Members Decry Loyalty Oaths, Cozy Deals: Reform Movement Forms in SEIU
By Paul Krehbiel
Labor Notes
April 2008 Issue
On the heels of a public fight over the Service Employees (SEIU) International's move toward labor-management partnership deals and hyper-centralization, members are joining a newly founded national reform group.
Several pockets of reform already exist in the union, but the largest is the SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART), founded in California in January. The group already claims members in 11 other states and Canada.
Members' grievances against SEIU officials have been mounting after President Andy Stern merged many locals into mega-locals, removed elected leaders, and appointed his own agents in their place. SMART's formation mirrors a conflict between Stern and Sal Rosselli, head of the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers - West local, over the international's consolidation of authority.
"The union is now a corporate-style organization where members and their issues are ignored. Members are furious," said Joel Solis, a registered nurse and steward at the Department of Mental Health in Los Angeles County, now in Local 721.
Catherine Alexander, a member of Local 521 and SMART, is the former chief steward at the Santa Clara County Libraries, located south of San Jose, California.
"The new local has meetings but they don't publicize them," she said. "We can't even get copies of the minutes. They want member-leaders and staff to sign 'loyalty oaths' saying they will only promote the views of top SEIU officials who were appointed by Stern."
Zev Kvitky, president of Local 2007, which represents service workers, technicians, and other workers at Stanford University, said he joined SMART because the union's lofty goals have mutated.
"We agree with President Stern that we need to organize the unorganized," he said. "But the way the International is organizing new workers, it is weakening our union. Their top-down deals with employers, the exclusion of members, the erosion of democracy and free speech undermine our power."
Dan Mariscal, a steward in Local 347 representing Los Angeles city workers, said his local is so strongly opposed to over-centralization that they filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against SEIU with the city's employee relations board to stop their local's forced merger.
Growing Efforts
SMART members and other SEIU reformers held a California-wide reform conference in Berkeley on March 22. Discussion ranged from how to regain freedom of speech in the union, re-establish election of leaders, and ensure membership involvement in contract negotiations and the life of the union, to how to prepare a reform delegation to attend the SEIU convention in May.
The clamor for democracy in SEIU is springing up across the country. Dave Peter, a steward with SEIU Local 1107 in Nevada and a member of Members for Union Democracy, said the Stern-appointed leader of their local, Jane McAlevey, has been abusive to members, and growing numbers are calling for her dismissal.
Bruce Boccardy, chief steward of Local 888 in Massachusetts and a member of Bring Back Our Union, said Local 888's appointed head officer, Susanna Segat, has driven 3,000 members at the University of Massachusetts out of their union and into the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

More information about SMART.


