One of the things we’ve learned as we struggled to reach out to our brothers and sisters is that many share a common experience:
- Members feel isolated and disconnected from their union.
- They question why the only time they see union staff is during contract negotiations.
- Unit stewards have experienced such a rapid turnover of staff and constant lack of response from Charleston to their requests for help in pursuing grievances and enforcing their contracts, that they've come to believe they are on their own.
What most members don't realize is that we've all had the same experience.
That's because under President Segat all intra-union communications originate in the Charlestown office and trickle-down to the members; making it nearly impossible for members to communicate directly with one another. Making it nearly impossible for us to act like a Union.
We'd like to break that hold on power.
This is after all, a nation founded on the principle of free speech.
So lets have some!
Please post your thoughts, questions and ideas about, and your experiences with, SEIU 888.
PS. You can post anonymously, so there's no need to worry about retaliation from Charlestown.
36 comments:
I have question:
I am a steward in a unit of 23 members in Central Mass. I have not even seen a union rep in nearly a year.
What is going on?
I call the MRC and lave messages but no one returns my calls.
The only way I can tell I am even in SEIU 888 is that dues keep coming out of my paycheck.
I feel my members and I are trapped in phony union. They take our money alright. But we get nothing back!
You have to e-mail the info from this blog to all City of Boston members -- City Hall, Public Health, Police Dept, Guild, DND, etc and all other units where you can find e-mail addresses -- Quincy city hall and school dept, Brockton, Weymouth, state unit 2, etc etc. If the membership just knew of the financial mismanagement alone, they would through Susana out. Never mind the total mismanagement of staff, the crazy MRC, the absolute abandonment of even a pretense of representation, the lack of any - and I mean any -- serious assistance for contract negotiations, on and on and on. I heard that Brenda Rodriques has now also left the staff. I met her at a stewards meeting last year and thought she was a smart, dedicated union activist -- no wonder she only lasted on staff for three or four months. Under Segat, our union has become a total embarassment. E-mail out the blog info and lets change 888 !!!
Go team go!
However, beware that our problems won't end if Susana Segat is defeated. She is closely tied to SEIU President Andy Stern; Anna Burger, the International's VP; AND with the president of NAGE, the local rumored to be ready to possibly absorb 888 if Segat is defeated. Google "Who's Who at SEIU" to begin to read more about them and other Segat-like creatures running SEIU locals (over the cliff) across the country. Be ready for a struggle for the heart and soul of the union way, way beyond 888. Check out seiuvoice.org to see how SEIU recently (2009!) "trusteed" a spirited California local that tried to buck Stern's undemocratic trends. Union dues are financing the squelching of democracy in the union! Sadly, SEIU's national path leads to questions about whether the proposed Employees Free Choice Act (EFCA), as currently written, will benefit rank-and-file workers or just allow the corporate-style top officials to continue thwarting rank-and-file "interference"!
Two weeks ago, I called the union office, oops I meant, the MRC. I wanted to get an update on City of Boston negotiations and I left a message on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I still have not gotten a message returned. Where is the MRC? Does anyone actually even work there or at 888? When I saw Segat at a meeting in the fall, and asked her for an updated list of all stewards in the City of Boston, she said that information could only be given out to the stewards. I couldn't believe it. Whose union is this and who are our representatives? And why can't we get a call returned? When we were still with Local 285, there were issues sometimes, but you always got your calls returned -- sometimes even by the president! Let's vote for a change at 888 before things get any worse -- though its awfully hard to imagine how that's possible.
Look up the other SEIU locals in Massachusetts on the link on the "Financial Meltdown" section of this blog. Susana Segat makes almost 110,000 a year and our local has 8000 members (with fewer and fewer every month I am sure).
