After waiting and waiting, labor groups are finally demanding that Hilda Solis be confirmed as the Secretary of Labor.  Andy Stern of the SEIU made a short video:

Their action page has a petition.

And this is just the beginning:

“Enough is enough, the gloves are coming off on Friday,” said one official with the AFL-CIO, outraged over the delays. “Labor, women’s groups, Hispanic groups are opening fire. We worked with Republicans in good faith. Hilda Solis has answered all their questions but they continue to oppose her for partisan ideological reasons.”

With Solis’s nomination stalled again on Thursday after revelations that her husband had just settled $6,400 in tax leins against his business, unions are no longer willing to hold their breath for the sake of fewer dramatics.

“Our full efforts are being mobilized to fight back,” the union official said. “Earned media and field campaign to generate calls, letters, and emails coming tomorrow. Depending on how things move paid media will be added on top of these efforts.”

Good to see.  Progressive groups like MoveOn should get Hilda’s back, too.

UPDATE: Our old friend Hans von Spakovsky, vote suppressor extraordinaire, is writing anti-Solis screeds in places like The Weekly Standard.

UPDATE II: MoveOn jumps in with a letter to the editor tool.

Hilda Solis’s confirmation in the Senate HELP Committee was abruptly cancelled today after a report surfaced about her husband paying $6,400 to remove a tax lien on his business.

The report, by USA Today, came just before the Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee was slated to meet to consider Solis’s nomination, which had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work. A source said that committee members did not learn about the tax issue until today.

“Today’s executive session was postponed to allow members additional time to review the documentation submitted in support of Representative Solis’s nomination to serve in the important position of Labor Secretary,” read a joint statement issued by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the panel’s chairman, and Mike Enzi (Wyoming), the committee’s ranking Republican. “There are no holds on her nomination and members on both sides of the aisle remain committed to giving her nomination the fair and thorough consideration that she deserves. We will continue to work together to move this nomination forward as soon as possible.”

No new date has been set for the hearing. The disclosure about Solis’s husband comes after tax problems caused trouble for three of Obama’s top appointees, leading two of them — HHS-nominee Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer, who was to be chief performance officer — to withdraw.

Senate Republicans have been slow-walking this nomination for weeks, and this revelation gave them another reason to do so.  To be clear, we’re talking about her husband’s business.  Given that she’s in Congress and is in Washington most of the time, I doubt very highly that she has anything to do with it.  In addition, by paying the taxes, Solis and her entire family are adhering to Obama’s ethical standards, not subverting them.

So this is the latest in a months-long obstructionism.  The LA Times reported today that some GOP members were trying to put a gag order on Solis:

Underscoring the bitter debate over a proposal to make it easier for workers to form unions, Republican senators are suggesting that President Obama’s pick for Labor secretary must recuse herself from lobbying for the bill’s passage.

In a written exchange with Solis, Republican senators indicated they are wary of her ties to a tax-exempt group dedicated to helping workers unionize […]

Solis’ Cabinet nomination is in the crossfire. She was a co-sponsor of the bill in 2007 and has served for the last four years on the board of American Rights at Work. Solis receives no salary as a board member or treasurer […]

In their questionnaire, the senators noted that American Rights at Work has lobbied for passage of the bill. They asked Solis whether she would seek a waiver from the Obama administration or avoid any role in passing the legislation.

Solis replied that she does not need a waiver and has no intention of stepping back. She said she was only a member of Congress exercising her powers.

“I am not a registered lobbyist, nor do I in any way meet the statutory requirements for registration as a lobbyist,” she wrote.

The American Rights at Work thing is a complete red herring.  She was a representative figure for those who supported Employee Free Choice in Congress.  She is not a lobbyist.  She supported a bill.  And so denying her free-speech rights seems ridiculous to the extreme.

