HOW TO DEFEAT THE BROWN FURLOUGH & WHY CAN’T THE CAPS LEADERSHIP DELIVER?

 President David Miller promised, to convene regular worksite meetings (not regular membership meetings), to win pay equity, to fight hard for the working scientist but instead he and his team of self perpetuating incumbents, just like Unit 9’s PECG leadership are merely pawns on some one else’s chess board.   While scientists and engineers are finding their middle class expectations evaporating as quickly as the mirage that was the “American Dream,” the Blanning and Baker (B&B) team and the Miller regime have nothing to offer the membership except the heads of the rank and file oppositionists on a platter.  Meanwhile SEIU 1021 representing the SF City workers just won a no concessions contract after a strong strike authorization vote, blockading traffic and temporarily occupying city hall.  In the UK the IWW  defeated an attack on the wages and hours of janitors at St. Georges University of London.  Today the bosses and their two bit politicians are vulnerable and can be defeated by militant rank and file mobilizations and job actions but the CAPS/PECG leadership bound and gagged by B&B have nothing to offer our members but cuts in wages!  DO NOTHING AND WATCH YOUR WAGES GET CUT!  ORGANIZE FOR STRIKES NOT FURLOUGHS AND WE WIN!

 You may wonder why for years we have heard about CAPS bold legal strategies but  never that our lawsuits nearly always lose.  You may wonder what stroke of genius led to the failed strategy of relying on the courts and politicians rather than on the organized strength of the rank and file.  The CAPS/PECG strategy to rely on the courts, profits the lawyers whom B&B engages but does nothing for the membership as we outlined at our blog tracing their history of failure.  Their strategy is to give hundreds of thousands in each election cycle to the very politicians who represent the interests of the 1% has won us nothing but concessionary contracts, with more give backs to come.

Look at these two failing organizations (CAPS & PECG) and ask qui bono? Who has made a career of misrepresenting the Unit 10 scientists and Unit 9 engineers? Who ends up with all our dues money? Who is so afraid of the membership that they refused to hold a regular membership meeting for over ten years, who is so afraid of transparency that they refuse to inform the members when they revise the bylaws and policy manual?  That would be Blanning and Baker LLC (B&B). 

 This firm has taken our unions (CAPS & PECG), which are organized as Mutual Benefit Non-Profit Corporations, has held them captive and turned them into profit centers for their partners.  B&B have little interest in putting up a real fight for our interests, their goal is to funnel your dues dollars into their partners’ 401K’s not to assure your wages and conditions!   So far they have been successful accomplishing their goal at our expense!

 Hence we will not see President David Miller prepare the membership to win us pay equity, he will not organize the membership to win ten years back COLA, he will not win back pay from the stolen holidays, he will not prevent or even try to fight the impending Brown furlough.  Rather he will negotiate with Brown about how we are to be robbed, either via the brutally long 9.5 hour day or the re-imposition of the floating furlough day. THE BOSSES SAY CUT HOURS AND PAY CAPS SHOULD SAY SHARE THE WORK THIRTY HOURS WORK FOR FOURTY HOURS PAY-CREATE JOBS FOR ALL!

 Why won’t Miller organize a broad coalition with PECG, AFSCME, Local 39,  & SEIU 1000 to show some muscle and stand up to Gov. Brown (Arnie 2 or Meg in trousers)?  Not because he has no faith in the power of the rank and file; but rather, like the majority of the trade union leadership in this nation, Miller has rejected the strategy and tactics that built the unions in the first place.  While the 1% has declared war on working people and in particular public workers unions, B&B and the Miller regime scoff at class struggle methods and instead contain the membership by keeping them from meeting and organizing together. 

 The Miller/Velez regime, held their kangaroo court to get rid of Rachlis/Cosentino not only because they fought for democracy in CAPS but because the caucus offered a more appropriate method of struggle with which to respond to the class war launched by the 1%-the ruling class to impose the austerity on working and poor people.  But Miller/Velez are subservient to both the profit takers of B&B and the capitalists’ bought and paid for politicians in Sacramento (see April’s issue of the Capsule for the snapshots of CAPS leaders embracing the banksters’ political stooges.) They will help to impose the next phase of the bosses austerity on the membership by offering more concessions rather than organizing a united front of public workers to take collective job actions! 

 Not directly in word but definitively by deed, B&B and the CAPS Miller/Velez regime push the bosses’ lie, that there is no money in the state of California and that we, must help pay for the crisis that the failing structures of capitalism has created.  They ignore the fact that there are over 80 billionaires in the state of California and these hoarders of capital rely on the delusion that it is the political stalemate in Sacramento which prevents the people from liberating the funds from the billionaires and the mega corporations. 

 The fact is if Californians waits until tax reform is voted on in Sacramento or for proposition 13 to be revised we will all be dead and in our graves.  The electoral system has failed the working people, the elderly, the students, the unemployed, and specially oppressed.  The electoral system is controlled lock stock and barrel by the 1%.  This leaves workers with only one weapon with which we can exert our economic and social weight on the political stalemate.  To respond to their class war we need to stop the wheels of production.  We need to unite all public workers, students, and recipients of state services to launch an indefinite general strike.  After about a week shutting down the state the billionaires will be throwing money at the problem because they can not sustain their profit making without the state workers keeping the state functioning!  WE ARE THE POWER THAT ALLOWS CAPITAL TO PROFIT!  

 CAPS leadership and B&B’s inability to fight for our interests should come as no surprise to anyone who has had to fight a grievance with management.  In case after case CAPS and PECG members have reported that B&B (which is supposed to provide advocates on our behalf) have sent their partners Matt Austin or Chris Voight and these characters sided with management against the workers or arrived at hearings unprepared, or gave the member the impression that they were lawyers only to revel at the last moment that they are not lawyers.  In other cases they told rank and file they could not represent them or strung them out for so long that the members retained other counsel; only to find out that once you retain outside counsel CAPS or PECG are no longer obliged to represent you, thus letting B&B off the hook.

 CAPS leadership incapable of keeping its promises to the membership has instead expelled members who advocated alternate tactics of organizing to defend our interests.

After censoring the opposition’s campaign statements, denying candidates their right to access the membership and denying the membership the right to annual membership meetings, the leadership under the direction of the dues sucking leaches at Blanning and Baker chose to sell the membership out in order to keep their friendly relations with the politicians they cozy up to. 

 For the membership to defeat the Brown furlough and win what we deserve we need to take our union back.  Demand no concessions!  Demand and emergency statewide membership meeting! Demand a united front of all public workers to prepare for job actions now!  DON’T WAIT FOR THE UNION LEADERS ORGANIZE INTER-UNION ORGANIZING COMMITTEES IN EVERY WORK PLACE, PREPARE FOR GENERAL STRIKE!