There are four other big SEIU locals in Massachusetts -- 509, 615, 1199, and NAGE. I couldn't find the info for NAGE and 1199, but 615 and 509 are there. The president of 509, Michael Grunko, makes 80,000 a year and they have almost 11,000 members. The president of 615, Arcelia Saenz, makes 90,000 a year and they have over 16,000 members. Why is Segat making way more than the other SEIU leaders in our state. And I am regularly reading good news about 509, 1199, and 615 in the news. They seem to be very active and somehow their leaders can get by on tens of thousands of dollars less than Segat takes from us every year. Its time for us to stop being sheep, and time for Segat to stop fleecing our entire union. Lets vote for a change at 888!!!
Is anyone up for flyering Boston City Hall at lunchtime with info from this blog? Can we organize contacts in other chapters to do the same? Once our members have this web site, the walls in Charlestown will start to crumble.
I compared 509's website to 888's some time ago and--lo and behold!--all the staff at 509 are actually listed, with contact info. The 509 president actually wants members to reach staff--how radical! Of course, at 888, the rampant turnover of staff would be too evident if staff were actually listed on the web....
At 509, the staff, leadership, and elected officials are not only all listed, with telephone extensions, but it's also clear they have lots more staff than 888. Further, members can download their current contract. Imagine that! How many 888 members have access to a copy of their current contract? There's too few staff to even get contracts produced and out to the members. How can contracts be enforced if members don't even know what's in theirs???
888 use to list staff on the website. Less and less staff were listed as time went on.
But once Deb Sullivan left they stopped listing any staff.
See:
www.change888.org/letter.php
Hi Bruce,
I noticed you said you're a member of the "Labor Party." I guess I wasn't aware of a nationwide Labor Party. Is that the party in South Carolina? Has it been on the ballot in Massachusetts elections? When there's no Labor Party candidate on the ballot in a partisan election, do you vote Democrat? (Just curious, more than anything else.) It's hard for members to get a sense of each other when access across chapters is so completely controlled by the local leadership. I'm afraid members might not vote at all. We know Segat's bad news, but some may feel they didn't get a chance to know enough about you and the rest of the slate. Worse, a fair number of members, no doubt, don't know there's a contested election, with the deadline to submit nomination papers on Thursday 3/26 at 5 pm! I say: take a chance & support the new slate (which includes many Executive Board members who realize Segat's ship is headed for the iceberg)! Hell, as somebody said, she's not only the ship, she's the iceberg!
The seiuvoice.org website apparently has been removed, though you can still see some of that website's "cached" pages via a Google search. (Would it be far-fetched to suspect that SEIU was behind removal of the site?) However, check out http://www.reformseiu.org/ for some of the info about problems with SEIU nationwide that was at the other site.
This is great to see - I am wishing you all the best luck in changing the horrible leadership at Local 888.
Be strong, be the union and elect some competent leaders!
Please update blog or website with election guidelines and turn out the vote efforts. We seriously need some intense flyering of the new slate at Boston City Hall and all the chapters. Also, there needs to be a reminder that if anyone sees Segat or any 888 staff campaigning on work-time it should be immediately reported to this site and the Department of Labor. I don't yet have verification, but I am sure this is going on. Segat by the way has been sending out requests for donations to other SEIU local leaders and to SEIU national staff. Lets all keep an eye on her shenanigans, spread the word on the new slate, and turn our local around. This is our local -- lets take it back!
Check out the DOL website -- 888 just filed their 2008 year end report today and guess what? Segat's salary went up by almost 20% in one year from 110,115 in 2007 to 129,330. And our dues cap went up from max of $45/month to max of $64/mo. And under Segat's financial mismanagement our local once again (for the 5th year in a row) spent more than it took in. In fact in 2008 the local spent almost $250,000 more than revenue.
Meanwhile what bargaining unit saw increases of even 4%, while our president gave herself a 20% raise through deficit spending of our dues. It is way, way past time for a change. Spread the word, Segat is raising our dues, increasing her already bloated salary, and running a deficit yet again.
Vote the Change 888 slate to take our union back!
You might want to contact the Globe or Herald regarding the story of Segat's incredible raise. Check out this story (www.labornet.org/news/0405/compen.htm) that the Globe ran on Segat's significant other who runs the other most undemocratic SEIU local in Massachusetts - NAGE.