Go to Original
Quiet Deal Leads to Bitter Fight in Ohio Hospitals
By Mischa Gaus
Labor Notes
April 2008 Issue
Accusations of sweetheart deal-making and union busting flew thick and fast in mid-March as the Service Employees (SEIU) and the California Nurses Association fought over SEIU's bid to quietly gain wall-to-wall representation at nine Ohio hospitals.
SEIU had attempted for years to organize about 8,000 workers in the Catholic Healthcare Partners facilities with little success. But in late February the Catholic hospital chain filed for a snap union election, to take place in two weeks. Workers were notified by mail of the election, and told to call a hotline if they had questions about the union.
At some of the hospitals no organizing committee existed, and no contact with workers had taken place in years, according to Colleen Gresham, an Ohio nurse and top supporter of SEIU. She discovered that SEIU was formally seeking to represent her when her employer, Cincinnati's Mercy Mt. Airy hospital, sent her the election notice.
"We were actually surprised by the secret vote," Gresham said. "We didn't know it was coming."
Gresham was among 15 nurses and other hospital workers who signed a March 12 open letter to CNA's Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, saying her "bullying staff ... spread terrible lies for no other reason than to destroy what we worked so hard to build."
As part of this controversial election agreement, both SEIU and the Catholic hospitals agreed not to campaign prior to the vote. "To avoid the conflict and negative tension typically caused by organizing campaigns ... neither managers nor union representatives will approach you or even answer questions if you approach them," read the letter to staffers at St. Regis hospital in Lima.
"Company Unionism"
The California Nurses Association, whose nationwide partner group National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) is active elsewhere in Ohio, said having the employer file for election amounted to company unionism, and threatened to establish a dangerous precedent of employer-union collusion.
Peggy Vaughn, a nurse at Mercy Western Hills hospital in Cincinnati who also signed SEIU's open letter, said the charge of collusion insulted her years of volunteer campaigning.
After the hospital unleashed an anti-union drive when organizing began three years ago, "it became apparent that if we were going to get anywhere we needed to work from the top of the organization down," Vaughn said. "In the last year-and-a-half, there hasn't been much door-to-door contact. I would tell people, we're working on a different level to make sure we could have an election without the intimidation we saw at the beginning of the campaign."
Catholic Healthcare Partners said the deal with SEIU was a template it sought to apply elsewhere. Other unions were unable to contest the Catholic hospital elections.
DeMoro said SEIU's Ohio agreement would teach hospitals to shut out combative unions, so CNA dispatched reinforcements to join its existing Ohio operation. Four nurses and organizers per hospital leafletted and called nurses, urging them to vote down SEIU.
Katrina Howard, an NNOC organizer, was arrested for trespassing at a Lima hospital after security guards said she stepped on company property when talking to a nurse. The hospital then took out a restraining order against NNOC. But SEIU staff were permitted access to the hospitals, Howard said.
"Vicious Attack"
SEIU called the California nurses' response a vicious attack on a fellow union, and cancelled the nine elections four days after CNA began its campaign. "When CNA came in disrupting work, they left a bad taste in peoples' mouths about unions," Gresham said.
Michelle Mahon, a Cleveland-area nurse and NNOC supporter who campaigned at two Springfield hospitals, said she met only a handful of nurses who backed SEIU among the roughly 250 contacts she made.
"Unions have a bad rap in some of the towns," Mahon said. "People feel like they're corrupt and you get nothing for the dues. When you don't have a strong base of support you're undermining labor organization for everyone. The philosophy should not be a union at any cost, it should be to have strong support and a democratic process."
Gresham argued that the disruptive approach of unions like the CNA doesn't appeal to many health care workers who separate concerns about their job from the actual workplace. Having a union, she said, "is always going to be beneficial in the end."
SEIU also noted that CNA had itself signed an election agreement with Tenet Healthcare four years ago in California that traded restrictions, like agreeing not to strike until 2010, for organizing jurisdiction of Tenet nurses. CNA says its deal permitted other unions to enter its elections, and protected nurses' rights to publicly criticize their employer over patient conditions, unlike SEIU's partnership accords.
The novel election in Ohio - filed for by the Catholic hospital chain - resembles a new procedure the National Labor Relations Board is scheduled to soon enact. Under this "RJ" petition, the union and employer jointly file for an election to take place within four weeks. The union would not have to prove any support among workers.
Current rules mandate 30 percent minimum support to file for an election, leading to fears the new process could reward unions that conform to management's desires. "Maybe it's a way to say, if you want to get cozy, go get cozy," said Ross Runkle, a retired law professor at Willamette University.

OSHA Sues Company for Firing Suspected Whistleblower

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed suit against Brocon Petroleum Inc., and its president, Richard Kohler, on behalf of an employee who was terminated in violation of the whistleblower provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The Freehold construction company specializes in municipal sanitation projects.

The complaint alleges that the defendants terminated the employee in retaliation for the employee engaging in a protected activity. OSHA conducted an inspection of the employer's worksite in response to an anonymous complaint about safety practices at the worksite. The defendants later that day fired the complainant because they believed the complainant had contacted OSHA.

