It was a palace civil war and nobody in the break-away group even bothered to ask their members what to do.
By Jim Miller
Last week I outlined why the ill-conceived Mickey Kasparian-driven split in San Diego labor was such a bad idea, citing the recent history of the failed attempt of several national unions to form a break-away organization outside of the AFL-CIO called Change to Win (CTW) that eventually fell apart under its own weight accomplishing not much of note in the long run.
As I observed in that column, CTW cited a bold new organizing strategy as its justification but the split was really more about big egos in leadership and ended up dividing the labor movement while not doing anything to increase organizing or unions’ political power. In fact, the long decline of the American Labor Movement continued unabated on both sides of the split in the midst of much ado about nothing.
An educated appraisal of that history might lead one to shy away from such folly again, but that is not the case with those intent on following Kasparian over the cliff by leaving the Labor Council without any consultation with rank and file union members. For instance, SEIU 221 President David Garcias sent an email to his membership on the same day as my last column (a week after the split was announced) citing the failed CTW endeavor as a precedent for taking his union out of the Labor Council.
In that message, Garcias accuses the unions in the Council of not sharing “core values” with SEIU 221 or understanding the “real attacks” faced by public sector, low wage workers, and fellow community members. This despite the fact that the Council he attacks for failing to grasp these issues was led by the same people he is currently aligned with now.
Somehow he equates blindly following Kasparian, a leader who fires or seeks to punish anyone who disagrees with him and has three pending lawsuits against him brought by his Latina former staffers, as part of a movement fighting for “equality for all, racial justice, and fighting for the most vulnerable in our communities.” He ends by claiming that his union will be “blazing a new trail that I believe will be a model to other unions on how worker organizations should be structured.”
The great irony of all of this is that the next day, Local 221 was decertified by the bargaining unit of rank and file workers in the City of Chula Vista. As one SEIU 221 member noted in an email to me, those workers joined others who have left 221 over the years from the County of San Diego Probation Officers, the City of La Mesa, the City of San Marcos, the County of San Diego Crafts Unit, the County of San Diego Construction and Maintenance Unit, Poway School District, and the Maintenance and Operations workers in the San Diego Community College District. Thus Garcias’s talk of creating a “new model” for other unions might be a bit premature.
What all of these decertification elections speak to is an ongoing problem with not just 221 but the entire union movement that has lost touch with its rank and file members. Indeed, the way Garcias pulled out of the Labor Council with no significant consultation from his rank and file workers no less a formal vote on such a serious matter is evidence of the kind of top-down boss unionism that looks a lot more like the problem labor is suffering from than any kind of “trail blazing” solution.
More specifically, Garcias, who claimed that “it wasn’t a tough decision” to leave the Labor Council at the unceremonious Working Families Council press conference, waited a full week to communicate with his members about how the decision to leave the Council “was not an easy one to make.” Clearly he thinks he can say whatever he wants whenever he wants without being checked by troublesome rank and file democracy.
This kind of disregard for the rank and file didn’t sit well with a number of SEIU 221 folks such as Executive Board member Melody Godinez who contacted me and noted that, “this abrupt decision without any real consultation with the membership is a disservice to our members. It’s more about egos and personal politics than County workers.” Godinez also made the case that it was not internal strife inside the Council but intense pressure to support Kasparian at any cost that is the real problem.
And on the subject of recognizing the “real attacks” faced by labor and the subsequent need for new and better organizing, it must be noted that the Labor Council’s former Secretary-Treasurer Richard Barrera saw the need to address the current crisis and held a noteworthy labor-wide meeting on organizing in advance of what we all rightly anticipated would be a devastating ruling on public sector fair share rights in the Friedrichs case from the Supreme Court before Antonin Scalia died.
Frequently it was not the official processes of the Labor Council that mattered but whether you were at the “meeting before the meeting” and sided with Kasparian’s personal choice.
After Barrera left, however, all talk of the coming crisis vanished as Kasparian soon eclipsed the role of both the political director and the Secretary-Treasurer and engaged in a year’s worth of destructive internal and external battles with other union leaders and local politicians almost all of which resulted in more turmoil and/or political loss.
While my local (AFT 1931) sided with Kasparian rather than the Trades in many battles in recent years from the Chargers stadium initiative to supporting Sarah Saez for City Council, it became increasingly evident that the issues were less about the big picture for Kasparian and more about personal political power. Frequently it was not the official processes of the Labor Council that mattered but whether you were at the “meeting before the meeting” and sided with Kasparian’s personal choice.
