Special Report: New SEIU leader wants union out of California politics. Bad idea, labor says
Editor’s note: This is part of a special report on California state government’s largest union, SEIU Local 1000. Other stories include this piece on the new union president’s use of social media, this story on a police visit to his home and our opinion editor’s interview with outgoing Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker.
The new president of one of California’s most powerful public employee unions wants to do something almost unheard of in Sacramento: Take the labor organization out of politics completely.
Not a dime for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Not a cent for statewide initiatives to raise taxes or to increase the minimum wage.
That’s just one part of SEIU Local 1000 President Richard Louis Brown’s campaign platform. He also wants to cut dues and increase membership and raises, but it is his non-politics manifesto that has caused the most controversy and division, and would be a major sea change for a good portion of the state’s union workers.
“What they spent money on may be really good for some people but really bad for some people,” Brown said in an interview. “In order to organize this union, you cannot be involved in politics.”
Labor experts say it’s not that simple, and he faces opposition from within the union from a board of directors that has consistently supported political spending.
Brown, 52, took over June 30 after ousting the union’s long-time leader, Yvonne Walker, in a low-turnout election in May, winning with 2,637 votes.
He campaigned with a loud presence on social media, announcing in videos that he will strengthen the union by not only ending political spending, but also by reducing members’ dues by 50%, allowing non-members to vote in union elections, negotiating an unprecedented 21% raise and persuading the state to eliminate Local 1000’s contributions to a retirement health insurance fund.
The sprawling Service Employees International Union Local 1000 has a $48 million budget, the might of about 40,000 employees in Sacramento, and almost 100,000 in the state. These employees cover a broad range of public sector jobs, from low-paid janitors to highly paid IT specialists. And Local 1000 has long been a player in the state’s broad Democratic coalition of unions.
It throws its weight around the Capitol, battling against bills that would scale back public employee pension promises and lobbying for laws that aim to raise wages and improve working conditions. In 2005, it helped crush ballot initiatives from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that aimed to curb labor’s power.
In Sacramento, the union has backed local initiatives such as rent control, a sales tax hike and a recent failed bid to give the mayor more power.
Just last month, Local 1000 gave $1 million to Newsom’s defense against a recall. Altogether, Local 1000 contributed about $17 million in cash and in-kind support from two primary political action committees during the last 10 years, according to campaign finance data.
Taking Local 1000’s money and will out of those campaigns, as Brown has proposed, would weaken the mostly Democratic politicians and platforms it supports.
That’s not lost on some anti-union organizations.
The Freedom Foundation and California Policy Center have worked for years to bleed California public employee unions of their members and influence by running opt-out campaigns and suing unions from time to time. Both organizations have been celebrating Brown’s win and his declaration that he wants the union out of politics.
“Ending union domination of California politics is the only way forward on reform,” said Will Swaim, president of the libertarian California Policy Center.
Brown lives in the capital city, in Sacramento’s Oak Park. He said ending political contributions such as the recent big check to Newsom will help the union. He expects increased membership, less division and more money to dedicate to a strike fund. He wants the union to narrow its focus. He will have to persuade the union’s 65-member board of directors to see things his way.
“No politics and non-germane, which means any activity that’s not directly related to contract negotiations or job representation,” he said.
Live, contentious and streaming
While campaigning, Brown often called out his opponents and critics by name, accusing them of hypocrisy, corruption and incompetence.
He made up nicknames for them, referring to longtime President Walker as “the high schooler” and calling her allies “sycophants.”
Now, as president, he spars with them in live-streamed videos.
Brown said the disputes help air out grievances, a process he believes increases engagement and trust.
“You can’t always argue behind a closed door,” he said. “When you argue out in the open, now more people are going to listen, and people feel like their voice is being heard. By arguing out in the open, over a period of time, it can lead to stability.”
Others in the union aren’t so sure. Some also worry his reality TV-style approach to leadership is making a joke of the union and is chipping away at the respect state bosses and negotiators have for Local 1000. They think Brown’s leadership could have ramifications for California public workers, state and local labor initiatives and for the perception of public-sector unions.
