As I noted in today’s column in Rare, the growth in the nation’s healthcare sector and the new dollars coming into hospitals thanks to the Affordable Care Act has led to a turf war between the Service Employees International Union and more-militant rivals such as the National Union of Healthcare Workers. But soon, SEIU could find itself becoming a player in another sector in which government plays a major role: American public education. And the union’s presence may not be welcomed either by the National Education Association or the America Federation of Teachers, the dominant unions in education policymaking.
In Los Angeles, SEIU is already making waves thanks to Local 99 in Los Angeles, which has become a force in backing the efforts of school reformers — including former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supt. John Deasy — to overhaul the faltering Unified School District there. The local represents nearly all of the janitors, lunchroom staffers, and other classified workers that aren’t part of either United Teachers Los Angeles, the AFT’s City of Angels local, or the school principal’s union. Over the past three years, it has successfully backed Monica Garcia, the leading reformer on L.A. Unified’s board, and also has put money behind the wishy-washy Steve Zimmer. It has also unsuccessfully backed reformers such as Villaraigosa protege Antonio Sanchez, who lost to former AFT local honcho Monica Ratliff last year.
So it wasn’t surprising when Local 99’s president, Barbara Torres, announced in April that she was considering a run for the school board seat held by longtime AFT ally Bennett Kayser. After all, the union spent $850,000 in 2011 to back the unsuccessful bid of Kayser opponent Luis Sanchez. While Torres decided last week to withdraw from the race, her sister, Kathryn, who runs the local’s political action committee, is now stepping up to challenge Kayser. The popularity of both sisters among union members, along with their influential roles in L.A. politics, makes it a certainty that the younger Torres will get SEIU backing, and thus, rally both reformers and other unions to her corner. The AFT local is definitely not looking forward to the SEIU’s challenge to its influence over the district.
In Sacramento, the SEIU’s Local 1000, which represents teachers and school employees working in the Golden State’s prisons and specialized schools, is increasingly becoming a force all its own. Two years ago, the local’s Bargaining Unit 3 successfully convinced state legislators to pass Senate Bill 1121, which requires prisons to include teachers and principals in assessing the educational and workforce training needs of inmates. Another bargaining unit for the SEIU local, which represents school librarians, is also becoming an influential force in education policy-making. SEIU is also making waves in Washington State, where another local is teaming up with the NEA’s Evergreen State affiliate to back Initiative 1351, which aims to devote more school funding toward class size reduction. At least in theory. One likely reason why the SEIU is backing the initiative because the wording of it would effectively allow any district to use the additional state dollars to hire custodians and other classified employees; more than likely, SEIU is using I-1351 as a Trojan Horse for its own aims — and not exactly to help the NEA expand its ranks.
Then there is SEIU’s major role in early childhood education, the reform currently in vogue among centrist Democrat reformers and traditionalists alike. The union, which counts thousands of Pre-K teachers and other staffers among its rank-and-file, has been a prominent backer of efforts to increase federal and state funding for the programs. In Seattle, its local has teamed up with AFT to launch a ballot initiative that would require childcare centers contracting with the city to pay a $15 minimum hourly wage to its workers — about $1.05 more than the average hourly wage currently earned by preschool teachers in the area.
As with so much with SEIU, the union’s increasing prominence in American public education is largely driven by the profit motive. After all, SEIU has managed to increase its rank-and-file by 10 percent between 2004 and 2013 — even as organized labor continues to decline — because of its willingness to become a major force in any aspect of Corporate America and the public sector. Particularly in early childhood education, the prospects of increased federal funding means more rank-and-file workers and higher levels of union dues into the coffers.
At the same time, SEIU is also playing a more-prominent role in education because of Latinos — especially immigrants and first-generation American natives — who are the fastest-growing constituency within its rank-and-file. As with earlier generations of immigrants — including Irish and Italian populations who settled the nation’s big cities — Latinos are quite aware that they can leverage public-sector employment for entering America’s economic and political mainstream. They also realize that high-quality education is key to their children continuing the progress of their families into the middle class. As a result, SEIU ends up straddling a line, supporting reform measures even as it also tries to preserve union privileges.
Then there is the role of mayoral control of education in furthering SEIU’s influence. Because mayors are elected by an entire city and not concerned just with education matters, it also means that public sector unions with a wide range of concerns will have greater influence over district operations than AFT and NEA locals. This is especially true for SEIU, which has a much wider footprint than the AFT in municipal politics. As seen in New York City last year, when SEIU’s local successfully backed Bill de Blasio’s mayoral bid (while the AFT’s Big Apple local chose losing candidate Bill Thompson) and gained an influential role in the new administration, the union has the potential to outmuscle teachers’ unions when it sees fit.
In the process of expanding into education, SEIU could end up further weakening NEA and AFT influence over education policymaking.
Because of SEIU’s massive size, it can serve as a counter-weight to efforts by NEA and AFT affiliates to ensure that school librarians and other workers are the first to be laid off during periods of budget-cutting. Given the union’s penchant for deviating from traditional union thinking, one can imagine its locals and affiliates teaming up with reformers to pass laws ending reverse-seniority (or last in-first out) layoff rules; SEIU units are also likely to demand that districts lay off laggard veterans (who have already attained decades of benefits thanks to quality-blind seniority rules) instead of the librarians and custodians it represents.
SEIU’s tendency to strike cozy deals with bureaucrats and corporate executives — often agreeing to replace defined-benefit pensions with defined-contribution plans in exchange for gaining the ability to unionize staffs — also makes it a threat to the decades of dealmaking that NEA and AFT locals hold so dear. Even worse for NEA and AFT locals, SEIU’s sharp-elbowed tactics makes it a threat to unionize the very teachers the two unions have long claimed to represent. As SEIU proved six years ago when it unsuccessfully tried to take over the AFT’s former affiliate in Puerto Rico with the backing of the territory’s governor, the union is more than willing to appeal to teachers, especially those wholly unsatisfied with how the NEA and AFT represent their interests, yet unwilling to embrace the professional association model that many younger teachers support.
The union’s considerable coffers, which, like those of the NEA and AFT, are funded by forced dues payments by rank-and-file members, gives it the ability to fight the two unions in political contests. One can easily see SEIU locals in other cities weighing in on school board elections the same way Local 99 has done within the past decade. That SEIU also has lots of bodies at its disposal also makes it a threat to NEA and AFT dominance in states and districts.
Meanwhile SEIU’s strong presence in early childhood education programs (along with that of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees) makes the union an obstacle to the AFT’s efforts to expand its influence into that sector. As sly as AFT President Randi Weingarten may be, she has never gone up against the likes of SEIU boss Mary Kay Henry or her notorious predecessor, Andy Stern, both of whom even more ruthless than she is when it comes to getting their way.
But will SEIU’s presence in education benefit school reformers? Depends on what you mean by benefit. If further weakening NEA and AFT affiliates — along with advancing some key reforms — is part of the goal, then yes, SEIU may be helpful. At the end of the day, however, SEIU is still a union, no different than the NEA and AFT in advancing its own agenda at the expense of children, taxpayers, and even its own rank-and-file members. Either way, the growing role of SEIU in education policymaking is a matter which reformers must watch cautiously.