Quepos

The official explanation was given by SEIU’s razorsharp political director, Jon Youngdahl, a couple of jumps over relative of the late and wildly great Arkansas labor lawyer, Jim Youngdahl:

“SEIU has met with Bill Halter, and finds him to be a great voice for working families with an extremely bright political future,” said Jon Youngdahl, the union’s national political director. “That’s why we’ve solicited contributions to retire his campaign debt and support his re-election campaign.”

Hmmmm…..Bill Halter has quite a lot of work to do before he quite qualifies as a “great voice for working families,” so that’s not the real answer though SEIU supporting “his re-election campaign” might just be closer to reality.

A few weeks ago when I speculated that I  thought we could bank on Senator Blanche Lincoln as a sure vote in the 60 for health care passage by throwing a sop to her Democratic base despite her only real concern with her seven (7) Republican primary opponents, I also guessed that it was unlikely that Halter would agree to challenge Lincoln given what I was hearing from friends and relatives in the Wonder State.  I would have to guess that SEIU’s sudden interest in Halter’s debt and anything in Arkansas at all, given that at this point they have no significant membership in the state anymore that could be helped by a Lt. Gov, must have come from some high level backroom discussions not with Halter, but probably with Lincoln and her campaign that dollars to donuts ended up with SEIU promising to support Lincoln aggressively if she slipped over and gave a needed vote on healthcare in the Senate.

For Halter this probably feels like Christmas, but in real terms this was just a consolation prize for him running in place and staying put for the future.

Union says it will help Ark. Lt. Gov. retire debt

(AP) — LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A major labor union said Friday it will help retire the 2006 campaign debt of Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, a Democrat who’s been touted as a potential primary challenger to U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln next year.

The Service Employees International Union said it is soliciting contributions to retire the debt along with the help of other labor unions. Halter reported in October that his campaign still owed him more than $444,000 that he had loaned it.

“SEIU has met with Bill Halter, and finds him to be a great voice for working families with an extremely bright political future,” said Jon Youngdahl, the union’s national political director. “That’s why we’ve solicited contributions to retire his campaign debt and support his re-election campaign.”

[1]

The move may help remove a barrier for Halter, who’s been mentioned as a potential rival to fellow Democrat Lincoln in next year’s primary. Halter has said he is focused on his re-election campaign, and has not said whether he is considering running against Lincoln.

Lincoln, who is seeking a third term, has more than $4.1 million in the bank for her re-election bid.

“The lieutenant governor continues to raise money to retire his debt and he’s thankful for anyone who offers their help, whether it’s SEIU or any Arkansan or union or person who believes Halter is doing a great job as lieutenant governor as he prepares to run for re-election,” Halter spokesman Bud Jackson said Friday.

Steve Patterson, Lincoln’s campaign manager, said he didn’t see any indication that the union was backing Halter as a potential primary challenger.

“I accept their statement on its face,” Patterson said.

A spokeswoman for the union, which represents 2.1 million members, said union officials had not decided whether to endorse Lincoln in her re-election bid.

Lincoln has been targeted by liberals and conservatives, particularly on health care legislation. The state GOP has criticized Lincoln for voting to open debate on Democratic-led health care legislation, while the liberal organization MoveOn.Org has aired ads pressuring her for opposing a government-run insurance option.

Labor unions have expressed disappointment with health care legislation in the Senate for not including the so-called public option.

Seven Republicans have announced they’re seeking the party’s nomination to challenge Lincoln next year.

New Orleans

• Voter slaps at Corzine and Bloomberg have a populist anti-Wall Street and decidedly, “money-can’t-buy-my-vote” cast to them for two rich guys willing to spend whatever it takes, particularly the record setting $90M outlay by Mayor Bloomberg in his very close race.
• Unions need to listen to their members more and to political pros and consultants less.  It’s embarrassing to know that two huge NYC political players, SEIU and UFT/AFT, took a walk on this election.  Their members didn’t.  Controller Thompson, the challenger, romped with African-Americans and voters making less than $100,000 both of which are heavily represented by those two unions.  Had they not been twiddling thumbs on the sidelines, this race would have been even closer and might have sent a message against big money politics that could reverberate around the country.

• The Working Families Party of New York is once again a HUGE winner this election!  WFP was vocal from the first blush against the 3^rd term effort and said so unabashedly.  They refused Bloomberg access to their line, despite persistent pressure.  Not having the WFP doing turnout hurt the Mayor, and having them do turnout for Thompson dramatically helped him bring the race close.  Big, WOW, here with props for Danny Cantor and all of the WFP team!