“I need to see a little less bullying,” union steward and California State Lottery employee Paulina Vasquez told Brown during a recent meeting. “I’m so turned off right now. So are my stewards. So are our members. It’s like the grand bull---- of political scale across the nation, and it’s suddenly in our union, too.”
‘Unilateral disarmament’ for a union
Brown faces opposition from within the union from a board of directors that has consistently supported political spending.
And his proposal to leave politics and focus solely on pay and benefits oversimplifies things, labor experts said.
Eventually, the experts said, a withdrawal from politics could make Local 1000 less effective at bargaining on behalf of the employees it represents.
“For a public sector union to not engage in politics at all is unilateral disarmament,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “Unions have really been the strongest bulwark of support for electing both candidates and passing ballot propositions that are in the broader interests of working people and that support strong, good quality public services. Were unions in general to pull out of doing so, that would have real ramifications.”
Brown’s rise to power culminates a long period of turbulence for Local 1000.
Complaints about political spending surfaced regularly during the 13-year presidency of Walker, Brown’s predecessor.
One of the union’s members, Dianne Knox, sued over its political spending and reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012. Hers was one of several key cases leading up to a 2018 decision known as Janus vs. AFSCME, which stripped public employee unions of funding by forbidding them from collecting fees from workers who hadn’t signed up for the union.
Local 1000’s revenue dropped from about $67 million in 2017 to $49 million in 2019, according to tax filings. The union operated at a loss of about $4 million in 2019 but returned to the black last year, when it reported a net gain of $2.5 million, the filings show.
Ken Hamidi, another longtime thorn in the union’s side, campaigned unsuccessfully for years to decertify Local 1000 and replace it with an association he would lead, arguing, among other things, that the union spent too much on politics and too little representing employees.
In recent interviews, several Local 1000 members who voted for Brown — and some who didn’t but support him now that he won — said they favor his proposal to exit politics.
The supporters — embittered by a furlough-like pay cut program Newsom and the Legislature imposed on them amid gloomy budget projections last year — said they had trouble seeing the benefits of the union’s political involvement. And they said they didn’t feel like they had a say in the union’s political decisions.
“No one ever asked our opinion, no one asked what we needed help on, they just took the dues,” said Betty Jackson-Steward, 59, a health facilities evaluator nurse for the Department of Public Health based in Riverside County.
Yet others said the political spending paid for itself, particularly in the state Capitol.
Proposals regularly pop up that would chip away at state workers’ benefits and working conditions, said Miguel Cordova, a former Walker ally who campaigned against her in the recent election.
Local 1000 lobbyists monitor those bills, and the union sometimes calls on members to talk with legislators — to whom the union has often made campaign contributions — about how proposals would affect workers’ lives.
“And when they know we’re not a player, not an entity, they won’t fight for us,” Cordova said of the legislators.
So far, Brown is holding to his campaign pledge. In an interview, he said he’s open to political spending to protect public employee pensions because of their importance to members.
“I’m open to discussion and to working with people to ensure that not just our pension but every state employee up and down the state that that pension is protected at all costs,” he said.
Black Lives Matter
Walker, the former Local 1000 president, took pride in advocating not only for union-represented workers but for all working-class Californians.
Local 1000, for example, has pressed for a statewide $15 minimum wage with SEIU’s umbrella organization, SEIU International, which is advocating for the new minimum nationwide.
She also spoke up about racism and inequality in messages to members.
A flashpoint for some employees came amid the protests that followed the death last year of George Floyd, a Black man who died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
While most state employee union leaders avoided making public statements about the protests, Walker, who is Black, posted a video to the union’s website saying no lives matter until Black lives matter.
“In the middle of a pandemic and pay cuts, she’d have a political video about Black Lives Matter and whatever cause the union was pushing — they’re very involved politically,” said Kathy Parks, 58, an Employment Development Department office technician in Van Nuys. “And not address the fact that we’re eating ramen with a 10% pay cut.”