I am a chapter president representing 34 members. Recently several members have lost their jobs, and I can't get my phone calls returned from the Union office on a timely basis. We have had half dozen different SEIU reps over the past two years. Most of them have called once or twice, never to be seen again. Our members have not had a pay raise in three years with none in sight. Now I read that the SEIU 888 president gets a $19K raise? This is an outrage. We are considering firing SEIU and hiring our own private attorney to represent us. We will know that our dues go to represent our chapter and not some left wing politically correct cause.
On Change888's Fast Facts page (under the section Members are Leaving SEIU 888 in Droves), the link appears to be missing to the 2003 article about the UMass units that left 888: "How and Why SEIU Lost 2,300 Members at the University of Massachusetts." You can read this lengthy (27 pages), but extremely illuminating, article by cutting-and-pasting the above title in a Google search, or cut-and-paste this link into your address line: http://labornotes.org/files/pdfs/888.pdf. The author, Ferd Wulkan, was an SEIU field rep at 509 for 13 years before agreeing to join the newly-formed 888 that absorbed 509's UMass members in August 2003. He struggled to work with Segat for 6 months before resigning. At year later, she personally appeared at his unemployment hearings to (unsuccessfully) fight his right to unemployment compensation (p. 7, footnote 4). What a terrific union leader, that Susana!
Does anyone else recall what the esteemed president of 888 wrote at the union website on 3/10/08 upon launching the MRC and so-called "Member Engagement Department?" I certainly do! In fact, I was so taken aback by her dim view of the contract enforcement, and of the members that bravely risk enforcing our rights (foolish them, thinking the union is behind them!), that I saved the page, and here quote verbatim: "Usually, there are a small handful of members who have trouble and who need union grievance help and the same people tend to keep coming back for more grievances. Unions spend most of their resources and staff time helping this very small percentage of members. That means that the vast majority of the membership, those who do not have worksite issues or grievances, just go about their business and don't think the Union affects them. Of course, we will continue to help those members who have trouble at work and those who have grievances. That is why we are creating the professionally staffed Member Resource Center and Grievance and Steward Resource Center. With our two new resource centers handling the grievance and legal work of the Local, we are going to devote resources to that second category of members, those who are members of the local but do not have worksite problems and feel unengaged from the union because of it." So, a year later, ask yourself: do feel "engaged" by the union now? Or are you "problem" time-consuming members "troubled" enough to vote this high-priced management mouthpiece OUT???
Guess what? President Segat's big pay raise made the Herald today, reminding me of her outrage in 2004 when the Jack Wilson was appointed to head UMass at a big, fat salary increase. '"What were they thinking?" cried SEIU labor leader Susana Segat, whose blue-collar workers at UMass-Boston have been without a raise in three years. "President Wilson is now getting private-sector CEO pay to run a public school in a state where public higher education funding has been slashed by more than 29 percent in the last few years," said Segat, whose members' average pay is $30,000.' (http://www.margaretsoltan.com/archives/2004_05_01_archive.html) As opposed to 2008, where we have President Segat getting a private-sector CEO pay raise to run a public sector union (into the ground) while negotiating no raises and layoffs for public employees! Hmmm...deja vu all over again. Gee, ain't it rough when public exclamations of moral indignation come back to bite ya?
According to 888's website, the ballots WENT OUT by mail yesterday (Monday April 6, 2009)! It also says any member who hasn't gotten a ballot BY APRIL 10th (or who loses it or otherwise needs a replacement ballot) should CALL or EMAIL Lisa Romeo at the American Arbitration Association (handling the balloting) at 617-695-6037 or romeol@adr.org, leaving your FULL name, phone #, AND FULL mailing address. (BUT IT DOESN'T SAY THE DATE COMPLETED BALLOTS MUST BE RECEIVED!?!--maybe AAA can tell us? Remember, as much as you may want to deface the ballot, please follow the ballot instructions to a T, to prevent any excuse for Susana to get votes disqualified!
