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| LaPhonza Butler and Mary Kay Henry |
It turns out that SEIU President Emeritus Andy
Stern isn’t the only SEIU official on the payroll of gig companies.
Laphonza
Butler, the former President of SEIU
Local 2015 and the SEIU California
State Council, is advising and representing Uber in secret talks with SEIU, according to an article in Bloomberg. (Josh Eidelson, “Teamsters
Union Splits From Uber and Lyft on California Worker Rights Law,” Bloomberg, July 25, 2019).
Butler, a close ally of SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, also served until on the SEIU International Executive Board. Last December, she resigned
her position at Local 2015 to take a job as a consultant and partner at SCRB
Strategies, a California-based business and
political consulting firm.
During the secret talks, covered in this
earlier post, SEIU discussed plans to support Uber’s request for an
exemption from a groundbreaking new California
bill (Assembly Bill 5) that would force Uber to hire drivers as employees rather than exploit them as
independent contractors.
On the good news front, Bloomberg
reports that leaders of the Teamsters union in California are now saying they
oppose exemptions for gig companies following a public backlash.
According to Eidelson:
… If the [gig] industry can’t win over the Teamsters, firms could still hope to find compromise with other prominent unions that companies have met with, which include the Service Employees International Union and the United Food & Commercial Workers.
One asset for Uber is Laphonza Butler. She was president of one of the SEIU’s largest local unions until last year and is now a partner at SCRB Strategies, a California-based business and political consulting firm. There, Butler has advised and represented Uber in its dealings with organized labor on employment issues and also serves as an adviser to the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic senator from California. An Uber spokesman said Butler brings a valuable perspective to the company’s efforts to improve work for drivers, and a spokesman for Harris declined to comment. Butler and her firm didn’t respond to requests for comment…
More recently, SEIU California circulated a summary of potential alternative legislation. The proposal would provide “flexibility to platform companies and platform workers,” according to the memo. It would create systems for collective bargaining, “portable benefits” accounts and minimum pay guarantees but would allow companies that meet certain criteria to seek “flexible alternative standards” in place of those covering other employers in areas such as overtime, breaks and worker’s compensation.
Such an approach alarms some drivers. Cutting a deal that deprives app-based workers of full employee rights “will absolutely damage the future for workers,” said Nicole Moore, a Lyft driver and organizer with the advocacy group Rideshare Drivers United in Los Angeles. She said any kind of special arrangement would reverberate far beyond ride-hailing and food delivery. “Workers can be deployed from apps in any industry,” Moore said.
In public, union leaders have taken a hard line. Mary Kay Henry, international president of the SEIU, said in February that the union intends to “reach an agreement that’s not a concession.” Henry discussed the issue in a recent meeting with Newsom’s chief of staff.
Bob Schoonover, president of the SEIU’s California State Council, said Thursday that the group “has not and would not support any third classification or interpretation of employee classification that would undermine employee status and protections” granted by last year’s court ruling and the proposed law. SEIU intends to help workers “maintain and expand upon” those protections instead, he said in an emailed statement. Schoonover described the memos exploring potential compromises on employment rights as “ideas and concepts” that “should not be construed” as something more significant.
What kind of deal is SEIU discussing with Uber?
It goes something like this:
In exchange for SEIU backing the gig companies’ exemption from the
California bill, the gig companies would designate
SEIU as their official “association” representing independent-contractor workers, according to articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York
Times and other publications.
This would allow SEIU to collect dues money. But it would deprive
the workers of the right to strike. And… it would deny gig workers basic legal
protections that come with regular employment status: minimum wage, sick leave, overtime pay, meal and rest
breaks, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, workers’ compensation,
parental leave, family leave, and
contributions to Social Security and Medicare.
If Andy Stern and LaPhonza Butler are on gig companies’
payroll, are there others?
Most likely. Tasty wouldn’t be surprised if David
Rolf is pocketing gig company cash.