To many state workers at rural Lassen County two prisons, Walker’s statements helped solidify a notion that the union was more concerned with political causes than representing members, said Frankie Luallen, 38, a Lassen County steward who spoke with The Sacramento Bee on behalf of the union’s District Labor Council 792.
“We’re the red-headed stepchildren, but it didn’t matter what we needed or what our members up here needed,” Luallen said. “A lot of the time, SEIU has forgotten its members. It has. And hopefully now our members will be remembered.”
Newsom has announced plans to close one of the county’s two prisons, California Correctional Center. Brown pledged to fight the closure, and said he wants to create a $2 million fund to support represented employees affected by the closure.
During his months of campaigning, Brown reached out to workers who wanted their union to focus only on bargaining for pay and benefits.
“Black Lives Matter, fight for 15, open borders immigration, endorsing politicians are not issues for Local 1000 to be involved in,” Brown said in one clip he recorded, which was aired on Fox News before an interview with him.
Other California unions play politics
Some of Brown’s biggest supporters said they would be open to some political activity from the union, but they want their leaders to ask them about their priorities.
“I would like to see a reorientation,” said Angela Pruitt, a health facilities evaluator nurse who voted for Brown. “It’s almost impossible to not have any type of politics involved. That’s just the nature and the history of the beast of being in the union and trying to work with the government.”
Other unions approach politics differently than Local 1000, focusing only on pay and benefits.
The Professional Engineers in California Government, for example, made a $250,000 contribution to help protect Newsom from recall. But the union doesn’t weigh in on social issues and didn’t announce a position during the Black Lives Matter protests.
California Professional Firefighters and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association — two unions with thousands of conservative-leaning members — also give regularly to Democrats such as Newsom without weighing in on social debates.
Steve Smith, spokesman for the California Labor Federation, said he expects Local 1000 will continue to engage in politics on issues important to its members, regardless of what Brown does.
“The union isn’t the leadership; the union is the members,” Smith said. “And leaders will have different opinions on things, but ultimately, the members drive the agenda of the union, and I expect that to be the case going forward with Local 1000.”
The changes and show have begun
Brown began making changes as soon as he took office.
He is ending paid union leave for nearly all Local 1000 representatives who have been using the time to work on union business. That announcement last week surprised union leaders who said they had been using the time to address the many changes the state has been making to working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
He has reopened the union’s website to the public. Walker closed it to non-members.
Most of his proposals would require approvals by the board of directors, which likely will oppose many of the unconventional ideas and could shoot down others as unrealistic.
Brown’s entertainment approach to union leadership continues. He has promoted union meetings on social media since his election and has opened formerly private meetings to anyone who wants to watch.
He live-streamed on Facebook a contentious meeting last Wednesday without telling the participants he was doing so.
“We have three different groups who all want what they want,” he said in the meeting, referencing his supporters, Walker’s supporters and supporters of a third slate of Local 1000 candidates who call themselves “Members for Transparency and Change.”
“And somehow, some way we all have to unify, and keep this union not just going but create the number one union in the world. So, everything that was done in the past may not be done in the future.”
He did the same thing the next day, advertising the second meeting as a “battle” over whether union representatives should be paid to do union work full-time or should return to their state jobs.
An employee asked him when dues would be cut in half. He said a union financial officer told him the union might not be able to pay its bills after a dues reduction of that size, and he was reviewing options. And he acknowledged he needed the board’s approval for a couple other priorities.
But he said he wants to hire new attorneys to seek new opinions about what he can and can’t do under union rules.
He swung between restraint and emotion in last week’s videos.
“Some people may say I’m too emotional,” he said in one, after a member’s critical comment. “Well, this emotion and this passion put me in this position … that same passion, that same desire that got me in here, is how I’m gonna lead this.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Special Report: New SEIU leader wants union out of California politics. Bad idea, labor says."