
The internal dispute within Service Employees International Union Local 1000 stems from the labor organization's decision last year to raise its dues 50 percent. As a result of the increase, a retired information systems analyst has forced an election that could exclude "fair-share" fee payers in SEIU 1000's largest bargaining unit from forking over any money to the union at all.
Lyle Hintz, 60, is the retired SEIU 1000 member who started the campaign to abolish the fee last year. He described his campaign as a protest against union leadership and said he is seizing on the fair-share issue as the best way to express it. "There is no mechanism within the union for members or nonmembers to take that has an effective impact on the union," Hintz said.
Going to California's Public Employment Relations Board, or PERB, with the fair-share election, he said, creates a neutral venue where "the rank and file can actually have a voice." The board has verified that 30 percent -- or about 13,000 employees -- in the union's Bargaining Unit 1, the so-called administrative division, have signed petitions calling for the election. A date for the balloting is expected to be set this week, according to PERB general counsel division chief Les Chisholm.
SEIU 1000 last year increased dues on the 87,000 employees it represents from 1 percent to 1.5 percent of their monthly salaries. The increase went into effect in July. A second increase that would have pushed the rates up to 1.75 percent in 2010 was forestalled at SEIU 1000's recent general council meeting in San Jose. The second increase now will be subject to a vote of the full membership.
Union President Jim Hard said the increase was SEIU 1000's first in 16 years. He said that "errors were made in the process of raising dues" over the past year by not getting the information out to the rank and file on what the union planned to do with the money -- "modernizing our infrastructure" and "adding additional staff" for "research, legal and bargaining."
"We failed to get that fact out to our members," Hard said. "We think it was a communication problem, and we're paying the price for it now."
Fair-share workers are employees in a bargaining unit who don't join the union but are still required by law to pay for contract negotiations and other services provided by the labor organization. They make up about a third of the 43,000 employees in Unit 1, according to the union.
With unit members paying an average of $75 a month in dues, according to Hard, and fair-share employees paying a couple dollars less, SEIU 1000 stands to lose about $12.5 million a year if the rescission campaign succeeds and it carries over into the next contract. That amounts to about 29 percent of the $44 million in revenue the union declared last year.
The fight over the fair-share payers comes at a time when petitions are circulating on a ballot measure that would reduce pensions on state employees hired after July 2009. Meanwhile, the union's contract with the state expires next year, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget writers already projecting an $8.6 billion operating deficit.
Hintz said union leaders "always argue it's a bad time to talk about dues reductions and fair-share fees going away." A union member and shop steward in Unit 1 until he retired last year, Hintz acknowledged his campaign is serving as a distraction but said SEIU leaders have nobody to blame but themselves.
"Of course, it will distract from (the pension and contract fights)," Hintz said. "If (the union leaders) were wise, they would have rolled back the dues to an amount acceptable to the rank and file. If they would have done that, they would have taken away the traction of the rescission campaign. They've done their best to give it the traction it needs."
Hard, himself a member of Unit 1, as union president is drawing the same $50,000-range salary he earned as an Employment Development Department worker. He also was hit with the dues increase. He said the rescission campaign will give union activists "a real opportunity to meet with the members as to the challenges we're facing and how damaging a rescission of fair-share fees would be to the struggles that we have in front of us."
"I believe we'll be successful if we get out and speak with the members and listen to them and listen to their concerns," Hard said.
Full-fledged union members, who make up two-thirds of the bargaining unit, will get to vote on the rescission along with the fair-share payers. Balloting is expected to be conducted by mail over the course of a few weeks to a month, according to PERB.
Out in the trenches of the state's work force, Joe Severino, a return-to-work consultant for the State Compensation Insurance Fund, said most of the employees he talks to are opposed to the dues increase. But most, he said, also will be voting against the rescission.
"I really would be very surprised if it isn't overwhelmingly shot down," said Severino, who is based in Santa Rosa.
Kevin Brown, a Department of Insurance employee in Sacramento, is a fair-share payer who signed the petition for the rescission. He said the issue is "not something that people talk about a lot" in his office. Fair-share payers that he talks to, however, are lining up in favor of the effort.
"They certainly support an alternative to the union," Brown said.
At its general council meeting in San Jose, SEIU 1000 leaders faced criticism from a self- described "reform" movement within the union that has expressed biting criticism of Hard and his leadership team. But leaders of the insurgent group, California State Employees United, said they are lining up against the fee rescission despite their dissatisfaction with their leaders.
"The solution is to remove the current elected officers, not weaken our union," CSEU President Alex Hernandez said.
(sacbee.com)