Local 30 Business Agents Bust Their Union
At the conclusion of the OPEIU Local 30 General Membership Meeting on 04-26-24, Dustin Teske asked all three of the union's Business Agents who had recently voted to decertify their union (CWA) if they would explain to us union members who they represent how and why they made this decision.
OPEIU Local 30 Business Agents, Margie, Ezekiel, and Briggett all described a similar concern with their union, CWA 9509. They each reported generally poor communication from their union following their attempts to speak with one of their union representatives.
Margie began with an unrelated reference to some of her relatives who had picked grapes as members of the UFW union. I would imagine that her relatives were not always immediately able to speak with their union representatives either, but unlike Margie, they did not give up and decertify their union. They would be ashamed of her decision. Also, how many times have members who work at KP have been unable to contact their union representatives over the years? If they followed Margie's example, our union would have been decertified a long, long time ago. Margie continued by stating that, when she reached out to her union, "the only people who would help me were Stewards." Ironically, she made this complaint to a room in which the majority of attendees were OPEIU Local 30 Union Stewards. Apparently, for Margie, it's fine that Stewards help us members, but being helped by a Steward herself was not good enough for her. Dustin suggested that since she had her CWA contract, and she is a Union Business Agent so she probably could have located the answer she was seeking help with by consulting the contract on her own. She then stated that another, specific reason that she voted to decertify her union is that her union contract does not contain any premium pay for performing bilingual work (for reverence, bilingual pay in our contract with KP is $0.375 per hour). So, then she was basically stating that she decertified her union because she was not receiving thirty-seven cents per hour for the time she speaks Spanish while at work. Also of note, is that the CWA contract actually stated that it only specified 'base' wages for all Business Agents and that, if the employer would like to provide higher compensation, it could. She could have just asked Marianne to compensate her for bilingual work. Then, even if Marianne declined at that time, bilingual pay could have been negotiated into the next contract (the CWA contract was scheduled to expire in May of 2024). Instead, she says she chose to decertify her union.
Ezekiel began by acknowledging that he had seen Dustin's Facebook post (likely referring to a post that contained a link to the petition regarding Angela's termination and Marianne's mission to bust the Business Agent's union). He continued by stating his reason for voting to decertify his union was due to poor communication. He described a specific incident in which he arrived at the CWA office during office hours, but there was no one to assist him. He then said he did not think that the CWA was a "good fit" for them. Dustin asked him whether they were seeking a different union to represent them that they felt would be a better fit. Ezekiel asked whether Dustin had a recommendation for them. Dustin stated he was not suggesting a union to them, he was asking whether they were considering others. Marianne interjected, "Dustin, you should know that they can't file for another union for at least a year [since they had just decertified the CWA]." Dustin responded that he was aware but that they could still be in the process of choosing a different union even though they could not file for an election for one year. Also of note is that, had the Business Agents located a union that they felt would be a better fit for them, they could have completed union authorization cards for the 'new' union at the SAME TIME that they filed to decertify CWA. Then, their ballot would have contained three choices: whether to be represented by CWA, or to be represented by the new union, or no union. Instead, they chose exclusively to file for decertification of their union and work non-union.
Briggett then began with an unrelated story about her husband who was a Teamster in Local 542 (coincidentally, Dustin had also been a Teamster in Local 542). She continued by repeating the same claims of poor communication on the part of CWA when she had reached out to them. Hilda (Local 30 Union member who was present) began to ask Briggette a question, but Briggett cut her off and spoke about her demand, for several minutes, that she be respected by not being interrupted. Briggett then finished by stating, "I will be voting for Trump or for Biden in the November election and it's no one's business who I vote for." Briggett created a 'Straw Man Fallacy' to confuse the issue. Nobody suggested that she should disclose who she would vote for in the upcoming Presidential election nor did anyone ask her to explain that. The fact is that she and Ezekiel and Margie are Business Agents whose job entails representing union members' best interests while advocating for workers to organize into the union. They cannot fulfill those roles while hypocritically decertifying their own union. They should be leading by example, instead they want us to do as they say, not as they do.
A point of interest is that, despite all three Business Agents speaking extremely critically of the union they have now decertified, the vote was actually 2 to 1 (two of them voted to decertify their union and one of them voted to keep their union). This could likely be, due to decertifying their union, they may now be terminated without cause so the one person who voted 'yes' to keep their union may feel compelled to speak against the CWA or risk the possibility of Marianne questioning her loyalty and terminating her employment.