Questions from Webcast Participants
and
Answers from SEIU Leaders
December 2007 Webcasts
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1. Maureen: How do we hold public agencies accountable for bad expenditures, programs, and policies— such as contracting out― without it reflecting on our members?
It is critical that our members lead for quality since they are the front-line employees and a critical part of quality public services is accountability and transparency for government. We should campaign for standards of accountability and transparency that expose bad expenditures or program decisions and our members should lead the fight for such policies. For example, many government agencies have purchased flawed computer systems despite opposition from IT employees. In these cases, management should be required to consult IT employees before making large software purchases.
2. M: How do we salvage our pensions and benefits, but stay competitive to private companies who could do our work?
We should work to raise the standards of all workers rather than only fight to keep what we have. If we joined together the nearly 1 million SEIU public employees to fight for retirement and healthcare coverage for all workers, we could stay competitive with the private sector. The part of the plan called “Leading for Strong Communities” addresses the need for public service workers to fight for stronger communities through winning healthcare and retirement security for all.
3. William: How do we partner with other unions that have our vision? Too many times our brothers and sisters in other unions are either so far left or so far right they won't walk down the center of the aisle with us.
We have demonstrated many positive ways to work together with other unions. We have partnered with AFSCME to win bargaining rights for city workers in Houston and child care providers in Pennsylvania. Across the country, we need to work with other public sector unions in areas where we can find common ground. We won’t succeed without them.
4. Larry: How do you get members more involved in the plan for 20 years?
By having conversations at your workplace and local union about the vision, you can get more members involved. Most of our local unions have had multiple chances for members to join the conversation. However, we cannot reach everyone, so individuals having conversations with their co-workers and sending them to this Web site is the best way to expand our conversations. We will continue to figure out opportunities for members to discuss the vision and offer input.
5. Tomasa: How do we legislate for quality when laws currently favor corporations to shut down in the USA and take our jobs to China?
Although some public sector jobs can go offshore (call centers, IT, etc.), most of our jobs aren’t exportable. However, the loss of union jobs in the United States has had a terrible effect on our standard of living and we are seeing the loss of healthcare and pensions in the private sector. Since private sector workers are losing these benefits, they are beginning to question why their taxes should pay for public sector workers to have benefits they themselves don’t have. They perceive public sector workers as lazy people with overly generous benefit packages. We need to fight to bring up standards in the private sector so that we don’t continue to see standards for all workers fall. And we need to fight for quality services to show citizens that the public sector can be effective.
6. Chica: Have we identified any partners in the private sector?
Although most private and nonprofit employers who do publicly funded work are not partners with us on quality public services and a strong voice for workers yet, we have found a few are starting to share our vision. Strong SEIU public sector locals in Massachusetts and the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, work with nonprofit employers to improve standards both for workers and for clients, including people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. As we lead on quality, more current and future publicly funded employers are likely to see the value of partnering with us.
7. William: How do we get older workers to accept change?
Change isn’t something to accept or not because it will happen regardless of whether we want it to or not. As Andy Stern has said, “Change is inevitable, but progress is optional.” The best way to help older workers understand what is happening to the public sector is through dialogue at your workplace. We should equip our members to talk to co-workers about what they can expect to see in the future on their jobs.
8. William Potts: When referring to everyone, who are we referring to?
We are referring to all workers in the United States, regardless of whether they are private or public sector.
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1. Interested: The corporations have done a terrific job getting the public to view "government" and therefore employees of "government" as corrupt, lazy, distrustful, and privileged. Can we use our pension funds in a collective manner to challenge and influence corporate America to discontinue such practices?
SEIU President Andy Stern and our capital stewardship staff have been exploring how we could use pension funds in a more effective way. Right now, many of them invest in companies that profit from privatization, are anti-union, and don’t have the public interest in mind. Are there ways we could work with pension funds to invest in our communities to promote better corporate behavior and investment practices? We don’t know the answer yet, but it is something we should all be thinking about.
2. Timothy: how many people are participating tonight?
About 150 and more than 5,500 people have viewed the archived version of the webcast.
3. Timothy: We have had some success in working toward stopping freight train to disaster in our child welfare system by utilizing every system at our disposal—talking with legislators we helped get elected and those we didn't, labor management, utilizing an agency head who is committed to making our agency a world-class career, and we successfully got a bad department head removed so work could be done. This is one way I see in opening the door to looking to quality services.
This is a great example of our members leading the charge to improve public services. If we wait for elected officials or department heads to do this, it may never happen. We know how our services could be improved, so we should take the lead. Your comments also underscore the need for whistleblower protections so workers are able to speak out about problems without being fired or otherwise penalized.
4. Theresa: I have a comment rather than a question: Bargaining for quality is a win-win for both employer and employee, we have bargaining language on this in our contract. Our contract has training language. This makes quality employees which in turn makes a quality business.
Very well put. We need to think about how we can get language in our contracts that will improve the quality of public services. One way to start is by updating contract surveys to ask members for their ideas about how to improve quality and for a description of the resources they would need to do that.
5. Kurt: [How] can our effectiveness in the political sphere create opportunities for cooperative relationships with the agencies that employ us?
If we are active in politics, we can work to elect people who will promote cooperative relationships. In many states, we have seen drastic differences for public sector workers based on who is governor. In Colorado, state employees lost dues check-off and saw their employee association devastated by one governor. Now a few years later, Gov. Ritter is working to give collective bargaining and a real voice to front-line employees. Many Colorado agencies have new policies on consulting with employees about workplace issues.
6. Brandon: How do we convince employers we are sincere on partnering in quality?
There are many employers that we won’t have to convince and we may find a hunger for this conversation by many employers that will surprise us. For employers that are not willing to talk to us about improving public services, we may need to campaign publicly for a voice in services.
7. Timothy: In Las Vegas, the local trains workers like an old hiring hall. How can we get a system like that throughout the union, particularly in computer work?
This is subject to local bargaining, but it is an interesting idea for a way to bargain for quality improvements.
8. Brandon: How does resource allocation for quality relate to the need for resources in new organizing?
This is a complicated question because locals allocate resources differently. Organizing is critical for us to grow stronger by uniting all workers in public services into our union. Working for quality might engage more people to be active in the union, and might attract more workers to our union. Both are areas that need resources allocated to be most effective.
9. Bruce: What are your specific plans for improving communications with the rank-and-file membership?
A team of SEIU local union leaders from across North America has been studying how local unions can build on our existing strengths and increase our effectiveness in a rapidly changing world—including improving our communications with members. Through the SEIU Local Union Strength Committee, local leaders have been sharing experiences, talking with members, conducting pilot projects, and studying lessons we can learn from unions in other countries such as Australia. As a result of this process, we have identified some ground-breaking, proven ways SEIU local unions can make our organization more responsive, involve and unite more workers so we’ll all be stronger, and win a better future for our families and our communities. We will be saying more about our specific findings in forums throughout our union in coming months.
10. M: What are the polling numbers? Where did the polls take place? What states were used for such a negative view of public employees?
The opinion research presented in the PowerPoint during the webcast was conducted in a half dozen South and West states—both those where we have strength and where we are pioneering rights for workers—but we have seen other polls that show similar results. The general public has soured on public services and it is up to us to turn that around. We need to show that public services have an important place in our country.