Fear of Trump Triggers Deep Spending Cuts by Nation's Second-Largest Union
https://portside.org/2017-01-03/fear-trump-triggers-deep-spending-cuts-nations-second-largest-union
Portside Date:
Author: Josh Eidelson
Date of source:
BloombergBusinessweek
In a clear sign that labor unions are bracing for lean
times under Donald Trump, the massive Service Employees
International Union is planning for a 30 percent budget
cut over the next year, according to an internal memo
reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek.
“Because the far right will control all three branches
of the federal government, we will face serious threats
to the ability of working people to join together in
unions,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry wrote in an
internal memo dated Dec. 14. “These threats require us
to make tough decisions that allow us to resist these
attacks and to fight forward despite dramatically
reduced resources.”
After citing the need to “dramatically re-think” how to
implement the union’s strategy, Henry’s all-staff letter
announces that SEIU “must plan for a 30% reduction”
in the international union's budget by Jan. 1, 2018,
including a 10 percent cut effective at the start of 2017.
SEIU, which represents nearly 2 million government,
health-care, and building-services workers and wields
an annual budget of $300 million, is the nation’s
second-largest union and arguably the most politically
significant. In the past few years, SEIU has mounted
organized labor’s most effective political intervention
with the “Fight for $15,” a campaign that’s dragged
Democrats—from city council members to presidential
candidates—further left on the minimum wage. At the
same time, it cultivated close ties with President
Obama, played a key role in passing Obamacare, and
worked hard to elect Hillary Clinton.
Asked about what the memo could mean for its current
campaigns, SEIU didn't offer specifics. “As we prepare
to fight-back against the forthcoming attacks on
working people and our communities under an
extremist-run government, we know we must realign our
resources and streamline our investments to buttress
and broaden our movement to restore economic and
democratic opportunity for all families,” said
spokeswoman Sahar Wali. “As part of this process, we
are currently looking at possible ways to improve our
budgets.”
SEIU, like most of its peers, was already in a state of
slow-motion crisis before Trump's victory. Things will
only get worse after inauguration, when organized labor
will find itself without a friend in the White House.
Unions will instead be up against unified Republican
control of the federal government and of half the
nation’s state governments, where labor organizers have
already suffered some severe blows.
In Michigan, for example, Republicans in 2012 passed a
private sector “Right to Work” law that let workers
decline to fund the unions representing them, a public
sector law doing the same for government employees, and
a third law stripping University of Michigan graduate
student researchers and home-health aides of their
collective-bargaining rights. Afterwards, SEIU's
Michigan health-care local lost most of its membership.
With Republican dominance in Washington, the threats to
SEIU will get more grave: Everything from slashing
health-care spending to passing a federal law extending
“Right to Work” to all private-sector employees could
be on the table.
One of the most widely expected scenarios is that
a Trump appointee will provide the decisive fifth vote
on the Supreme Court's labor cases.
The court already ruled in 2014 that making
government-funded home health aides pay union fees
violated the First Amendment, and a future case could
apply the same logic to all government employees,
effectively making the whole public sector “Right to
Work.” SEIU was bracing for such a ruling earlier this
year, in a case called Friedrichs v. California
Teachers Association, but got an unexpected reprieve
when Justice Antonin Scalia's death left the court
tied, four to four. With several similar cases brought
by union opponents already making their way through
lower courts, it may not last for long.
The Dec. 14 internal memo from SEIU's president doesn’t
specify which threats necessitate planning for a 30
percent cut or how particular programs could be
affected. It does reference the next congressional and
presidential election cycles, saying the union needs to
“focus our resources and energy on the fights that
position us to retake power in 2018, 2020 and beyond,”
as well as position itself “to take on the forthcoming
attacks, absorb the short-term losses and strengthen
ourselves to win big in the future.”
The Trump-induced triage could affect the Fight for
$15, which has swept across the country as a blend of
legal and regulatory attacks, media and political
pressure, and high-profile workplace strikes. The goal
has been to force higher pay standards in the low-wage
economy and to compel the virtually union-free
fast-food industry to embrace some form of
unionization. SEIU has spent tens of millions on the
campaign since 2012.
The unorthodox campaign has pulled off some big coups,
including $15 wage laws passed this year in California
and New York State, but there's been no national
agreement. Even before Trump’s win, the prospect of a
Friedrichs loss and the array of attacks facing unions
had some skeptics wondering how long SEIU could afford
to keep funding the $15 wage push without any matching
influx of fast-food union dues.
SEIU leaders around the country have countered that
the emergence of a popular Fight for $15 movement,
whose strikes and slogans now encompass workers i
in SEIU’s traditional industries, is already paying off by
making it easier for home-care workers to win bigger
raises and galvanizing support for airport workers in
unionization campaigns. They say the high-profile
campaign is inspiring many more workers—including
the government employees that the Supreme Court
could soon give the option to opt-out of fees—to want
to be involved in SEIU.
Asked last year whether, if labor lost the Friedrichs
case, she would direct funds away from the
Fight for $15,SEIU's Henry answered, “absolutely not.”
She added, “You can’t go smaller in this moment.
You have to go bigger.”