I was at the 888 website, where President Segat urges everyone to be sure to take advantage of fuel assistance. Thanks for the hot tip, Prez, and for your proud proclamation that "Our members in Boston are some of the hardest working and lowest paid members in one of the most expensive cities in the country." Does that say it all? PLEASE join your fellow members in voting for change!
President Segat accuses the Change888 ticket of running too negative a campaign and insists there's no proof of allegations of member discontent with her. (Of course, you'd never find it on the SEIU 888 website--it's completely controlled by her!) Well, here's one public record of one of the unhappy 888 chapters that left in 2008, to become the independent Grafton Municipal Employee Association: http://graftonma.virtualtownhall.net/Public_Documents/GraftonMA_Selectmen/Minutes/2008/minutes%207-1-08.PDF. (See page 2, item d.)
President Segat also claims there is no proof of staff discontent. In addition to what is elsewhere on this website, pasted below is an excerpt from The Guild Reporter (11/11/04), the newsletter of the Newspaper Guild/Communication Workers of America:
'More recently, another well-known labor activist in Massachusetts quit his field rep job to protest SEIU Local 888’s belief "that members are incapable of intelligent decision-making and activity without almost total direction from staff."'
The necessary corollary to Segat's belief (that staff must control the membership) is that Segat feels compelled to micromanage her staff to execute her control.
To read the full article, go to www.newsguild.org/gr/pdf/04119.pdf. The author there concludes that such a union management style results in workers who feel they have no control at their worksite AND in their union. If that's what you feel like in your chapter, vote for democracy and the new ticket for 888!
About SEIU 888's failed (and expensive) campaign to organize family childcare providers (and SEIU's corresponding failure to convince Massachusetts voters to back Question 3 in Nov. 2006), I found this illuminating discourse at the not-radical-and-not-conservative Democratic blogsite, Blue Mass Group,
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5019. It explains better than I could why the family childcare providers were against it and how they saw SEIU 888's maneuverings to be motivated by self-interest (expanded dues base) rather than in the interests of children or the childcare providers. I actually voted for Question 3 but, in reading that blog, I am now convinced about why that campaign was flawed, misguided, and ultimately unsuccessful. Even though the funds for that organizing campaign came in part from the International, whose dues do you suppose support the International?
In comments following the 4/7/09 Boston Herald story about the alternative slate challenge to Segat's regime, somebody mentioned the unfairness of an election rule that says members whose dues aren't current AND paid on time can't sign nomination papers or vote. For the longest time, I had wondered why, despite repeated requests, Linda DeLuca (Segat's appointed Financial Mis-Director) had done nothing to enforce dues deductions from certain chapter members. Now I'm beginning to see the light: Segat preferred to forego dues from those members, apparently unhappy with the union, rather than risk their participation in an upcoming election that could oust her. If they try to vote, she'll challenge their ballots. (I heard that 10% of the ballots were challenged in the last election.)
I'd recommend carefully scrutinizing Susana Segat's recent Form LM-2 financial filings with the Department of Labor, if history is any indication of her record of accuracy.
In a July 13, 2006 letter to the SEIU Massachusetts State Council (http://www.dol.gov/esa/olms/regs/compliance/CAP_closing_letters/SEIU_STC-MA_07-13-06.htm), the DOL revealed that the council was required to file an amended LM-2 after a limited audit of the council's LM-2 for year ending December 31, 2004 revealed numerous deficiencies.
Among them:
"-Schedule 14 (Other receipts) failed to note the exact nature of receipts from the International Union...as well as Director Segat's reimbursement of travel expenses to the Council."
Also, "-Schedule 15 (Other Disbursements) incorrectly reported that $74,763 was disbursed for 'Conventions and Meetings,' when the actual nature of the disbursement consisted of salary payments made out to SEIU Local 888 on behalf of the former assistant director of the Council." (That's quite a "mistake," I'd say.)
After amended reports were filed with DOL, the letter said that "[n[o further action will be taken regarding this violation." But, it warned that the problems DOL uncovered "are not an exhaustive list of all possible problem areas since the audit conducted was limited in scope."