The former employee filed a complaint with OSHA alleging retaliation by the defendants in violation of Section 11(c) of the OSH Act. OSHA investigated the complaint and determined it had merit. After being notified of OSHA's findings, the defendants refused to reinstate the employee to the same or a substantially equivalent position of employment and to pay back wages or other employment benefits.

"Employees should be free to exercise their rights under the law without fear of termination or retaliation by their employers," said Louis Ricca Jr., OSHA's acting regional administrator in New York . "This lawsuit underscores the Labor Department's commitment to vigorously take action to protect those rights."

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, the complaint seeks to reinstate the employee; secure compensatory damages, lost back pay and punitive damages; and require the company to post a notice in a prominent place for 60 days that explains employee rights under Section 11(c) of the OSH Act.

OSHA enforces the whistleblower provisions of the OSH Act and 15 other statutes protecting employees who report violations of various trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, rail, and securities laws. Detailed information on employee whistleblower rights, including fact sheets, is available online at: http://www.osha. gov/dep/oia/ whistleblower/ index.html.
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White House Aide Resigns Amid Probe of Cuba Funds
By Pablo Bachelet
McClatchy Newspapers
Friday 28 March 2008

Washington - A White House aide has resigned amid a Justice Department investigation into allegations that he misused an unspecified amount of U.S. grant money intended to promote democracy in Cuba.
Felipe Sixto, a Cuban-American from Miami, was the special assistant to President Bush for inter-governmental affairs, dealing with Cuba, Native American issues, state legislators, Latino elected officials and Puerto Rico.
The White House announced his resignation Friday. Before joining the administration last summer, Sixto had been chief of staff to Frank Calzon, the head of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, which receives some of the funds through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Sixto didn't respond to e-mails or phone calls to his home.
Officials provided no details on the allegations. White House spokesman Blair Jones said the White House learned of the allegations from Sixto when he resigned from his post on March 20.
"Our understanding is that Mr. Sixto allegedly had a conflict of interest with the use of USAID funds in his former employment," Jones said. White House lawyers investigated and referred the matter to the Department of Justice.
Calzon said he welcomed the investigation. He didn't say how much money was involved.
Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart said in a joint statement that they were "deeply disturbed by any allegation of misuse of taxpayer funds" and urged the Department of Justice and the USAID's inspector general "to move thoroughly and swiftly in investigating all the facts in this matter."
Joe Garcia, a Democrat running to unseat Mario Diaz-Balart, said the resignation underscored "the fundamental flaws of a policy designed to win votes in Miami and patronize partisan supporters, not bring freedom to Cuba."
"Millions of dollars intended to fuel a democratic change in Cuba are ending up in the hands of Bush/Diaz-Balart cronies and never makes it to the island," Garcia said. U.S. policy should require that at least 80 percent of the money be made available to Cuban opposition groups on the island, he added.
In 2006, the Government Accountability Office pointed out that most Cuba grants were awarded without competitive bids, and it found some instances of abuse, such as the purchase of cashmere sweaters with U.S. taxpayer money. But the report also found that the grant money led to large amounts of equipment and literature getting distributed to Cuban democracy activists.
Calzon's Center for a Free Cuba works with foreign governments and activists in Cuba to raise awareness of human rights abuses and distributes literature and other materials on the island. Calzon said it was the center that initiated an investigation in mid-January when the allegation of misused funds emerged.
Calzon said he expects that any misappropriated funds will be returned to the federal government.
Sixto, who is in his late 20s, is married and has one child.

