SEIU 721, The Bigger Better Union has found itself in quite a bind.
It can not under any circumstances surrender on health care or it would lose the Coalition of City unions support and it would cement it’s future & decertification of members would not be able to wait.
Miguel Santana, our CAO, has managed to catch a DUI in a City Vehicle, get arrested, convicted, go to treatment and still manage to beat down every union who comes to the Table.
Well Except IBEW who’s massive organization and turnout along with business reps who took none to kindly to the Councils weak attempt at playing with their pensions left the LA City Council with it’s tail between it’s legs.
Mayor Hopeful and Civilian, Sworn, Part-time and full time workers nemesis Eric Garcetti lead the way attacking pensions like they were the spawn of satan.
IBEW has from what I understand Black balled his future Mayoral run, he is finished in LA politics for now.
MOU 08 & 17 has had impasse declared on them and SEIU has remained virtually silent on the matter.
Many employees had no idea very shortly they will lose important benefits and/or pay large amounts of money to their medical care.
Open & Transparent, that is what they seeked when they came over and that is what they were promised.
Many of the loudest critics are blaming the CAO, the Mayor, the governor and some actually embarrassed themselves by blaming “big oil”.
Well I would like to point out the following:
Mayor Villaraigosa, the CAO, and the Council have not kept the intentions they hold for Public Employees secret.
This is NOT news to me or anyone who reads my blogs, follows us on twitter, or is within 20 miles of my worksites.
SEIU chose the following in order to fight for it’s members.
Protest Mayors Oscar Party, while having the media Relations person whose salary we pay demand we stop chanting anything that would actually upset the mayor or anyone in the area.
Nothing vulgar was said, she is incompetent and I demand she be fired and so do hundreds of other employees she should resign in order to save her future career.
SEIU also chose to push budget blame onto others.
Parking lot owners, Banks, and Wall Street.
Claiming uncollected debt would save the city from what I understand very little if any media attention was given to these events.
Mayor, and CAO said thanks we need to do better at collecting, promptly looked at outsourcing collections, and created a headache for ASCFME who had to fight that due to SEIU’s insistence that we need to do better collecting. $0.00 of the future collected debt will be credited towards the budget shortfall in favor of the unions.
SEIU has refused to purchase a single advertisement, Dan Mariscal has been pushing for SEIU to purchase advertising since at least March of this year.
Idea after Idea has been ignored and they have fallen flat on their face.
MOU 089 & 17 Members have vowed to decertify SEIU if they don’t begin doing something other then the third grade demonstrations they have so far failed at.
Many of the reps agree that the direction the union is going is miserable and have been getting louder and louder.
SEIU is second to none in organizing, they fail at representing. They also fail to recognize when they have made mistakes instead burying their head in the sand and staying the course similar to our fight on terror, that’s working out well too.
SEIU was recently emailed a laundry list of suggestions and possible job actions etc.
A new course of action, Detailed action plans.
John Tanner, Julie Butcher, Charles Leone, Bob Schoonover, and J.J. Straight were all recipients of this email, each was asked for thier opinion and how those ideas could help the members succeed.
Each was asked to respond, Each one read the email, each one failed to respond.
If SEIU is doing so good with it’s course of actions why is the Mayor releasing in a few days his new budget plans continuing his attack on public service workers?
Why is Miguel Santana preparing his departmental outline asking for more cuts coming second week of November?
Why is SEIU not representing the members in the manner they deserve?
In fairness to J.J. Straight she has been the only one of the above mentioned employees to actually respond to phone calls and she has made an attempt to work with us in carrying out the work that needs to be done and she has actually been a surprising breath of fresh air for SEIU members looking for change!
She has found herself under attack though as some people are hell bent on keeping the old regime in power.
This is another story for another time, right now the entire membership is under attack and SEIU needs to be accountable because by this time next year MOU 08 & 17 will be an Association affiliated with AFT if they don’t Get things done and quickly.
HAD SEIU actually taken our ideas to heart and paid attention to the members instead of sending members to Arizona to protest, or to Washington D.C. in these troubled times, MOU 08 & 17 along with other employees would not have been in this situation.
Detention Officers have Demonstrated a No Confidence vote in SEIU hiring an outside party to negotiate on behalf of them, Paying out of pocket.
General Services Police Officers have Demonstrated a No Confidence vote in SEIU hiring an outside party to negotiate on behalf of them, Paying out of pocket.
Who will be the next to go?
Remember when I said, “the grass isn’t always greener on the other side”
MOU 8-17 are hearing those words ring true now.
See for yourself the documents declaring impasse.
DOWNLOAD THE MOU 08 & 17 PACKAGE DOCUMENTS HERE!