjustments. But there’s also unanticipated money coming in — for example, San Francisco stands to get about $33 million in federal stimulus money for the Department of Public Health in April, and that funding will be retroactive to the previous year. So this year’s shortfall will actually be $33 million less.

Tina Johnson, a legislative affairs staffer for the state Department of Health Care Services, confirmed the near-certain availability of that money in a Nov. 16th letter to state Sen. Leland Yee.

In any other year, I suspect the controller would follow the normal practice of informing the mayor and the supes that the budget was out of line (as it is, in one way or another, almost every year) and then allow them to come up with some mid-year corrections. But this battle between Local 1021 and the mayor has gotten ugly, and I’m sure there was pressure on Rosenfield.

Look for a showdown at the board meeting tomorrow (Nov. 17). Daly told me that whatever Rosenfield says, “we’re going to have a vote on this.”

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