Monday, December 18th, 2006...8:47 pm
SEIU Update
I haven’t written about SEIU’s organizing efforts among Pima County workers in a while.
Back in late October, Attorney General Terry Goddard issued an opinion that county workers were entitled to a vote on “meet and confer” status. Goddard’s opinion all but overruled a self-interested opinion issued by Barbara LaWall’s office (many of her own dissatisfied workers want SEIU representation).
LaWall has relented, and a Board of Supervisors vote is scheduled tommorrow to place an item on the January 9th agenda authorizing county employees to vote on representation by a union.
Tommorrow’s motion has, in all likelyhood, four votes: those of the three Democrats plus Republican Ray Carroll. This vote is the best of all possible worlds for Carroll: it is his chance to do the right thing, and his chance to take a shot at County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry.
Huckleberry is opposed to any union, but got to where he is at because he knows how to count to three (which, as we have all learned from former Supervisor Dan Eckstrom, is the most important skill in Pima County politics). He sees that the writing is on the wall here, and will grudgingly accept that county workers will organize. However, observers wonder what sort of language he will try to slip into the enabling ordinance.
Those details aside, this is great news for the labor movement.
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