Going back even further, in retrospect it is clear to see how principle and/or even political coherence flew out the window as Kasparian veered wildly from seeking to destroy Lorena Gonzalez to anointing her to sainthood, spending over a million dollars out of labor’s war chest on David Alvarez to demonizing him, running a social justice unionism campaign and talking about “core progressive values” in the race against Nathan Fletcher and then supporting the formerly Republican mayor of National City right after that.
After a while anyone actually paying attention in the Labor movement started feeling like Winston Smith in 1984 trying to discern who the enemies and allies were on any given day. In sum, it all went back to Mickey Kasparian’s ideologically moorless and, at times, unprincipled personal politics.
His speeches at endorsement meetings frequently morphed into long diatribes about how this or that politician succeeded or failed to do what he had asked her or him to do and how that made them either a hero or a zero in his book. It wasn’t high-minded or even politically sophisticated stuff. It was boss unionism from a leader who once told a fellow union representative that the Labor Council didn’t even need a political director because he should be the one taking care of those responsibilities.
…the “Building Trades versus Mickey” narrative turned into a cartoon and political conflicts ossified into deep personal hatred with Kasparian completely unable to see beyond his animus towards the Trades.
I could go on ad nauseam, but the fundamental point is that this top-down style started to create an in-group/out-group dynamic even before Barrera (who served as a check on Kasparian’s worst impulses while there) left and devolved into total dysfunction from former Secretary-Treasurer Bankhead’s election on. As things continued to decline, the “Building Trades versus Mickey” narrative turned into a cartoon and political conflicts ossified into deep personal hatred with Kasparian completely unable to see beyond his animus towards the Trades. And every time they poked him, it got worse.
While I was more often than not on his side of the issues, what became clear was that Kasparian’s leadership style made him incapable of dealing with opposition, a quality that, even when one agrees with the leader, is a fatal flaw for any diverse organization. With Bankhead unable to provide even a modicum of ballast, it soon turned into a nightmare, not because there was any rank and file conflict, but because leaders didn’t like each other.
Truth be told, none of this had anything to do with the majority of union members in San Diego. It was a palace civil war and nobody in the break-away group even bothered to ask their members what to do. That issue was, as Garcias’s email illustrates, an afterthought.
Thus, Garcias’s attempt to paint this as a dispute over “core values” just doesn’t hold any water. Many of the unions still in the Labor Council such as my local, AFT, the United Domestic Workers, and many more were always ready to come out and support Fight for $15 actions and share SEIU 221’s broader progressive political agenda.
And the constant “reactionary Building Trades versus progressive unions” narrative falls apart upon close inspection when one considers that it was the Trades who supported Alvarez along with other unions who argued that we needed a City Council President who would aggressively resist Mayor Kevin Faulconer while Kasparian advocated for Faulconer’s choice, Myrtle Cole, as president who then appointed Republicans to several key positions.
In fact, at the Labor Council delegates meeting where I stood up and argued that in the age of Trump we needed a “street fighter not triangulation,” it was Richard Barrera of UFCW who called my position “irresponsible” and forcefully argued for compromising with Republicans rather than resisting them.
I might also throw in that it was Carol Kim of the Building Trades who introduced Bernie Sanders at his National City stop last spring and trades unions like IBEW 569 joined AFT 1931 and CNA in endorsing Sanders for President. So, it’s just not that easy to draw the lines.
The anti-Trades narrative is also complicated by the inconvenient fact that Garcias’s new group includes the Laborers Local 89 as a founding member, the same union that broke with the Council to support Fletcher over Alvarez and fiercely opposed Sarah Saez’s progressive Labor Council-supported run for City Council, siding instead with the de facto candidate of the GOP. Local 89 is also a union that did everything it could to undermine the work of the Labor Council’s Environmental Caucus while in the Council and is quite reactionary and hostile to SEIU’s agenda on climate justice at the national level.
Meanwhile, the Building Trades as a whole joined the Quality of Life Coalition of labor and environmental organizations to oppose Measure A while Kasparian and Bankhead pulled a shady maneuver and rigged a Labor Council Executive Board vote to overturn previously established Labor Council transit policy in order to stay neutral on A. Nonetheless, SEIU 221 which shares AFT’s climate justice agenda, seems to have little problem being allied with THAT member of the Building Trades because they are on the same side (for the time being) of what is essentially an ego driven spat between leaders rather than a principled argument about politics and organizing.
Thus, as Martin Sheen says to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now when Brando’s character asks if his methods are “unsound,” I would suggest to Garcias that “I don’t see any method at all.”
It’s also a shame to see so many good people on the staffs of these unions who have no choice but to follow their bosses’ lead and be dragged through this miserable conflict.
One can only hope that the members of SEIU 221, UFCW, and the handful of other unions who have left will insist on more rank and file democracy and urge their leadership to rejoin the Labor Council for the sake of the local labor movement as a whole. It’s also a shame to see so many good people on the staffs of these unions who have no choice but to follow their bosses’ lead and be dragged through this miserable conflict.
