“… there needs to be imagination”

We need a new indicator of economic success other than GDP.

We must change our thinking fundamentally: that GDP, or simply put, the aggregate growth of an economy is almost meaningless unless that growth is clearly defined in the context of democratic principles.

Let us measure GDP at home and abroad based on the path toward attainment of the social contract that achieves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Let us build solutions to the issues of health, education, housing, employment, and retirement measureable by outcomes that equate to nothing short of the achievement of the full capacity of every child, woman, and man. 

To me the essence of organizing and social movement is that before there can be planning, strategizing, or even investment in change, there needs to be imagination, the ability to truly see a new place for people to create a peaceful and just society.  Indeed such a place requires new public policies, but the creation of such policies that actually result in transformed lives for people to be able to achieve their dreams first requires clarity about what the dream actually is. I think consensus can be achieved about the dream.   The means to get there is when we challenge ourselves with the facts.

Often people who want positive change complain that our nation lacks the constitutional commitments that exist in Europe and elsewhere that “guarantees” certain social and economic benefits to its citizens. We often complain that the struggle here in the U.S. is quite different. Perhaps.

I would suggest that such paradigms and constitutional mandates change over time…just look at the creation of the Eurozone and the current convulsions and threats to the economic security there. Sadly and predictably, all across Europe, even in what seem to be unlikely places such as Scandinavia are experiencing the rise of racist and fascist parties that are in large measure responses to Great Depression-era unemployment levels and dislocation. The social contract in Europe is under severe threat of falling apart. It will take much convulsion and reconciliation to arrive at up-to-date and workable solutions.

What about in the U.S.?

“Having won this race, all are complicit in both a major crime against humanity and against workers everywhere and here in the US.”

Let’s look at just how far off track we have gone:

In my view, a recent New York Times story in its way scratches the surface of these questions by detailing the misery this nation’s and others’ manufacturing, labor, and trade policies cause to so many.

On December 22, 2013, the New York Times provided a very important piece of research and journalism which explains what we already know:  the race to the bottom of wages and working conditions in the clothing industry has been won by the manufacturers, distributors, and purchasers of clothing world-wide.  Having won this race, all are complicit in both a major crime against humanity and against workers everywhere and here in the US. 

Sadly, but unfortunately all too consistent with what is wrong with our nation in its essence, is that the U.S. government spends about $1.5 billion directly aiding this aspect of the race to the bottom through direct purchases of clothing from the lowest wage and inhuman working condition manufacturers in the world.

The race to the bottom in the clothing industry has been underway for more than a century.

There is no telling just how far the cynicism and fear among workers here and abroad will go.  The nearly vertical direction of wealth flowing to the top 10%, 1%, .1%, and .01% both in the US and around the world by definition creates so much misery that the mind cannot really comprehend it. Yes, the race to the bottom has been going on for a long time.  And the cynicism and fear in the hearts and minds of workers everywhere stokes the passions of dangerous ideology.  Have we learned nothing from our past?

How much longer will we tolerate low wages and inhuman working conditions? 

And how much longer will we tolerate the self-fulfilling prophecy that people “want” low-cost items because they cannot afford more?  There is just too much data that we all know all too well that the race to the bottom is what capitalism has achieved.  It is time for all stakeholders to discuss and plan for a much different set of outcomes.

This should not be a radical idea.

We must have a vision of how to attain high quality health outcomes for all while achieving manageable and affordable costs.

“I believe there is a grand experiment that we can undertake: change our thinking about GDP in the health care sector.”

There is a different path:

Health care in the US has also been a race to the bottom. 20% of our GDP, that amorphous super macro measure of growth hides the race to the bottom in US healthcare: 50 million uninsured, with health costs being the single highest cause of personal bankruptcy, and for all of our highest in the world spending, the World Health Organization ranks the US 37th in the world in health care outcomes for its people.

A vision known as The Triple Aim summarizes a new vision, a realizable state of consensus in which 1.) each individual, and 2.) the population in aggregate achieves health, and in so doing, 3.) the cost to achieve health is substantially reduced.  There is a growing consensus among stakeholders in the healthcare sector of the economy that The Tripe Aim ought to be achieved. Obviously there are differences about how to get there…but the vision is demanding and actually quite specific in its intent. The Triple Aim demands that the 20% of GDP spent on health care be measured, improved, and substantially reduced.

We must have a vision of how to attain high quality health outcomes for all while achieving manageable and affordable costs. Our nearly $3 trillion annual spend in healthcare must be reduced if our economy and our people are to have money for other needs.

Through Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Health Insurance programs, the Veteran’s Administration, and now the Affordable Care Act, we say as a people that care must be extended to all, care that is of the highest quality, highest safety, with gentle and caring patient experience. If actually achieved, care for all will become much less costly because health is maintained for everyone, not just for those who can afford care.

To accomplish this, we need systems thinking: the cost, safety, quality, and access to care requires a different delivery system of care and a different payment system that rewards outcomes as opposed to activity: outpatient and preventive care should be the emphasis, with clinics available near everyone; outpatient care must emphasize early childhood preventive care, including dental care and behavioral/mental health care. We need care that is based on popular education methods so that people learn to own their own health and understand their bodies.

There is a broad consensus that these transformations in health care would if implemented over time, save about $1 trillion of the $3 trillion annual spend. To achieve this outcome, we must start the investments in transformed health care thinking and delivery systems as soon as possible.

“Social dialogue must replace the politics and confrontation of self interest in all venues.”

