Portside Special - Reflections on AFSCME's 40th Convention:
 Public Employees Elect New Leader in a Time of Crisis

 By Gregory N. Heires and Ray Markey
 Special to Portside

 Published by Portside
 June 26, 2012

 LOS ANGELES - The country's largest public employee union
 has elected its first African-American president, who stands
 to become perhaps the leading voice in organized labor's
 fight- back against the fiercest attack on government
 workers and services in modern times.

 Lee A. Saunders, who started out his career as a civil
 servant in Cleveland and rose over the years to became the
 top assistant to Gerald W. McEntee, the colorful outgoing
 president of the American Federation of State, County and
 Municipal Employees, was overwhelmingly elected to head the
 union at its 40th convention, which was held in Los Angeles
 June 18-22.

 Two years ago, Saunders narrowly defeated Danny Donohue,
 head of Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000 of
 New York, in a hotly contest election for secretary-
 treasurer. But this time he handily knocked off Donohue for
 the top post.

 The 2012 election was the first contested election in
 AFSCME, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year,
 in more than 30 years and the second time in which a white
 candidate and a black candidate squared off for the
 presidency.

 In his first election, McEntee defeated William Lucy, who
 went on to become the union's long-time secretary-treasurer,
 president of the AFL-CIO constituency group Coalition of
 Black Trade Unionists and founding president of Public
 Services International.

 The roots of this year's election extend at least as far
 back as to the 2004 convention. That's when Lucy announced
 his retirement. Donohue and Saunders quickly announced that
 they would run to succeed Lucy, but they withdrew after
 delegates convinced Lucy to continue as secretary-treasurer.

 This time around, what once was a sub-rosa campaign to
 portray Saunders as a McEntee clone became a focus of the
 campaign.

 Donohue also vigorously argued that Saunders' election would
 cement the union's inside-the-beltway political orientation,
 draining funds for local and state needs. In fact, as
 Saunders pointed out, AFSCME allocates two-thirds of its
 political action funds to state and local races.

 The Donohue supporters claimed Saunders along with McEntee
 had turned AFSCME into a cog in the Democratic Party machine
 and that this had been a disaster for AFSCME. They implied
 that if only the union had been willing to be more even-
 handed in its support of Republicans, public employees would
 be in better shape.

 This is pure rubbish. In speech after speech at the
 convention, Saunders stressed that the union will respond
 with equal force to attacks on its members, whether the
 attacks are from Democrats or Republicans.

 So what explains Donohue supporters' bogus suggestion that
 McEntee and Saunders are Democratic lackeys? The answer is
 clear: They were appealing to the conservative wing of
 AFSCME, the estimated 30 percent of union members who vote
 Republican.

 Much of the venom of the Donohue camp seemed to be "anti-
 McEntee" and less reflective of a clearly articulated
 platform. But the Donohue backers couldn't get that poison
 to stick on Saunders, who seemed to win over undecided
 delegates through his convention speeches in his role as
 secretary- treasurer and as a candidate at the presidential
 debate, as well as through his speech as at a rally for a
 contract fight of University of California workers. (An
 AFSCME convention custom is to devote an afternoon to the
 struggle of local workers at the host city.)

 At the convention, Saunders was unapologetic about AFSCME's
 willingness to open up its checkbook to ensure that the
 union is a leading progressive voice in national politics.
 But he also underscored his commitment to: * building upon
 the union's growing multi-cultural membership base,? *
 empowering women, who make up the majority of the labor
 movement and AFSCME, * training and providing opportunities
 for the union's young "New Wave" activists, * strengthening
 retiree participation, * responding aggressively to the
 conservative and anti-union agenda of Republican and
 Democratic governors and * pouring resources into organizing
 campaigns (which have added 50,000 new members to AFSME's
 ranks the last two years).

 Both sides clearly recognize that today, AFSCME's survival
 is on the line.

 The debate is about the appropriate response.

 The union confronts a concerted right-wing attack on
 collective bargaining rights, the ability of the union to
 collect dues and political contributions through payroll
 deductions, and the success of Grover Norquist's "starve the
 beast" strategy to eviscerate public services. State and
 local cutbacks during the Great Recession have reduced the
 union's membership by tens of thousands.

 AFSCME remains deeply wounded from Wisconsin Gov. Scott
 Walker's signing of a law stripping public employees of
 their collective bargaining rights along with his subsequent
 strong defeat of an AFSCME-backed recall effort.

 Confronted with this bleak picture, many delegates seemed to
 be focused on the gravity of the national political scene
 and were apparently not won over by Donohue's effort to make
 the allocation of union resources the central issue of the
 election.

 Simply put, Donohue wasn't able to capitalize on what his
 supporters perceived as a deep simmering resentment over the
 national union's control of funds. At the same time, while
 acknowledging the setback in Wisconsin, Saunders was able to
 argue that the fight-back there has reinvigorated the labor
 movement. Also, he was able to point to the union's
 successful campaign for a referendum on Republican Gov. John
 Kasich's anti-collective bargaining legislation in Ohio and
 another campaign to scuttle Gov. Rick Scott's prison
 privatization initiative in Florida.

 So, while McEntee, a pillar of the Democratic Party's
 progressive wing, clearly was a Washington insider, AFSCME
 cannot be charged with neglecting what's happening on the
 ground throughout in country, Donohue's claims to the
 contrary. And Activists know this.

