According to
multiple press outlets, SEIU
President Mary Kay Henry issued an
internal memo on December 14 announcing plans for a 30% cut to SEIU
International’s budget in 2017. Tasty’s sources say the plan calls for cuts of 10%
in January 2017 and another 20% in July 2017.
News of the
memo was first publicly reported by Josh
Eidelson at Bloomberg Businessweek (Eidelson, “Fear
of Trump Triggers Deep Spending Cuts by Nation's Second-Largest Union,” Bloomberg
Businessweek, December 27, 2016).
In the memo,
Henry says the cuts are necessary due to the Republican Party’s imminent control
of all three branches of the federal government. Here’s an excerpt from her
December 14 memo, according to Bloomberg:
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. These threats require us to make tough decisions that allow us to resist these attacks and to fight forward despite dramatically reduced resources.
Tasty believes
the story behind the cuts is more complex than what SEIU describes in its memo.
Why?
There’s
another reason for the cuts that so far hasn’t been mentioned – namely, SEIU’s
planned merger with AFSCME.
More than 18
months ago, SEIU and AFSCME began merger
talks spurred by concerns about Friedrichs
v. California Teachers Association, the U.S. Supreme Court case that could
weaken public-sector unions by challenging their right to collect fair share
fees from nonmembers to cover the costs of representation, such as negotiating
contracts. In February 2016, the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia left
the court deadlocked on the Friedrichs case and apparently slowed the two
unions’ merger plans.
In May 2016,
SEIU approved a resolution leaving open the possibility of a full-blown merger
while immediately calling for joint planning, organizing, bargaining, and
political work between the two unions. In July 2016, AFSCME approved
a nearly identical resolution.
With the
election of Trump in November, both unions are likely speeding up their merger
plans -- which undoubtedly will require the elimination of duplicate functions,
departments, etc at the two unions. Tasty guesses this helps explain SEIU’s announcement
of rapid budget cuts.
It also helps
explain why other unions with large public-sector memberships haven’t also
announced deep budget cuts.
 |
| SEIU's Mary Kay Henry |
So why doesn’t
Henry’s budget-cut memo mention the AFSCME merger? It’s easier to win the staff’s
support for layoffs based on Trump.
If Tasty’s
theory is correct, we’ll likely see evidence of expedited merger activity in
the months ahead… and perhaps budget cuts at AFSCME as well.
As far as eliminating
waste, SEIU should start by axing some of its highly paid officials inhabiting
the top floors of the Purple Palace. For example, over a number of years, SEIU
has almost doubled the number of its full-time “Executive Vice Presidents” (from
four to seven EVPs).
The latest increase came in May of 2016 when SEIU boosted
the number of EVPs from six to seven-- at the same time that it passed the AFSCME
merger resolution to prepare for SEIU's declining membership. Makes total sense,
right?
Each EVP
earns more than $200,000 a year, according to financial records. If you
eliminate four of them, that’s more than $1 million in savings a year when you factor in benefits, etc.
Stay tuned.