I don’t know if a family member’s tax issue is enough to sink this nomination (like the last Labor Secretary’s spouse, one Mitch McConnell, has no ethical issues to speak of), but I for one think Solis should be confirmed.  And as for the Employee Free Choice Act, the battle for a fair workplace goes on.  Thousands of people are marching in the streets of Los Angeles today in support of free choice.

I’m currently on a conference call with the former leaders of SEIU-UHW where they are announcing the formation of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. They’ll be working to decertify UHW at many of the facilities. This will be a long fight as the negotiations come up throughout the next coming years.

This is all in response to SEIU International’s trusteeship of the UHW local. As I understand it, the International has placed calls to employers notifying them that UHW employees no longer represented the employees.

The SEIU International has a conference call of its own coming up shortly.

{Amy Thigpen and members of UHW are sleeping in their union halls across California tonight due the threat of imminent seizure of those buildings by SEIU International, which instituted a takeover of UHW West today.}

Last night I slept on the kind of carpet you don’t really want to examine too closely.  It’s splotched with decades of coffee stains and salsa and too many conversations still seem to hang in the stale air, but there I was, curled up on my air mattresses in the union hall in downtown Oakland, the home of United Healthcare Workers West, my union.   On my right my sister the Medical Assistant slept peacefully, on my left my sister the Call Center Representative, across my sister the Ultrasound Technician, and my sister the Optical Technician.  All of them healthcare workers, member leaders and officers in our union.  I realized that I loved this stale, stained room, with carpets held together by duct tape, I love the room because it holds the waking dreams of my sister and brothers in UHW-W.  The place may be held together by duct tape but we as a union are held together by something stronger.

Whenever my union brothers or sisters ask me to do something, anything — lead a chant, bargain over working conditions, join them on the picket line — I say yes.  Why?  Because everything I’ve been part of as a steward and Medical Social Worker with UHW for the last two years has been about furthering a cause that is just and right and about empowering workers.  And not just any workers, workers who provide in-home care for elders: bathing them, cleaning their homes, feeding them, people who do the work that matters most, even though it’s often valued least.

Convalescent workers and homecare workers get paid far less than their colleagues in the hospitals.  But as members of UHW, Hospital workers and Long Term Care workers are joined together in one statewide healthcare union. We’ve raised standards for all, including some of the best wages and benefit packages under the Mariner contracts settled late last year.   And when I say we’ve raised the standards, I mean we. We bargain our own contracts, we elect our leaders from stewards to our executive board of rank and file members.  So why are we sleeping in the union hall?

Despite all of the member-led success of UHW, our International Union — SEIU — placed us in trusteeship today.  It’s a long story, and a very well publicized one, but it’s really not a new story.  It’s an old one, about leaders, in this case, Andy Stern, president of the International Union, forgetting who they represent. It’s a story about a few people, our International Executive Board, who care more about concentrating power than the reality of the workers they are supposed to represent.

So we’re sleeping in the UHW hall and we’re unified in our worksites, only unfortunately instead of concentrating our efforts on fighting for better wages or working conditions or patient care, we have to fight our own International Union.  At a time when our country has pulled together in an historic way, putting the needs of the collective above the few and the privileged, it’s a terrible irony that Andy Stern would choose to attack and destroy, instead of building on this momentum.  Luckily, though Stern and his trustees may have forgotten about workers, people like my sisters and brothers have not, and we will not.

Tonight I’m going to sleep on the stained carpet again surrounded by my sisters and brothers.  If Stern and his trustees disturb us, try to bust into the Hall, cut off the power, the water, we’ll resist.  We’ll hold this duct taped hall as long as we can, and if we have to yield our hall, we’ll take our fight to the facilities, to the courts.  We will hold our union and build our union.  How am I so sure?  Because I believe in the power of each of us bound to the next by common values and a common goal: to improve the lives of healthcare workers and patients, a goal we’re all ready to lose sleep over, to fight for and to win.