The movement should not be defined by the egos and the individual calculations of union leaders; it should be about the best interests of our rank and file members because a weaker, divided movement hurts us all.
Jim Miller
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Great article
“Say what he wants whenever he wants without consequences” Sounds like the Age of Trump.. Egos predominate.
The political spat of egos is actually worse. It’s a spit in the face of working people. Not only those inside unions but workers outside of unions are weakened by corrupt leadership. We can’t be fighting the enemy when the union boss is in bed with the enemy. Furthermore, the enemy is not only Republican, but the establishment. So, if the building trades are going to put on the progressive hat, let them leave the Democratic Party. Push for a socialist platform or get out the way with Mickey.
I’m confused. Why would the public sector union seiu221 leave the labor council? Aren’t there more unions in the LC than in the new group? I smell corruption. My wife wasn’t asked to vote or given an option. Stop taking money out of her paycheck if you don’t represent her! My wife is a social worker and we are struggling. How will she get a good contract when her union keeps losing members and deciding what is best for our family without asking us! Why join a group that is led by an accused sexual harasser? That doesn’t send right message about my wife or our family values. No wonder she doesn’t have a contract yet. Stop focusing on your backdoor deals and focus on her contract now!! When are they up for reelection?! Livid
Jim- With all due respect, Kasparian is accused, and he has not been convicted. What if all women, or men, went around accusing some higher up of sexual harassment? I am not saying everything is all right in the union, I am just wondering why when someone is accused, as was Filner for that matter, it seems as if it is true. Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do? I know I have, and I would have preferred waiting for it to go to a court of law, rather than have a public trial. I also didn’t realize social workers were in the same union as the one Kasparian leads. Just asking not making any kind of accusation. I don’t know Kasparian so I cannot speak to his issues.
And so this excuses his ‘my way or the highway’ strategy and tactics?
Doug Porter: Since I do not know Mr. Kasparian, I can only assume you and Jim know more than I. If there is something he has illegally done, then send it to court, or let the members vote him out. I guess I get tired of hearing accusations from both men and woman about how mistreated they are. If, in fact, as one woman alleges, Kasparian made her give him “blow jobs” or she would lose her job, she should have immediately gone to the police and told them. But from what I have read she didn’t. My question is “why” didn’t she? Is he really another Hoffa as some people have alleged?
William,
Nowhere in this piece do I say that Kasparian does not deserve due process and, if you follow my column, you would have seen the AFT statement on the Kasparian situation. Here it is:
“The American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931 believes that the charges against San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council President Mickey Kasparian are deeply disturbing and that Sandy Naranjo, Isabel Vasquez, and Anabel Arauz deserve to be taken seriously and treated with respect.
While Mr. Kasparian has done many good things for the local labor movement over the years and has the right to due process, we believe the honorable thing for him to do, while this process unfolds, is to take a leave of absence from his position as Labor Council President until this matter has been resolved.
Nonetheless, the bottom line is that as the labor movement faces existential threats in the near-future, our focus should be on the fate of working people as a whole, not on the controversy surrounding one leader. It is imprudent to drag the entire San Diego labor movement through this difficult process, forcing parties outside of the UFCW to choose sides in a matter that, at this point, can only be resolved through the legal system. It may be in the interest of Mr. Kasparian to take this position, but it is certainly not in the best interests of the entire local labor movement to do so.
Further, as a progressive labor union that believes in fighting for the rights of workers, women, and people of color, we cannot summarily dismiss these charges, as some have done, until the complaints have been thoroughly and independently investigated. To date, there has been no formal internal process to investigate these charges in the Labor Council nor, as far as we know, inside the UFCW. Our leaders have privately urged this course of action be taken and now, given the inaction we see, we feel it necessary to call for such a process publicly as an organization whose members care deeply about not just due process but also the rights of women in the workplace.
We are not a movement of union leaders only, so we need to stand for all workers, regardless of their status in labor leadership. Thus, we call on Mr. Kasparian to step down from his position as Labor Council President until these matters have been resolved.”
***
The problem with the way the ousted Labor Council leadership handled the Kasparian situation is that they circled the wagons and unilaterally decided that the proper course of action for the Labor Movement was to go into bunker mode, allow him to publicly undermine the credibility of his accusers in a less than honest fashion, and then turn the whole situation into a “with us or against us” litmus test.
All of this happened without a formal E Board vote nor a Delegates vote. Thus the rank and file union members of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council never got a chance to even address the elephant in the room as Labor Council meetings were closed to non-delegates and the subject was never even raised by the leadership during meetings. The question of whether there should be some kind of internal investigation was never considered.
