Previous Article: Letter to Carpenters from Carl Biers
Next Article: What happened in Iowa and New Hampshire?
Public employees, get all the news: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!
From the January-March 2004 issue of UDR #150
Reformers win big in California State Employees Association
The Caucus for a Democratic Union dominated the November convention of the California State Employees Association, ousted the incumbent administration, and elected all the incoming state officers. The CSEA is the largest local on the West Coast. Its Civil Service Division, with 90,000 members, is the third largest affiliate of the SEIU. In winning the election and a majority of the 1052 convention delegates, rank and file volunteers from the 600-member caucus campaigned vigorously in 55 chapter officer and delegate elections and thirteen regional elections for CSEA Board of Directors.
The sweeping victory of
the reform caucus culminates a bitter battle for democracy that began
almost 14 years ago when five members of the CSEA negotiating committee
campaigned against a contract which the state CSEA leadership was pushing
for adoption. They were removed from the committee and suspended from
membership. That's when they launched the CDU. From that point on the
state leadership continued an unrelenting campaign to get rid of these
critics. The state leaders filed charges against them, seeking their lifetime
suspension, but the state Public Employment Relations Board rebuffed the
move.
In 1996, having narrowly
escaped expulsion, the CDU reformers won control of the Civil Service
Division. Jim Hard and Cathy Hackett were elected to the two top positions.
The statewide CSEA, an oddly
constituted union, is composed of four separate divisions. Only the Civil
Service Division is affiliated to the Service Employees International
Union as SEIU Local 1000. With its 90,000 members, the division could
command a majority of the statewide membership of 140,000 in all four
divisions, but a gerrymandered system of organization kept the old state
officials in control, and they used that control over the years to try
to suppress the reformers, including a failed effort to put the division
under trusteeship. The reform leaders of the division decided to register
the division under state law as a non-profit organization, a move that
would provide protection for their democratic rights not easily enforceable
otherwise. Their move was resisted by the state organization, but after
an extended battle in state court, the CDU was successful. With their
rights now guaranteed, the CDU went on to statewide victory.
Joseph Jelincic, the new CSEA state president was one of the founders of the Caucus for a Democratic Union.
More on the
CSEA:
California
State Employees fight to stay in SEIU 2/3 2002
CDU's website: http://www.unionspark.org/main.htm
The website of the other side, "Many Voices, One Union": http://www.csea4us.com/
Previous Article: Letter to Carpenters from Carl Biers
Next Article: What happened in Iowa and New Hampshire?
This website is made possible by contributions from union members and supporters like you. Please help us build the movement for union democracy, join or contribute to AUD.
AUDHome; Legal Rights; Education; Union Democracy Review; Books; AUDLinks
Page designed by Matt Noyes, National
Writers Union/UAW, and Rachel Szekely
The Association for Union Democracy. www.uniondemocracy.org
104 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn,
New York, 11225; USA; 718-564-1114; info@uniondemocracy.org
This work is licensed
under a Creative
Commons License.
Use
the following credit line on the materials you use:
"From the
website of the Association for Union Democracy. www.uniondemocracy.org. Email:
info@uniondemocracy.org. 104 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11225; USA;
718-564-1114"
Please notify us at websteward@uniondemocracy.org when you use material from the site.
Send comments or suggestions on the website to websteward@uniondemocracy.org.