So after huffing and puffing for weeks, Arlen Specter got what he wanted out of the Eric Holder nomination hearings (his main potential primary opponent declined to run against him) and decided to back the Attorney General nominee.  After all the talk of principle and judgment, it just took improved electoral prospects for Specter to have a change of heart.  Funny how that goes.

But there’s another nominee that is languishing, perhaps the only true progressive in Obama’s cabinet, and many of us would like to know why.  Greg Sargent at his new digs reports on Hilda Solis’ nomination:

Why hasn’t Hilda Solis been confirmed as Labor Secretary yet, and why haven’t we heard from the unions or from the Obama administration about it?

Some top operatives in the labor movement are frustrated with the Obama administration for not giving them the go-ahead to publicly target Republicans who appear to be stalling Solis’ confirmation, people in the labor movement familiar with the situation tell me.

The silence from Obama aides on Solis is ominous to some labor officials, because they view the Republican efforts to hold up Solis as a first shot in the larger coming war over the Employee Free Choice Act, a top labor priority. Some labor officials worry that the Obama administration’s refusal to make an issue of the hold-up on Solis is a sign that the Obama team won’t act aggressively on Employee Free Choice.

“The anonymous hold on Solis is a clear proxy fight for Employee Free Choice,” says a top operative at a prominent union. “And from the Obama Adminisitration … crickets.”

over…

Solis’ confirmation hearing was January 9 (you can track cabinet nominees here).  If anyone from the Obama team or in the entire Democratic Party has said two words about her since then, I’ve missed it.  Her position on the Employee Free Choice Act is well-known (she voted for it last year, after all) and so the talking point that she wasn’t “forthcoming” in her hearing is bogus.  Labor is apparently willing to make a lot of noise about this, but want a go-ahead from the Administration, according to Sargent.

“People are just frustrated because they are not getting a clear signal of when and where to fight,” the official says, though he adds that a second school of thought within labor holds that there’s nothing to worry about, and that labor should be “comfortable” with Obama’s “timing on the Solis nomination.”

Still, some in the labor movement were already worried about the administration’s commitment to acting on Employee Free Choice in his first year, as Sam Stein recently reported. And for these people, the administration’s silence on Solis is making it worse.

(Actually, the UFCW is demanding confirmation.  Good for them.)

If this is more of that post-partisanship and Obama’s team not wanting to tear down bridges to the business community though “divisiveness,” consider that those same businesses have no problem being divisive on their end.

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.” […]

“This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life,” he said, explaining that he could have been on “a 350-foot boat out in the Mediterranean,” but felt it was more important to engage on this fight. “It is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is a disaster, a total absolute disaster.”

Remember that “decline of civilization” line the next time you need some hardware and have a choice of purchasing options.

Corporate titans are going to fight for their interests.  We can’t wait for others to fight for ours.  Yesterday thereisnospoon launched a citizen lobbying campaign to find out who is holding up Solis’ nomination.  He has numbers for a bunch of Republicans, but the calls should really go to Harry Reid, who had no problem ignoring Senate holds last year when Chris Dodd was threatening them.  Another good phone call would be to the White House switchboard, so Mr. 78% can expend a smidge of political capital to get his own nominee confirmed.  Hilda Solis is completely qualified to be Labor Secretary, and in this economic climate the Labor Department needs to be running at full speed.

I have to admit that this is kind of unexpected.  Not only did State Sen. Gil Cedillo announce his intention to run for Congress in the seat soon to be vacated by incoming Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, but Gloria Romero, who was widely expected to run for the seat, abruptly decided to bow out, endorsing Cedillo and announcing her intention to run for State Superintendent of Public Instruction instead.

Here’s a bit from Romero’s statement:

I have evaluated the wonderful opportunities before me and have chosen to listen to my heart.

My passion is education.  I understand that education is the civil rights issue of our time — the great equalizer in America .  My commitment — particularly now as the Chair of both  the powerful Senate Education Committee and Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee on Education — is to lead the Senate’s effort  to transform and hold accountable our state’s public education system.