The fact is that I met with and communicated with all the relevant parties and it was made clear to me that the greater good of the local labor movement has taken a back seat to the greater good of Kasparian.
The bottom line is that there is a huge difference between believing that someone deserves due process and believing that they have the right to maintain leadership of an organization at all costs during a period of existential threats to labor. That decision was, I believe, strategically suicidal and it clearly ended up costing them their positions. Sometimes there is a difference between what is technically legally possible and what is the right thing to do. In any event, even if Kasparian survives the legal challenges, the controversy that led to them shows that he is, at best, the kind of boss who fires a young mother right before Christmas rather than trying to resolve the issues another way and a boss who inspires his former employees to sue him. Not exactly a stellar face for a labor movement in crisis.
And, furthermore, his actions in response to his removal stand alone as a testament to his recklessness and narcissism as a leader. In this case what’s good for Mickey Kasparian is clearly not good for the labor movement. If he had some degree of humility, he would have seen that a long time ago. I tried to make that case to him privately in a kind way and it fell on deaf ears.
So really, you miss the fundamental point of this piece and what’s most important in the bigger picture.
Jim: I was referring to Jim T. Montemayor’s post, not your article. Sorry for the confusion.
Garcias claims the other group they split from didn’t share their “CORE” values? But following an accused sexual predator does? Isn’t the new org also run by the same man? What a joke! Money money money power power power!! Social workers are part of SEIU 221 and they didn’t ask or give my wife or their thousands of members the option to vote!!! Why not!!!??! Speaking of social workers, my wife is the reason SEIU 221 is as large as they are because social workers are very active in her union. It is unacceptable that Garcias is saying it was easy at the press conference and suddenly tells the members it was hard!?! Why is this man the president again? Shame on corrupt mobster unions. This is why I don’t like unions! Give my wife her money back!!! Now! It affects our family because my wife is a victim of sexual assault and to know her union disregards the membership shows their true motives. Kasparian has been linked to a number of scandals and this gives not only unions but my wife’s union a bad name. Go away already! People like that have no business running a union. I thought i saw this man with Ron Morrison-another joke. Why do people allow this? Why?
Sounds like the Democratic Party in operation, the operators within the party structure got together with some big money and started a thing called the Democratic Leadership Council which was little more than an extension of Hillary. It did not advocate for a decent minimum wage or other quality of life problems that many millions of working poor Democratic voters care about. It is how you end up with an alleged Democratic politician advocating for billionaire bankers instead of single mothers struggling to feed their children. It is how you end up with a health care system that costs double and delivers less than the rest of the world. It is about that filthy lucre, the mother’s milk of politics. The workers are being harmed by these neo-Democrats in power. We need Progressives because they represent the voice-less.
Mr Miller’s response of 5-23 I find compelling. He directly addressed leadership and due process issues which matter in the Kasparian fiasco. Unfortunately Kasparian is behaving like a corporate mogul who ran his company into the ground and now expects a 9 figure golden parachute. I don’t know how performance becomes so disconnected from one’s tenure. It is a labor organization and if he isn’t delivering the goods he needs to go. The extracurricular stuff is just icing on the cake. How is it that an allegedly democratic organization becomes so dictatorial. Why hasn’t the man been voted out?
Jim Miller,
Good piece. But I do have to inform you that since the probation officers, construction maintenance and the crafts bargaining units decertified, we organized Red Cross blood workers, Chula Vista middle managers and Operation Samahan clinics. The certification of Operation Samahan, btw, opened up a whole new industry (community clinics) to organization. I can also say the very reason that CM, CR and Chula Vista workers left was because they did not want to be part of SEIUs efforts of environmental, immigrant and racial justice. I personally heard the main leader of the CR decertification effort say disparaging and crude comments regarding undocumented immigrants. I also read an email from one of the leaders of the CM decertification where he stated that President Obama was an Islamic terrorist and that Islamic terrorists infiltrated our southern border. The bargaining units that left did not recertify with an AFL-CIO affiliated union. They wanted to leave the labor movement altogether. And since the CR and CM bargaining units left, they have accepted one takeaway contract after another. In fact, the last 2 contracts they acquiesced to had “me too” clauses in them. The clauses stipulated that if Local 221 got a better contract, they would get the very same benefits. That year we got a fair contract with no takeaways. So in essence, we bargained for them. This year they threw their future workers under the bus by accepting a significant reduction to the pensions of new employees. SEIU fights pension reductions and it was first county proposal we said no to. Local 221 also has a robust advocacy department that protects workers and forces the county to abide by the contract. So in essence, when we left the Labor Council, we did not leave the labor movement. Also, David Garcias kept us abreast of what was happening with the labor council. And when we left, it was no surprise.