Things are not going well for many whistleblowers. Gerald Eastman is a good example. His trial in King County Courts is more of a railroad ride to a lynching than a trial. King County Prosecutor's Office appears to me to be entirely too connected to The Boeing Company, and the Judge has narrowed the scope of the trial as to eliminate looking at the big picture including what Mr. Eastman, as a whistleblower, did to resolve safety inspection violations and a big risk to the American public. He went through the complaint process of his company, and then went to FAA, which has been thoroughly corrupted for some time. Mr. Eastman did not know that it appears and went there in good faith, believing FAA would uphold the law and federal regulations in it’s oversight role. They did not. Then Mr. Eastman went to Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and fared no better, as they also are having significant problems as are many federal oversight, investigative and oversight agencies this past 8 years. It appears the Judge may also go along with Boeing's attempt to refuse to acknowledge Mr. Eastman is indeed a whistleblower and has a right to whistleblower protections. Also, the Judge appears to be going along with Boeing refusing to respect Sarbanes-Oxley. This is an absolutely unacceptable miscarriage of Justice.

Please, help derail this train, as this so called trial is a travesty and an insult to the trust of the American public in their justice system.


GFS

Report Details Limitations Faced By Federal Inspectors General
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008; A17

Inspectors general appointed to uncover waste, fraud and misconduct in federal agencies often lead underfunded and poorly staffed units and are not as independent as the public has been led to believe, according to a study released yesterday by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
The study noted that more than half the 64 inspectors general are not appointed by the president or subject to Senate confirmation hearings. They are appointed by agency heads who in many cases control the watchdogs' budgets and have on occasion retaliated against them over unfavorable reports by cutting funding or denying promotions to staff members, the report said.
"The inescapable conclusion is that an IG who lacks independence is an impostor -- even calling such an office 'Inspector General' confuses the press and public and can create pitfalls for potential whistleblowers," the nonprofit advocacy group concluded.
The current system was created by the Inspector General Act of 1978, which Congress passed in an effort to place controls on government agencies after the Watergate and other scandals.
A 2006 report to the president showed that audits by inspectors general resulted in potential savings of nearly $10 billion and that financial recoveries from investigations netted another $7 billion. Investigations also led to 6,500 indictments or charges, 950 civil actions and more than 7,000 suspensions and debarments.
Jane Lee, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the watchdog system, said the POGO report proves that "IGs are as effective today as they have ever been." She said that, contrary to POGO's report, the IGs "help identify and eliminate waste" and that, since the start of the Bush administration, "there is more transparency and public reporting about what is working and not."
But the report said the inspectors general lack the tools for independence that would give their investigations more bite. It includes a survey of inspectors general: 30 appointed by the president and 34 appointed by the heads, generally, of smaller agencies.
Inspectors general appointed by the president for agencies such as the Agriculture and State departments reported having staffs that include hundreds of auditors, investigators and other personnel, as well as a staff attorney for legal matters.
But respondents at smaller agencies reported having much smaller staffs, and few had an independent legal counsel. The one at the Election Assistance Commission has a single staff member. Those at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the International Trade Commission have two each, greatly limiting their ability to launch and complete audits or investigations.
The report highlighted the hostility inspectors general sometimes face. When then-Smithsonian Institution Inspector General Debra S. Ritt refused to end an audit of high-ranking officials, for example, her budget was cut, and she resigned, according to the report.
Paul Brachfeld, inspector general for the National Archives, praised the study. He said his staff of 18, which includes three investigators, is not big enough to monitor an agency that has 3,000 employees, 30 facilities, and treasure troves of historic and classified documents.
"You can't be the sheriff of Mayberry with three criminal investigators," Brachfeld said. Inspectors general "are independent in intent, but there are pressures that fall upon you that make it difficult. I still receive an evaluation from the head of the agency. Sometimes at risk to yourself, you have to reach out for support outside the agency," he said.
POGO recommends the creation of a council of inspectors general so they could share staffs and independent lawyers. The group suggests setting fixed terms for inspectors general and providing their offices with budgets in which expenditures would not require the approval of agency heads. The group also says inspectors general should be prohibited from accepting cash awards and bonuses, but that their pay should be raised.
Legislation pending in the House and the Senate calls for remedies favored by the advocacy group. Separate bills in the House and the Senate would create a slate of qualified candidates who could be called upon when positions open, to ensure that vacancies are filled by people with accounting, auditing, investigation and management skills.