• What are the progressive forces going to do without the GOTV and registration work in the community which ACORN has indicated it is unlikely to play in 2010 and beyond?  It was wild to read the pre-election right turnout scare tactics using ACORN as the boogieman.  A DC spokesperson for ACORN said they were not even involved anywhere in this race in New Jersey, and despite all of the strum and dang, ACORN had no base or operations in the NY-23^rd race.  Turnout was low and decidedly down among minorities and youth.  The more one reads and studies this rightwing ideological attack the smarter and more effective it seems, if its main purpose was to help level the playing field by successfully pushing one of the players off the field.

And, yes, none of this was about Obama, but all politics is local and the President will get the message.  According to the New York Times, Bloomberg was effective in putting the President and his people to the sidelines with a head fake and some bluster, and Thompson’s work as the standard bearer for the Democrats could seen a different storyline with real White House help rather the shrinking back, timidity that came with riding the donkey in New York.  What’s up with that?!?

If I were in one of the President’s men, I would be getting an apology together (and maybe offering my resignation!), because this is a huge wakeup call from the base, and it needs to be heard clearly without putting more sugar in this sad cup of coffee.

Philadelphia

I was not surprised because part of the reason I had agreed to support the great work in Philly lay at the footsteps of a good example of the potential of majority unionism.  For several years JwJ here under its director Fabricio Rodriguez had been involved in the long, arduous process of supporting the building of an organization among the 175 security workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  After several years the organization had navigated the obstacles for security workers in organizing and recently had transitioned to an independent union, filed, and won a representation election handily, and not surprisingly having already proven the organization at the workplace long ago.  Now, they challenges of bargaining away, but that’s another story.

Majority unionism is what I have called the process of changing the labor organizing paradigm to allow workers first (not employers!) decide they want an organization, build strength through direct membership and direct action, and using that power along with community and political leverage to win recognition and advances regardless of any other obstacles in law or habit.  This kind of strategy led to the huge success in our generation among informal workers (home health and home day care) which have added more than a half-million members in the last 30 years to the ranks of organized labor.  This is also the heart of the successful pilot we led in Florida several years ago to prove that Wal-Mart workers could be organized a different way.

The hard question asked by several of the union lawyers and reps in the room, was how do you make the organization sustainable over the time frame necessary to win?  This question was particularly important because the examples from home health care and Wal-Mart were based on more modest dues levels (in some cases only $10/month) than what many of them were accustomed to seeing in existing unions.  Certainly this had also been our challenge as well, and led to our independent union becoming part of the SEIU, and kept us from continuing the Wal-Mart Workers Association as an independent entity.

The answer I was too well mannered to give was that this question lies at the heart of the dilemma between being a union movement and an institutional structure.  The efforts among farmworkers, home care workers, and others – including what we are doing with ragpickers and cartoneros now – are rooted in deep political, individual, and organizational commitments over long time frames of sacrifice and struggle until victory is achieved.  These are projects that don’t fit the normal box of excellent wages and benefits for union organizers, but will be driven by rare organizing zealots willing to pay the price for years in the conviction and passion that success will justify the climb long into the future.  There’s a crazy, courageous history to this, but my friends were right:  it’s not a model.

But it is a way to shift the paradigm and turn the tide, especially if we can convince unions and others to help balance the books while the work is done until what I, perhaps crazily, believe will be the inevitable victory.  The workers want organizations.  They want power on the job.  Eventually, we are going to have to pay the dues, and give them what they demand, even if it is harder than we like and different than what we know.

Washington

A promise to Senator Baucus around revenue has led to a taxing problem on so-called “Cadillac” benefits, but voices from Rich Trumka at the AFL-CIO and many others are point out that the tax would go to fairly thin programs including a lot of plans that are part of collective bargaining agreements.

There now seems a cadre of folks in the House and a smaller number in the Senate who are trying to hijack the bill based on stripping out abortion and taking a promise from the President as part of the license to do so.  Are we now throwing women under the bus as well?

The Times reported that some states, led by Arizona, are trying to act unilaterally to say that the state could “veto” an “individual mandate” that might come with a federal package.

The tactics seem to be overwhelming the strategy.  This is not a debate but a dog pile it seems.  Where’s the adult supervision?

Postscript!

