Members First

Service Employees union local has its first contested election in anyone's memory

opinion by Brian King

On December 3, 2002, there was some good news for the labor movement in Washington State. Reform candidate Sergio Salinas won the election for president of Local 6, a union affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. All those running on the Members First slate with him won as well.

Salinas's victory was the culmination of a long and at times difficult struggle waged between the Members First group and some leaders of Local 6's parent organization.

A century of service to the community

Local 6 originated a century ago in Seattle, with its membership coming mainly from the ranks of janitors in the city's vaudeville entertainment industry. Today, SEIU is a huge and growing union with more than a million members. Because of this tremendous growth, most of the local SEIU unions had become, by the turn of the 21st century, "amalgamated unions." This means that their membership rosters are comprised of workers from various sectors of the service economy. Nurses, janitors, university office people, and others, might all belong to the same local. In order to allow local unions to better organize and represent groups of workers with similar needs, SEIU's Washington leadership adopted the New Strength Unity plan (NSU) in 1999. Work groups in an area would be shifted with an eye toward making each local union more homogenous.

Rule from Washington DC challenged

Coinciding with the implementation of NSU, the 30-year president of Seattle's Local 6, Mark Earls, retired. The International leadership wanted to be sure that his successor would be amenable to NSU, so they asked a young SEIU leader from California, David Rolf, to move to Seattle and run for president to replace Earls. Rolf had demonstrated a talent for bringing homecare workers, referred to as Independent Providers (IPs), into the union in California. SEIU leaders in Washington DC hoped he could repeat this accomplishment in Washington State. He succeeded, with solid financial support from the International, when ballot initiative 775 passed in 2001, giving 26,000 very low paid home health caregivers the right to unionize. The International appointed Rolf to serve Earls' remaining term at Local 6, and he made plans to run for election in December 2002.

As Rolf consolidated his power in Local 6, things began to worsen for many members and staff at the old local. Organizers were expected to work as many as 80 hours/week, much of it on the Independent Providers campaign, which in turn drew resources away from representing current members. Rank and filers increasingly felt they were not being represented properly. "We needed to bring the union back to local members. Everything was too dominated by the International," said Swedish Hospital shop steward Perry Whitman. He went on, "Everything was so concentrated on the IP campaign, members didn't have a voice in the union anymore." Then word got around the local that money earmarked for arbitration of grievances had been spent instead on the IP campaign. No money to finance the costly arbitration process would mean no teeth in the grievances that workers filed.

As summer 2002 headed into the fall, several of the senior staff at Local 6 quietly made plans to move on. The handwriting was definitely on the wall; once Rolf won the election in December, they would be out. But then, an unusual thing happened; instead of going quietly, a few senior staffers got to talking things over. Before long, Salinas was brought into the discussion. "We're out anyway, why not have a run at these guys in December?" was the consensus in the group. Salinas agreed to run, and the group vowed that the campaign would be driven by a broad based rank-and-file effort.

Activists insist on right to democratic election

And so, Members First came into being. Word went out through activists in the local that Sergio Salinas, the current secretary-treasurer, would be running for president in December. This would make for the first contested election for control of the local in anyone's memory. A political earthquake in SEIU. A major goal of the new activist group was to convince the leaders of the International that they were a serious organization with broad support from the members of Local 6, and that Salinas had every intention of carrying through on the NSU plan, if elected.

When Eliseo Medina, a key West Coast leader of SEIU, came to Western Washington in October, Members First was there in force to greet him at a get-out-the-vote rally in Auburn. Thirty Local 6 rank-and-filers surrounded Medina before his speech to impress on him three messages. First, they told the powerful union leader about the difficulties inside the local that had led to the Members First campaign. Second, they sought to impress upon him how important it was that they be allowed to democratically express themselves on election day.

Third, the thirty members of Members First told Medina that the International should not respond to the contested election by imposing a trusteeship on the local. Frequently, when leadership in a union local is challenged, the parent union steps in and takes over. The fear of a trusteeship imposed by the International usually ensures that members will not challenge the International's agenda. Members First told Medina that this would not be appropriate in their case. The election should be allowed to take place.

As December 3 approached, the Members First campaign built. When the International came to town to conduct a hearing to determine the exact disposition of SEIU members in Washington State, the activist group again seized the opportunity to demonstrate its strength in the local. Many rank and filers at the hearing spoke eloquently, including janitor leader Tom Medica: "This campaign underlines the principle that union locals should be member driven. If this is not to be the case, we're doomed."

Two days before the election, David Rolf withdrew as a candidate for president of Local 6. Sergio Salinas won by acclamation. Almost 500 members voted, by far the largest election turnout for the local that anybody could remember. At his acceptance speech, Salinas graciously extended his solidarity to David Rolf, who had been named president of the newly created IP Local 775. He told the assembled members and friends of Local 6, "We have our work cut out for us next year. We have to bring all of Puget Sound's janitors into our union, and we gotta do it soon."

Brian King is the husband of a shop steward in Local 6.

WWW Washington Free Press