Wherever We Live and Work We Must Lead
Bob Schoonover, who on Friday, March 26, was elected president of SEIU 721, writes about what he has learned in 30 years working for the City of Los Angeles.
By Bob Schoonover
SEIU 721 President
The City of Los Angeles is spinning its wheels, threatening to lay off thousands of workers and shred neighborhood services like parks programs, street repair, animal control and tree trimming. City leaders’ plan is to slash and burn, and they don’t have a vision for how we can keep people working and services running.
That’s happening in a lot of the areas where SEIU 721 members work. Here are the lessons we’re learning in Los Angeles that apply everywhere we’re facing serious budget crises.
1. The leadership and continuity of workers who spend their careers in public service is always needed to pull our cities and counties through good times and bad, and to improve the services we deliver to our fellow citizens. In my 30 years working for the city of Los Angeles as a mechanic involved in my union from the beginning, I have seen how union members can make a difference, not by protecting what’s ours, but by fighting for the things our communities care about: clean parks, safe roads and neighborhoods that work.
2. We can’t wait for elected officials to solve the crisis – we need the answers. In Los Angeles, that means having a strong budget alternative to the slash-and-burn. We’re bringing research and policy together to show elected officials how they can save by collecting from deadbeat debtors, cutting expensive outsourcing and asking that banks do their part to fix the economic problems they caused. That’s where SEIU is really strong.
3. It’s workers, not city leaders, who really keep our city running. We must put the spotlight squarely on what these cuts would mean for our cities and counties: they will devastate our parks, streets and neighborhoods. Instead we offer tools to deal with this crisis that build and preserve our communities. Workers need to reach out to the communities where we live and work to build alliances around our parks, schools and youth sports teams.
Right now, everywhere 721 members are working, we must lead. Public workers are the rock of our middle class. In so many of our cities and counties we see a leadership vacuum that we must fill.
Every crisis is an opportunity and crucial opportunities now face us wherever we live and work:
- LA Superior Courts, where our members are fighting to keep courts open for the public and facing cuts of 1/3 of court operations unless we act
- Riverside County, where last year’s bargaining victories to limit furloughs and win overtime language are being tested in one of the nation’s worst economies
- Tri-Counties, where bargaining team members demanded that all County workers including management share in the sacrifice
- Santa Ana, where our tough fight against layoffs last year brought management to the table to hear our solutions this year
- LA County’s health care system, where we’re expanding funding and helping to bring a union voice to new members to improve health care delivery in their communities