It is for this reason that I have chosen to decline to run for Congress and to pursue my dream of becoming California ‘s next Superintendent of Public Instruction […]

I endorse Senator Cedillo and look forward to working with him to continue the “change we can believe in” both in California and Washington in these troubling times.

And here’s a bit from Cedillo’s:

State senator Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) today confirmed his intention to run for the 32nd congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Hilda Solis, the Obama administration choice for Secretary of Labor.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for Latinos and the working people of East Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley. Hilda Solis has been a strong leader on labor and economic issues for the 32nd District. As a candidate I seek to continue that focus, creating a competitive workforce, securing access to affordable healthcare and investment into public safety and transportation,” shared Cedillo.

This changes the calculus of this race a bit.  Gloria Romero represented most of this district in the State Senate.  Gil Cedillo actually does not.  In fact, Judy Chu has represented maybe more of this area than Cedillo has.  Chu has already grabbed the endorsements of local Assemblymen Kevin DeLeon and Ed Hernandez.  And if more Hispanics join the field, that could certainly chip away at Cedillo’s support among low-information voters.  One of the Calderon brothers may still jump in.  And Dante noted last week that Emanuel Pleitez may run.

This kind of makes this astroturf piece by Paul Hefner, playing down expectations that Chu could win in a divided race and playing up Romero’s chances while disclosing midway through that he WORKS for Romero, look ridiculous in retrospect.  (What’s even funnier is the dueling astroturf comment in that piece from Judy Chu’s former chief of staff.)

I would be careful with assuming that ethnic support is monolithic.  The last special election we saw with an ethnic divide, in CA-37, was decided more because of strong labor support for Laura Richardson than identity politics, though it never stopped Richardson from trying to frame the entire race that way.  Chu absolutely can garner support in Latino areas, as much as Cedillo can in Monterey Park.  Labor’s endorsement is going to mean a lot.

On the merits, I would say that Cedillo would certainly be a strong progressive with a particular interest in immigration policy, and Chu has a good background through the Board of Equalization on taxes and economics.  Hopefully we’ll have both of them on Calitics in the near future to discuss their candidacies.

(P.S. This HuffPo article about the new Progressive Change Campaign Committee suggests that they might play in CA-32.  That ship has pretty much sailed, though if they got on board with Sen. Cedillo it may make some sense.

UPDATE: UHW just issued a statement, apparently a few members of the executive board planned to raise objections to both the substance and timing of this vote, since there is an official meeting Jan 20-21st. Stern decided to do the vote electronically with the deadline of 2 pm tomorrow.  More when I hear it…

ORIGINAL POST: I know I have been quiet here as of late, but I couldn’t let this pass without speaking out and making sure it did not fade below our collective radar.

Today a special meeting of SEIU executive board is being called by teleconference. On the agenda is the potential creation of a statewide long-term care union, a new local.  SEIU International has established them in several other states and they want to do it here in California.  That is not their only motivation and probably not their biggest one.  The creation of this new union would gut UHW, by removing 65k members.  This appears to be the solution that the International has come up with for weakening UHW, after the charges they went after UHW with fell apart during the trusteeship hearings in the fall.

The SEIU/UHW dispute aside, a statewide local sounds like it could be a good idea, no?  Consolidate everyone who have the same type of job and build a new local.  It might end up being a new benefit to the workers, or it might not.  It depends on if the new local is a better advocate for the workers than the one they left.  They would be leaving the known for the unknown.

One would think that SEIU members should have the say over whether or not they want this to happen.  Well, there was an election, technically speaking.  It gave all of the SEIU health care workers in CA two different options for creating a statewide health care local.  There was no option for workers to keep their current representation, staff and elected leadership.  Both would end UHW as we know it, which appears to be why the International is pursuing this, despite the results of the “advisory” election.

Ballots representing 7.8% of eligible members were received, a horrible turnout.  Notice I didn’t say only 7.8% voted.  That’s because the rules were changed mid-election and members were encouraged to vote more than once.  UHW actively organized against the vote, and frankly organized circles around the International.

