Organized Labor

In Wisconsin, battle lines between unions and their foes seem clear. In our trench are Democrats; in that trench across no-man’s-land are Republicans. The Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate this month employed a procedural maneuver to make attendance of Democratic senators unnecessary for a vote, then passed a bill limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees just to the subject of wages – no bargaining on overtime, none on premiums, none on pensions, work clothes, equipment, hours, holidays, stewards’ rights, grievance procedures… The Wisconsin Assembly, which had already passed an earlier version of the bill, followed suit. Governor Scott Walker quickly signed it.

True, one Republican senator, Dale Schultz, voted against the bill. One assumes he will be court-martialed, then placed before some kind of firing squad.

We might think that here in San Francisco, where the Republican Party is insignificant, our bargaining rights are safe.

Not so; anti-union concepts have so pervaded political thought in this country that even politicians who are often our friends, even those who acknowledge the continuing accomplishments of unions on behalf of all workers and the broader society, treat collective bargaining sometimes as a problem and seek to limit it.

We saw this last November first and foremost in Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s Proposition B, which bypassed collective bargaining completely and sought to increase pension contributions for all City employees and raise health plan contributions radically for some. For Adachi, collective bargaining was not to be trusted to deal with projected increases in pension and health expenses for the City.

In the course of Adachi’s campaign, former Mayor Willie Brown sided with him. This Council has supported Brown in every election in which he has ever run, and we had always considered him a friend. Council President Larry Mazzola, Sr. wrote to Brown to ask him to reconsider his backing of the Adachi measure. Brown ignored the letter.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd has consistently supported our work and has on many occasions helped this Council, whether publicly or quietly. His Proposition G in one regard increased the scope of collective bargaining, by ending a formula that determined Muni operator wages and subjecting them to negotiations.

At the same time, Proposition G set new standards in the binding arbitration that follows inconclusive bargaining. The new standards require an arbitrator to consider the maintenance of service and the interests of Muni riders and the broader public in deciding between union and management proposals; well and good. By additionally placing the burden of proof on the unions to show that their proposals do not go against these considerations, however, the standards establish a presumption that management’s assertions about them are correct. This represents a de facto limit on collective bargaining; management has less reason to want it to come to a successful conclusion and so to engage seriously in it, but has instead an incentive to go to arbitration.

As we in unions know well, management’s true interest is often in neither service nor the public interest, but in taking care of managers.

In the lead-up to Supervisor John Avalos’s recent local hire legislation we saw more rejections of collective bargaining. As I described in my September 2010 column, in stakeholder meetings arranged by the Haas Sr. and San Francisco Foundations between Council representatives, community groups, contractors, and City officials we proposed that the approach to local hire be negotiated through a citywide project labor agreement policy – in other words, through collective bargaining. The community groups rejected all forms of this proposal. When I argued for it later to Supervisor Avalos, he, too, rejected it; he said that the community groups wanted a law on local hire first, and we might have a project labor agreement policy later.

Avalos also remarked, without comment, that a project labor agreement policy would have to be negotiated by Mayor Newsom’s office. Not only was there little trust between Avalos and Mayor Newsom, Avalos would have received much less praise for an agreement negotiated by Newsom’s office than for a law.

Whatever Avalos’s reasons were, he believed that a measure deeply affecting our unions and our work should be off limits to collective bargaining. All that was available to us was to discuss details of how to institute a 50 percent mandate. We knew that mandate was impractical and that it would divert attention and resources away from what is really needed to give local residents successful careers in our Trades.

We would have negotiated a comprehensive policy. We got instead a showpiece for politicians.

And this is an instance of one of the chief dangers when politicians reject collective bargaining. We do not get what works for both workers and the public. We get what makes politicians look good, and workers suffer, and often the public, as well.