 AFSCME has poured millions of dollars into 12 "battleground
 states" where governors (including New York's Democratic
 Gov. Andrew Cuomo) have directly confronted the union,
 playing into resentment toward public employees.

 Behind the scenes and on the convention floor, both camps
 played political hardball by questioning credentials of
 delegates.

 Also, Donohue backers accused AFSCME of following the
 practice of former SEIU President Andrew Stern to install
 political allies in affiliates through trusteeships. But his
 campaign didn't detail its charges in public documents or
 statements.

 The AFSCME Constitution restricts trusteeships to cases
 involving financial improprieties and decertification
 revolts. Only 18 of AFSCME's locals are in trusteeship.
 While Saunders could take credit for running the union's
 legislative and political ground game in battleground
 states, what did Donohue offer?

 Critics pointed to his lack of visibility in the national
 union's fight-back activities. He failed to articulate a
 powerful and comprehensive alternative path. And he
 certainly couldn't point to his recent track record.

 Donohue's current five-year contract for CSEA members
 includes three zeroes, furloughs and increased member's
 payments into health and pension funds, and health-care
 givebacks. The CSEA pact has boxed in other unions in New
 York, where public employee unions and employers generally
 follow the practice of "pattern bargaining" in which one
 union's pact sets the parameters of the negotiating climate
 for all unions.

 Moreover, CSEA agreed to a new pension tier for its members
 at the end of the term of Cuomo's predecessor, Democratic
 Gov. David Paterson. That set the stage for Cuomo to ram
 through a widely criticized pension tier for all the public
 employees in the state a year later. The new tier requires
 public employees to work longer  (as many as 12 years) and
 contribute more (as much as double) for a pension that
 provides less (up to 40 percent).

 Tellingly, five of the six AFSCME affiliates in New York
 backed Saunders.

 Donohue opponents charge that CSEA's concessionary
 bargaining will ultimately translate into a lower standard
 of living for more than 400,000 public employees and the
 undermining of the retirement security of future public
 service workers in the state.

 Saunders' election takes on a special symbolism in AFSCME,
 which prides itself on its diversity and support for civil
 rights. Indeed, a New York City retiree poignantly shared
 with us how she offered a prayer for Saunders the night
 before his election.

 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated when he traveled to
 Memphis, Tenn., in 1968 to support striking African-American
 sanitation workers in the union. And William Lucy
 spearheaded the U.S. labor movement's campaign to free
 Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

 The candidate slates in the election reflected the union's
 diversity. Saunders ran with Laura M. Reyes, who heads the
 65,000-strong United Domestic Workers Local 3930 in
 California. Donohue ran with Alice Goff, an African
 American, who is the president of Council 36, which
 represents city and county employees in many titles in
 Southern California.

 Saunders defeated Donohue by 54 to 46 percent; winning
 683,628 votes compared with 582,358 for Donohue, who
 received the lowest vote of the four candidates. Reyes
 defeated Goff by 661,413 votes to 603,624.

 Under AFSCME election rules, the delegate votes represent a
 number of AFSCME members, not an individual. Virtually all
 unions in the AFL-CIO, including AFSCME, hold conventions
 with delegates to elect their top officers. Alone among
 major unions, the Teamsters hold direct, mail-ballot
 elections.

 With just over 200,000 members in CSEA, Donohue only managed
 to get the support of 380,000 AFSCME members outside his
 local, while Saunders won double that without an electoral
 base.

 But for all the union's pride in its diversity and roots in
 the civil rights struggle, the election, couldn't escape the
 politics of race.

 A controversy erupted the eve before the vote when a Donohue
 supporter supposedly hung a stuffed toy monkey identified as
 Saunders on a convention pole, sparking charges of racism.

 Donohue didn't do himself a favor when he appeared on the
 floor and declared that if "anyone accuses me of being a
 racist, I will kiss your ass." Some activists believe the
 comment cost him African-American votes.

 (Days later, an offended New York City African-American
 local president said he strongly considered dropping his
 pants on stage before exercising self-restraint.)

 When the convention opened, most delegates appeared to think
 the election was pretty even. The afternoon before the
 election, the word was the candidates were separated by
 9,000 votes.

 What explains the big swing for Saunders?

 Many believe a lot of African-Americans deserted Donohue.
 Members sitting on the fence apparently were turned off by
 vitriolic attacks on the floor of the convention and the
 failure of Donohue to chart an alternative path for the
 union in the debate.

 Will both sides live up to their commitment to a healing
 process?

 Union leaders and activists are known for their long
 memories. Meanwhile, AFSCME is ready to continue the fight-
 back.

 "We know that Wall Street and their allies are engaged in an
 all-out assault against our members and the services we
 provide," Saunders said after the election.

 "They know that AFSCME stands in the way of their efforts to
 destroy the middle class. We are united in our commitment to
 stand up for the men and women who care for America's
 children, nurse the sick, plow our streets, collect the
 household trash and guard our prisons. Our members are a
 cross-section of America, not some elite group as our
 opponents try to claim.

 "We are energized and ready for the battles ahead, including
 putting boots on the ground to ensure the re-election of
 President Barack Obama."

 [Labor Portside moderators Gregory N. Heires and Ray Markey
 attended AFSCME's 40th Convention in Los Angeles. Heires is
 a long-time, trade-union writer. Markey is a former
 president of the New York Public Library Guild Local 1930,
 one of more than 50 locals in AFSCME DC 37 in New York.]

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