Last month, a group of approximately 400 public-sector
workers in Southern California petitioned to dump SEIU Local 721 in order to create their own independent union.
The workers
are employed by the Coachella Valley
Water District, which provides water to more than 110,000 homes, farms and
businesses in Riverside, Imperial and San Diego counties.
The decertification effort is backed by the workers’ elected
board, according to a July newsletter (see below). More than 50
percent of the workers had already signed the decertification petition by early July.
According to
newsletter, the water district
workers want to form an independent union with the help of
City Employees
Associates, which represents 105 independent associations of public-sector
workers across California.
The news was reported by a dirt-digging blogsite called “
Loco
221,” which offers news and commentary about
SEIU Local 221 in San Diego.
So why are so many of SEIU’s members running for the exit
signs?
Here’s what the leader of a separate group of already-departed
SEIU members says. "Loco 221" published an
interview
with the president of the
La Mesa City
Employees Association, which earlier decertified SEIU Local 221 to form their own
independent union.
Just before the
decertification of SEIU we had only 22% of employees who were SEIU members and
most of them didn’t know why they were hanging on. Employees were tired of SEIU people
confronting them at their workstation and at home to join SEIU. Employees were adamant that they would not
join an organization that took a lot of their money and they had no say of
where that money went. Once we started
our decertification process, we wanted to send a clear message to SEIU, every
employee dropped out except the President and Treasurer. We stayed only so we could control the bank
account which had only a few hundred dollars left. That last year I met with [former local 221
president] Sharon-Frances Moore 4 times insisting we needed change. We needed
a rep that returned phone calls and responded to e-mails. We needed a rep that did not “call in sick”
to a bargaining meeting but forgot to call us and tell us he would not be
there. We needed a rep who would show up
to her first ever Skelley hearing and NOT not know what to say – I could go
on. Sharon-Frances Moore made a lot of
promises and it never got any better.
For readers who don’t remember Sharon-Frances Moore… Andy
Stern met her at a cocktail party in New York City and then hand-picked her
to run SEIU Local 221 even though her closest previous union experience was
working for the Girl Scouts!