The take-away? Be forewarned that the accuracy of Local 888's financial filings should be taken with a hefty grain of salt.
It was with the 888 non-management staff in mind that I read with interest that SEIU's statewide bargaining director Kevin Preston (along with a NAGE rep) recently negotiated anti-bullying language into state collective bargaining agreements, including some that cover 888 members, to take effect in July 2009. (http://bullyinginstitute.org/newsletters/newsletter_032709.html)
Unfortunately, President Segat doesn't think there's any reason to extend the same courtesy of civil treatment to HER beleaguered staff, who she regularly subjects to berating and belittling treatment. (See Deb Sullivan's letter about Segat's abuse of staff posted at this website.) Segat's out-of-control behavior, no question, plays a major role in the HUGE staff turnover that again and again leaves so many chapters in the lurch right in the middle of contract negotiations.
A vote for Bruce and the rest of the alternative slate is a vote for the membership AND in support of the hardworking reps. They can't tell you this, at risk of losing their jobs, but it's true.
Here's how labor writer Steve Early described President Segat in a 2/4/09 article, "Employee Free Choice at Work: Checking out of Stern's Hotel California," at www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20474:
"In 2005, the threat of an impending decertification campaign even enabled 2,300 workers at the University of Massachusetts to leave SEIU peacefully for the greener pastures of the state teachers association (but only after a protracted struggle against THE UNPOPULAR AND INEPT STERN-APPOINTED LEADER OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEE LOCAL 888." (emphasis added.)
President Segat also got bad reviews, though she was only referred to as Local 888's president, in a discussion about her undemocratic ways in the 2008 book "Unions in Crisis?: the future of organized labor in America," (page 49) by Michael Schiavone. You can see the excerpt about her on line.
If you need to be a member of 888 to run for office and have your dues current, does that mean that Susana Segat is a member in good standing on her dues? How is that checked out? Do you thing she has record of her dues payments?
The link to page 49 of Schiavone's "Unions in Crisis," discussing what he described as the Local 888 president's "distaste for union democracy" is: http://books.google.com/books?id=0MhdAlpQgloC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=SEIU+Local+888+democracy+2008&source=bl&ots=qoIJvpkZuj&sig=7Vu_oEqGPryg9ThaiDIJBr8YLVQ&hl=en&ei=bhjoSZmCIJvAtweM_oDMBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4.
Actually, the link to Unions in Crisis?, pages 49-50, author Schiavone's discussion of 888 leadership's "distaste for union democracy" is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0MhdAlpQgloC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&ots=qoIJvpkZuj&dq=SEIU+Local+888+democracy+2008
Can anyone provide the name or names of the staff that actually do still work at or for SEIU? Is there really only one lawyer and grievance rep?
Are there any public records available that can be used to show the chapters that have already, or are in the process trying to decertify? I think that would be powerful information to make your case!
Tina Hardy is the Grievance Rep and Harold is the Attorney.
To the question someone raised about public records regarding units that have decertified, a Mass. Div. of Labor Relations decision just issued on March 13, 2009 states that, on October 29, 2008, Local 888 delivered to the Division an "unequivocal disclaimer of interest in representing" the members of two Lowell chapters that petitioned to be represented by the "Greater Lowell Unionized Employees," following 888's failure to negotiate successor contracts expired on June 30, 2006. This March 2009 decision ordered that these two former 888 bargaining units, (cafeteria workers and school buildings & grounds workers) be allowed an election to determine whether they wish to now be represented by "GLUE." So there's two of the chapters that, sadly, left 888 because they couldn't get what they needed from the union under President Segat's leadership. Since 888 chose not to fight the departing members, the decision solely concerned whether the two bargaining units would consist of the same workers as they had when affiliated with SEIU; the decision determined that they would. It can be downloaded at www.mass.gov/Elwd/docs/dlr/MRC-07D-5302 et al.pdf .
Very happy for the members of Local 888 and the much needed change in leadership! Congratulations! This is a prime example of how democracy works and how effective our unions are when members make informed decisions about their leaders.
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