My “friends” on the right seem to be using me as a source for an attack at yet another new target:  Patrick Gaspard, political director at the White House.

I have huge admiration for Patrick and have enjoyed my dealings with him over the years.  In almost 1400 blogs I’ve done, sometimes I don’t get it right, call it a senior moment or whatever it might be, but reading the blogsphere with me as a source took me back searching for whether or not I could be causing a problem here inadvertently.  Patrick was never on the staff of ACORN.  I double checked with people I still know there, and it appears that I dropped a stitch there.  Hopefully my misstatement won’t lead to the White House throwing him in front of the bus in this rush to neo-McCarthyism that has become so prominent. In this case, my memory tricked me.  I’m glad to carry the weight and simply say I made a mistake, and damned if I’m not sorry and hope no damage is done to a good man doing a hard job.

Let me quickly add, since I read Google alerts and have noticed that there is a attack squad at all manner of friends and associates I have had over the years, that for the formal record, I have NO friends.  If there’s a problem with me, then bring it on, but for the rest of you, if you see me on the street, just nod and pass on by, if you are worried about it.  Until we learn to all stand together and oppose this kind of blood sport political targeting, it’s going to be like this for a while.  I’m just not sure how long it will take.

Washington

I stumbled into the fine hall after the ceremony had already begun, taking a seat just behind Jon Hiatt, Sweeney’s long time general counsel at SEIU and now the AFL, who reached out his hand, and Bill Lurye, from New Orleans sitting down the row past Ray Abernathy and Denise Mitchell, the communications wizards I had known so long.

Listening to John read his very personal speech, I could see Ray imperceptibly nodding as he heard the words that he had no doubt helped shape for John as he has so many times before.  In the wake of the Ted Kennedy funeral and the very public expressions of faith, including the revelation of the recent letter from Senator Kennedy that was hand delivered by President Obama to the Pope, John and Ray had obviously decided in this very Jesuit institution to have John speak very comfortably and personally in his own testament to his Catholic faith as part of his service to working people.  Bob Welsh later commented to me at the reception that for all of the thousands of speeches he has heard John give this was the first one he could recall that was so deeply and personally Catholic as a man, rather than as even a Catholic labor leader.

Having long heard the Sweeney standard preamble that recognizes virtually every labor leader in any room where he is speaking, the beginning was more personal and less political as he named every Sweeney relative in the room and only mentioned Rich Trumka, his coming successor, whom I visited with later, and Arlene Holt, who I may have missed in the crowd.  Clearly, I was hearing the end of Sweeney’s political service and something of his transition to whatever his new and more personal service is likely to be.

Reading the program, it was hard to believe that he had been at the AFL-CIO for 14 years.  Could it have been that long?  And, that he had headed SEIU for 15 years.  Was it really that brief?

The President of Georgetown, Dr. John DeGioia, may have captured his recent career better in noting what I would call his “stewardship” in keeping faith in hard times for institutional labor.  Perhaps that subdued and solid note is most apt. Though it’s sad in a sense of what “could have been” to those of us who stood and hollered, as I did as a proud delegate from the New Orleans AFL-CIO and comrade from SEIU for my President as he spoke as the candidate of change and hope to reform and revitalize labor and offered to lead the AFL-CIO in a different direction in New York in that convention, when Sweeney won as a reform candidate there now years ago.  Now, we have a shattered house of labor still trying to find its future, and an AFL-CIO that is still profoundly better than what he found there, I believe, but still not what we had hoped it might have become.

My friends, comrades, brothers and sisters with whom I’ve shared so much were there in full, graying force.  It was good to see Gerry Shea whose path has now crossed and intertwined with mine for 40 years now back to welfare rights.

It was sobering at the reception to visit with Steven Greenhouse, the Times’ labor reporter, and ask him, as one of the most knowledgeable observers from outside the various houses of labor, where he thought the best new organizing was happening in the country, and realize that what used to a casual and easy question, had clearly caught him off guard.   He easily cited for Joe McCartin the stories where he had covered my organizing on his beat, when I directed the HOTROC campaign among hospitality workers in New Orleans as part of the early Sweeney AFL-CIO organizing offense when our shared friend, Kirk Adams, was the AFL’s Organizing Director, and again in Orlando and Tampa when he covered the drives we were running among Wal-Mart workers on a project supported by the AFL, SEIU, and the UFCW, when we were still all together and still trying to break new organizing ground just five years ago until everything split apart in the middle of our work.  On one hand he confessed that his editors weren’t really interested in organizing, but also conceded that there wasn’t much he could find either.  His last big organizing story he said might have been the campaign that I had helped develop and shepherd through as a partnership with ACORN and the UFT to organize the tens of thousands of home child care workers in New York City.  Joe more gracefully changed the subject to the organizing I was doing internationally to create unions of waste pickers in India, but the work there doesn’t explain or excuse the “waiting for EFCA” vacuum in so much organizing here.

