Union flexes muscle in supervisors' race

The union representing 1,900 Sonoma County government workers is taking an unprecedented role in election contests for supervisors, supporting three candidates who could vote on their future paychecks and retiree benefits.

The push, which could influence three of five board seats and lead to majority control of the board, comes at a time when several factors are in play: The Service Employees International Union's contract has expired; negotiations between the union and county appear headed nowhere; and the current board could vote as early as Tuesday on retiree health benefits.

"SEIU members are in difficult negotiations with the county, and having supervisors that understand working people's issues is vital for this county," said Bill Steck, an SEIU leader and political director of the North Bay Central Labor Council.

The expired contract and companion debate over health benefits have raised the stakes in the three races on November's ballot, said Supervisor Paul Kelley, who is not up for re-election.

He won his seat in 2002, when union involvement was limited to an endorsement, a little money and a little precinct walking.

"We have gone from a collaborative, deal-making mentality in the context of reasonable economic times in 2002 to a mind-set of confrontation, combat and political activism today," Kelley said. "It is an attempt to buy, through independent campaign expenditure committees, the other side of the bargaining table at the expense of taxpayers."

In the 3rd District, which encompasses Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park, Shirlee Zane, head of the Council on Aging, is a clear favorite of labor forces. Unions, guided largely with money from SEIU, spent a total of $77,000 on efforts that benefited her in the primary.

Her opponent, former Santa Rosa Mayor and county planning commissioner Sharon Wright, issued several sharp attacks on the union's attempt to influence the race. A business-oriented independent expenditure group spent more than $34,000 on her behalf, so both sides appear headed for an expensive re-run in the coming campaign.

In the 5th District contest where the labor candidate Maddy Hirshfield, a legislative aide, fell short of the runoff, labor support has shifted to county planning commissioner Rue Furch. She is competing in the runoff against Efren Carrillo, a credit union counselor. Unions, again prodded by SEIU, put $36,525 into promoting Hirshfield, and many expect a similar effort aimed at targeting Carrillo's business community ties.

And in the 1st District, labor is supporting incumbent Valerie Brown, although it has been unhappy with her support of administration proposals and it may have more political kinship with her opponent, Will Pier, an ecologist.

The wrath of the union -- and many of its members -- was stirred to a boiling point by the county administration's contract proposal to restructure health benefits of all current workers and all retirees so that everyone would wind up paying higher portions of their monthly premiums.

The union is incensed that negotiations over health benefits for current employees have become divorced from retirees', thus allowing supervisors on Tuesday to decide whether to impose health premium changes on retirees before contract negotiations for active employees have concluded.

Donning the SEIU's purple T-shirts, hundreds of union supporters have conducted several noontime demonstrations outside county supervisors' chambers, and workers have pleaded their individual cases before supervisors during public comment sessions. On a few occasions, SEIU activists stood outside Sonoma County Fair gates to hand out balloons with SEIU messages saying "Sonoma County . . . Unfair," only to have the fair manager order security guards to confiscate and deflate the balloons.

Appearing to get nowhere with the supervisors in public, their representatives have met privately with supervisors Brown and Mike Reilly, neither of whom would give the labor representatives a commitment to vote against the administration's proposal on retiree health benefits.

The SEIU officials said they are planning a large-scale job action at the county administration complex on Tuesday, an event scheduled to coincide with the supervisors' debate on health premium increases for retirees. Union leaders have plans to encourage a mass walkout shortly after lunch with an effort to pack the weekly public comment session that begins at 2 p.m.

Both sides in contract negotiations say the atmosphere is far different from that of 2002, when there also were three supervisorial seats up for election.

In that year, the contract was settled through a cooperative arrangement called "interest-based bargaining" in which both sides agree on goals and then develop proposals to meet them. Neither the talks nor the settlement merited even a single newspaper story, and the contract was settled before deadline.

Also in that year, incumbent Supervisors Kelley and Mike Kerns won re-election and Brown won for the first time. All three were competitive election races, but SEIU participation was low-key.

Over the past six months, there have been 27 negotiation sessions and four others with a mediator. Progress on minor issues has been achieved, but the thorny issue of employee health benefits remains unresolved.

This time, unlike last, the county is represented by attorneys from a San Francisco labor relations firm; the attorneys, rather than county administration officials, lead discussions on contract proposals. There was no agreement to engage in interest-based bargaining.

"Last time, there was a cooperative spirit and there was no winning or losing on issues as we went along," said Tom Drumm, who was on the 2002 negotiation team and this time is the union's lead negotiator. "This time, they don't seem to intend to negotiate anything with anybody, and they are not coming up with anything that doesn't screw people."

County Administrator Bob Deis, who also participated in the 2002 talks, agrees the atmosphere of negotiations is far different, a situation he attributes to a changed economic climate that has adversely affected county tax revenues, which fund salaries and benefits, as well as new government accounting standards that require details of how governments intend to fund long-term commitments such as retiree health.

"It's like getting your Visa bill and you start digging yourself deeper and deeper into debt if you keep making minimum payments," Deis said. "Sooner or later, the actual costs are going to be so huge that the supervisors are going to have to eliminate programs and employees. It will be unacceptable to decimate county services, so we are trying to avoid a financial meltdown that will get passed on to the next Board of Supervisors."

Deis said there is noticeable change in the SEIU's approach, too, with regional union officials appearing to exert more control over bargaining than do local leaders.

Kelley said the contract, hanging in limbo during the election campaigns, creates an incentive for the union to avoid a settlement and channel momentum into supporting its endorsed candidates.

"It plays out in their showing up at board meetings, handing fliers out at the fair and activism in the electoral process," Kelley said. "It plays out in making them resistent to concluding a contract because they need the energy to influence the elections."

Union reps deny using the contract and health benefit controversy to stimulate employee interest in the election.

"Sure, we always need more sympathetic votes because we don't have any right now," Drumm said. "But it offends me that some say we should do nothing and wait until the board changes in January. Unions are in the business of having contracts, not working without them."

You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.