Walter Ballin

This blog is about the International President of the Service Employees International Union -- SEIU Andrew Stern's possible plans to take over the United Health Care West -- UHW led by Sal Roselli and place it under trusteeship, because Roselli and UHW are fighting for more democracy in SEIU. I am providing 2 links to articles http://www.tnr.com/environmentenergy/story.html?id=61f4ea0d-90bb-4a38-9650-c507fa73efbe AND http://www.counterpunch.org/early04022008.html, and then I will talk about my own experience when I was a member of SEIU and a dealing that I had with Stern.

I was a building maintenance person in San Francisco for 18 years and I was a member of SEIU Local 87, the high-rise office building janitors union. For 2 and a half years from 1995 until late 1997 I had a good daytime position at one of Blue Shield's buildings. Officially I worked for a janitorial contractor, but being that I worked during the day I was accountable to the people at Blue Shield. I must say that they were super nice to work for and the Facilities Manager whom I worked for, was one of those super nice people. Unfortunately, late in 1997 the Blue Shield CEO's closed the 2 buildings including the one that I worked in and moved all of their SF offices into the Bechtel building. Due to a lot of corruption between the union that I belonged to and the contractors, I lost all of my seniority and had to go to the union's hiring hall at 3 in the afternoon for night jobs that didn't begin until 5:00 or 6:00. On several occasions, I made requests to the local to properly represent me, by arranging with the contractor to place
me into a permanent position and restore my seniority and pay. I was
repeatedly rebuffed in my attempts. I also wrote the SEIU International President Andrew Stern, who replied to me and with a one sentence letter stating "Dear Brother Walter, I am investigating your problem with Local 87 and I will get back to you as soon as possible." I am being facetious in saying that it is 10 years later and I am still checking my mailbox for Stern's further response. During this time, I heard of many instances from reliable sources that there were new janitors obtaining jobs in buildings without ever having to follow the union's rules, by going to
the hiring hall to obtain a dispatch. On one occasion, while working in a
building where I had to obtain a dispatch, I found out that a 16-year-old
fellow was working there without a dispatch. It was for one night. He
happened to be the son of another janitor, whom the contractor allowed to
come in and work. This was just one of many cases, where the Local 87
officials simply turned their heads. There was also a situation where a
contractor, fired a foreman for sexual harassment. The local arranged for
him to be hired on as a foreman for another contractor with full seniority.
I heard that he even received $1.00 per hour more with the new contractor.
There were many cases where janitors faced disciplinary action, including
loss of income, for not being able to handle the heavy workloads. They did
not receive proper representation from the local. In fact, one business
agent actually told members that the problem was their fault in the presence of the employers. During this
period, several Local 87 members of various ethnicities concurred with me
about the wrongdoing on the part of the local's leadership. Many office
buildings were going non-union. While a good part of that was because of
greed on the part of building owners, part of that was because of the
mismanagement of the local.

Between the stress from this and the very heavy workloads, I hurt my back and got a hernia and went out on workers compensation and left the union. This was in 1999. After being treated, my workers comp attorney referred me to a vocational counselor and I attended a 5 month program at a school and learned office skills. I moved to Chico. Not being able to find a job as many employers don't want to hire a middle aged or older person who lacks experience in a new field, I retired. However, I remain active in community affairs.

Regarding the Janitors Union Local 87, I heard that SEIU International President Stern did place the local under trusteeship in 2002 and merged it with a statewide local 1877. However, I heard that things still did not improve. I heard that a janitor in the TransAmerica pyramid building actually collapsed and died on the job due to her terribly heavy workload and harassment that she received from her supervisors. It is my understanding that the union officials response to workers complaints about the horrendous workload, was that they should look for another job if they were not happy. Because members of Local 87 planned to decertify from SEIU, later Stern allowed for them to have their own local again. Recently, I heard again that conditions still have not improved because so many members of Local 87 are not American citizens, don't speak English, and there simply are not enough members who have knowledge about how to operate a labor union. There is a lot of fighting going on at the local, and I heard that the San Francisco police had to come to a recent union meeting. I believe that the union's contract with the building owners and managers comes up this year. Who knows what will happen? All I can say is that I am glad that I am not there anymore.

If there ever was a good case for Stern to place a local under trusteeship, this would have been it provided that he would have done things the right way, which he did not.

Click on the links to the articles that I pasted at the beginning of this blog. I hope that the UHW led by their President Sal Roselli will be able to change the leadership of SEIU and bring about reform, so that we can really build a stronger labor movement.