Sweeney time and service was being appropriately recognized, and he and his team deserved the thanks for progress made and promised kept, even if there were many dreams unrealized and disappointments on the road.  It was an honor just to be in the room and to be fortunate enough to be there for such a great occasion with some many comrades and friends.  Many if there were more hosts and facilitators like the good, committed Jesuits of Georgetown and the thoughtful wise veterans in the allied trades, like Professor and friend, Joe McCartin, we could still make many of these dreams still come true.

New Orleans It is depressing when politicians who know better start pandering to the worst impulses and most narrow pieces of their base.  Reading the accolades to Senator Kennedy and his consistency in standing true for his principles, made it even more disconcerting to hear and read how Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu handled her town hall meeting yesterday.  I’m not sure she can ever be counted on for a courageous vote on anything now, unless she is targeted as a complete opponent.

These quotes from the Times-Picayune tell just about the whole story:

• “I do not believe that people who are not citizens should receive health benefits.”
• Even the reporter, Bill Barrow, commented in the article that, “None of the bills introduced would extend any public insurance coverage to people who are not in the United States legally, though Landrieu did not explicitly rebut the questioner’s claim.”  This is why I would have to call Landrieu’s response pure and simple pandering.  Ugh!]
• “Some parts of our system are already socialized…”  Why would a several term Senator ever allow the debate on those terms, even while making a half-hearted defense?

Talking to labor and community participants at the town hall, they were pretty unanimous that Mary went out of her way to NOT call on any supporters of reform, but instead to allow the “teabag” elements to rant and yell.  Later she tried to spin the meeting as all having been good!

Where was she?

ACORN people were taunted with the chant:  “Where is your bus?”  and “Who Paid You to Come?”  These wing-nuts seem to not understand the fact that ACORN is a membership organization and the members pay dues and come on their own time.  The same attack was on unions, especially SEIU.

Look at the sign illustrating this blog.  Would have been hard for the Senator to miss don’t you think?  It was clearly orchestrated and prepared by the national Republican hate brigade.

I had to look up LUCAP.  I had never heard of it and neither had anyone else.  Turned out it was the Loyola University Community Action Program or some such.  They seem to have done some Katrina recovery work in St. Bernard.  Wonder who they made mad?

Senator Landrieu is becoming almost as embarrassing as Senator Vitter.  For him we have no expectations.  For her, it now seems only disappointment.

In the bitter court battle and divorce struggle within UNITE HERE as they try to unwind the merger of their organizations several years ago and reassemble various pieces into a new formation or in the former UNITE case to affiliate with SEIU, like the worst of Hollywood divorces both sides seem unrestrained in trying to destroy the other, no matter who and what is hurt at the hindmost.  Most recently when the HERE forces seized the building in New York City where the former UNITE forces had been operating, a flood of documents has been unleashed in internet way past acceptable boundaries.

One details the declining financial fortunes of UNITE laying the cupboard bare for employer inspection at a time when employers are trying to deny recognition – and therefore – dues income to the union claiming (with way too much credibility) that they can’t tell who and what the union really is.  ARAMARK, who I know too well personally from a dozens of organizing campaigns run by my local union or partnerships we managed, seems to have been predictably quick to now refuse to bargain and deny recognition I heard from a colleague in California on the phone yesterday.

Hospitality workers desperately need organization, and here where Local 100 works in the middle South, especially places like New Orleans and San Antonio where such industries dominate, the lack of organization is a tragic factor in impoverishing entire communities.  I would like to pretend all of this mess was in service to a potential organizing program, but there’s no sign of this yet on the horizon.  All sides seem instead to be set on weakening unionization in this critical sector by throwing all of our laundry into the street.  Maybe it was bad judgment to leave these memos lying around, but it was equally wrong to serve them up for public consumption.  We have to be better than our enemies, not the same.

All may be fair in love and war, as the expression goes, but even where there now seems to have been little love, there needs to be an understanding that this is still not really war, so some standards need to be upheld.