Perhaps just as important, union members presented the Election Officer with petitions protesting the election signed by 80,000 members.  These were accompanied by 40,000 formal letters of protest. UHW members presented these letters and petitions in sacks weighing hundreds of pounds. It was an astonishing outpouring of opposition, organized in less than one month.

It is fair to say that SEIU members are vehemently opposed to the creation of this new local based on the results of the election and the huge backlash against it.  However, the International is calling the election “a celebration of union democracy” and using it as justification during today’s board meeting.  They have not received a mandate to make this change and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best.

The International has the power to create this new local and that is just what they are going to do.  Stern would appoint the new leadership and staff would be found.  The members that would be forcibly moved would be under unelected leadership that could from from anywhere in the country.  They would be leaving, in at least the case of the UHW members, an incredibly strong, fast-growing union that has gained deep, far-reaching contracts that are in many cases considered the gold standard.  Through this fight with the International, UHW members have proven how dedicated they are to their leadership and staff and willing to do whatever it takes to defend it.

The result is that the path seems pretty clear.  Today the International will create the new statewide home care local.  UHW members will actively and strongly resist it.  That will create legitimate grounds for trusteeship, which the International would persue with pleasure.  The path is so clear that it seems like it is indeed the point.  This would gut UHW and end up with them trusteed.

Cal Winslow in the article I linked above and quoted goes into a longer deeper discussion of the larger fight between UHW and Stern/Internation.  We have covered this in some depth last year here at Calitics.  Generally speaking, the gutting of UHW would take away a strong ally here in California for the progressive movement.  They are organized, effective and tend to be more progressive when it comes to policy than Stern and those he appoints.  It is the difference between the Arnold health care plan that Stern flew in here to back and the Democrats’ legislation.

It is not my role as an outsider to tell SEIU how they should run themselves.  It is up to the members.  They clearly are not interested in what the International is attempting to force upon them.  That is the antithesis of a bottom-up people-powered union.  While I have great respect for a lot of the political work SEIU International has and continues to do nationally, this stinks for SEIU members in CA and for the larger progressive movement here.

This transcript from today’s Democracy Now! includes an interview with Sal Rosseli and the press release from the International on today’s events.  Here is the excerpt as it gives you a flavor of where both sides are coming from in their own words.

Sal Rosselli, I wanted to ask you very quickly-we just got a statement a few minutes ago within the show emailed to us from the Service Employees International Union. They say, “Today’s vote follows an exhaustive two-year participatory process including 13 days of hearings to determine how best to represent SEIU’s 240,000 long-term care members in California. In August, an outside hearing officer concluded that California’s long-term care workers would be better served if they were no longer divided among three local unions. Similarly, in June, the member delegates to SEIU’s quadrennial convention representing the union’s 2 million members overwhelming adopted a proposal that called for the creation of a single long term care workers’ union per state.

“The question facing the IEB today”-that’s the International Executive Board-“could not be more urgent. These are particularly challenging times for California workers. Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed dramatic across-the-board cuts in patient care and worker pay, including slashing the pay of many workers to a bare minimum wage, and long-term care members must to be organized to fight back.” They conclude, “The proposal being considered today would create the nation’s largest organization of long-term care workers, instantly making it a political and economic heavyweight in the nation’s most populous state.”

Sal Rosselli, your response?

SAL ROSSELLI: It’s disingenuous at best. You know, the hearings inside SEIU are kangaroo court type of operations. The bottom line is, workers need to be able to vote in a very democratic way about their future. And the workers in-the 150,000 workers in UHW in California have voted to stay united into one union.

It’s also hypocritical, because in every other state, including New York, long-term care workers are united with hospital workers. Enforcing a division of them in California, which is what Andy Stern is attempting to do, will delegate long-term care workers to permanent second-class citizenship. It’s the strength of hospital workers united with long-term care workers that’s fundamentally important to achieve quality patient care, achieve a real voice in staffing levels and achieve fair conditions for these workers.

My views are absolutely colored by watching the proceedings in the fall where SEIU was unable to prove that UHW did anything wrong and yet are doggedly continuing on a path to eliminate or vastly weaken UHW.  That said, I am interested in what others opinions are on the subject.  This is no cup of tea to talk about as two allies duke it out and good friends are on both sides.

Well, we know that Mitch McConnell’s heart is definitely two sizes too small.  

The Republican Senate leader’s successful efforts to block the auto bailout has struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of auto workers–and millions of people in their families, communities, and industry.  That’s a lot of Whovilles.  And even by the Grinch’s standards, the Mitch who Stole Christmas is diabolical.  

Unionized nurses around the country, members of the AFL-CIO just like our UAW brothers and sisters, are kicking off a new campaign to let the Mitch know he’s gone too far.  Time to either get some Christmas cheer–or get booed off the American stage.  Please help out by sending a message to the Mitch here–think of it as a virtual lump of coal.. We’ll send him your words….and the message that a revitalized labor movement is not going to let these jobs be lost.

Remember, the GOP made sure there are no conditions on executive pay the Wall St. firms that got bailed out.  And don’t be fooled–American auto workers don’t make much more than competitors at foreign-owned firms in the South.  For example, new hires at Jeep, a GM company, make 14 bucks an hour.  When McConnell and his gang demand pay cuts for these American workers, really they’re arguing that pensions and healthcare need to be cut.  

If this is their message in the holiday season, I understand why America has just shown them the door.

What’s really happening here is that the Senate GOP sees the chance to weaken American labor unions just as we are resurgent.  

The LA Times reports that: “This is the Democrats’ first opportunity to pay off organized labor after the election,” read an e-mail circulated Wednesday among Senate Republicans. “This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.”  In the words of Professor Harley Shaiken, though, “If we back up a moment and look at what’s at stake, it isn’t two automakers and a union…It’s the long-term viability of manufacturing and the future of the middle class.”

Please help America’s nurses and auto workers deliver labor’s next blow against the Senate GOP …and let the Mitch who Stole Christmas know that we’re not letting him get away with it.

Across the state, a vote just concluded. You may have missed but, over 300,000 votes were sent out. The voter base was bigger than the number of registered voters in at least one state.  So, what was this vote? Well, here is the exact question that would profoundly affect some of the biggest unions in the state:

Please choose one of the following options:

Option A: Option A would create a new statewide local union with jurisdiction for all California long-term care workers. under this option, SEIU lont-term care workers who are currently represented by United Healthcare Workers- West (“UHW-W”), Local 6434, United Long-Term Care Workers Union (“Local 6434”) and Local 521 would be united in a new long-term care local union, and Local 521 would be united in a new long-term care local union, and Local 6434’s charter would be revoked.

option B: Option B would create a new California statewide local with jurisdiction for all healthcare workers currently represented by Local 6434 and UHW-W, and long-term care workers currently in Local 521. Under this otion, these healthcare workers would be united in a new SEIU health care local, and the charters of Local 6434 and UHW-W would be revoked.

And that’s pretty much all of the question.  Interestingly, there’s no option for the status quo.  That little tidbit seems to be the reason for protests from at least one of the unions involved, UHW-W.  Of the 309,000+ voters, slightly less than 25,000 votes were actually turned in. That computes to a turnout rate of about 8%.  On the other hand, a petition with over 125,000 signatures was turned in to protest the vote. I was unable to find the actual results of the vote.

The vote was advisory, so no action will be necessarily affected by this vote. On the other hand, as this was a purely symbolic vote, you have to think that the large petition will carry at least as much weight. Either way, one would have liked to see some sort of ability to write-in something in.

The little tiff between the SEIU International and UHW-W will likely come to head in the short to middle term.  We’ll keep you apprised if we hear of something on that front.