All of these changes that must take place require a much different dialogue among practitioners, employers, employees, administrators, insurers, government, unions, and community stakeholders.  Inherent in the changed dialogue is a commitment to put self-interest aside, and plan change in a collaborative fashion based on measureable improvement and value creation.

Social dialogue must replace the politics and confrontation of self interest in all venues.

Health care transformation should be part of a broader social movement, part of an imagined, but real vision of the hopes and dreams of our people.

If everyone is covered by insurance, the “risk pool” is broadened and spreads the cost across the largest population, the healthy and the not healthy.  Since healthy people use the system less, the overall cost is reduced.  Emphasis on prevention and patient education is the key to success:  pre-natal care, teaching healthy eating/active living and pro-active management of chronic conditions like diabetes, heart ailments, asthma, and mental health saves money over the long haul.  All of these changes require investment in new infrastructures outside of hospitals and other large institutions which create new opportunity and new forms of employment. Payments to providers must be based on achieving these goals.

“We have seen the race to the bottom…”

Like anything else, a system that works requires management and regulation:  you cannot have utilities, transportation, or construction of buildings or housing without strict regulation and systems to ensure safety and service. Health care requires the same kind of planning. No more sacred cows!

Wholesale cuts in expenditures or services are not the answer. Clinicians and providers can only cut their own expenses so much, and these cuts will impact small group and individual practitioners and advantage large systems that can scale back costs through consolidation and volume. Such cuts will demoralize the workforce, which instead must be fully supported. It is the workforce that must be fully engaged to solve the problems of waste, error, efficiency, safety, and patient experience.

The Triple Aim envisions substantial reduction of the unsustainable amount of our nation spends and wastes on health care. Let the Triple Aim serve as a path to new thinking about a New New Deal:  a fundamental alteration of priorities with a vision to create high wage employment, reduction of military spending, advance universal health care, alter the tax codes, make pension plans a right, universal early childhood development a right, with a parallel emphasis on “employment transition”; that is, long term planning for skilling up for the jobs we will forecast for the future.

We have seen the race to the bottom in the clothing sector and in manufacturing. We have seen the race to the bottom in health care. What these tragic experiences have in common has been a reluctant but wrong acceptance that we cannot have prosperity for all and products and services for all.

And through it all we keep measuring our economy with something we call GDP.

Without measures of improvement in our people, we will continue to mask democracy with incomplete and amorphous data. The Triple Aim is inherently measureable, and should serve as a path to how we think about and measure our economic activity.

This is hard, but it is much harder and dangerous to have a society in which the basics are missing for so many.

Introduction:
Our attempt at this article was inspired by a brief analysis of the BART strike by Maria Poblet of Causa Justicia/Just Cause. We agreed with much of her global view that the strike was conducted under the current neo liberal agenda in this country of dismantling public services, at the same time blaming the inadequacy of those services on the public workers and their unions. In this article we would like to not repeat or focus of these points but home in on what the union(s) could have done better under these conditions – in particular SEIU 1021 – because we are more familiar with that union through our direct work with them in the past.

Why all public workers need to learn from the BART strike:
After a strike or any labor struggle, union summations often focus on how vicious the management was and how one-sided the main-stream media was in their reporting of the strike. Both these points were true during the BART strike, but this is the basis of our first critique. Unions need to ask themselves what they could have done better, regardless of the trying conditions. By its opening strategy, the union leadership appeared not to have expected management’s intransigence or that the mainstream media would immediately, foment public sentiment against them. Why would this be a surprise to any public sector union heading into contract talks today? Didn’t they read the news reports about what had taken place to public sector workers in Wisconsin and Michigan? Closer to home, three years ago, in liberal San Francisco, SEIU and other public workers were attacked with a referendum to cut their pension and health care benefits. Although public sector unions fought this back, a two tier system was created and newly hired SEIU 1021 members have a longer vesting period, and all members now pay more into their pensions. This was done through a compromise referendum offered to the voters as an alternative to the more reactionary one. Only last year, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee tried to decimate the lowest paid SEIU 1021 members, mostly women, by driving a wedge against comparable worth standards (equal pay for equal work) with male dominated classifications. The Mayor’s lay-off and furlough plan during the recession could have disproportionally fallen on women and minority members in classifications held by SEIU 1021. This unilateral move was stopped in court when a judge ruled that the mayor could not do this in the middle of a current contract and would have to wait until the contract reopens and bargain for this change. This may well be another fight deferred.

Public workers and reliance on politicians:
It is clear from the above that even the most liberal politicians and the leadership of the Democratic Party hierarchy have succumbed to the neo-liberal paradigm that public sector unions are to blame for deteriorating services and rising costs, including in mass transit. So who did SEIU appoint to lead the bargaining battle that would result in the BART strike? Josie Mooney, who served as Executive Director of the old SEIU 790 local in San Francisco before their merger into 1021. Mooney was an old school public sector union head who kept a regular table at one of San Francisco’s tonier restaurants near City Hall where she would meet political power brokers to get what she needed for her members, while returning coveted support for future electoral ambitions. SEIU 790 and 9 other locals in Northern California merged into one regional behemoth Local 1021 (now encompassing over 165 bargaining chapters and 54,000 members). Their BART members constitute only one of these chapters, albeit with one of the better contracts historically.

One of Mooney’s first acts after being rehired was to bring in her old ally, Mark Mosher (of Whitehurst/Mosher Media), on the campaign as a consultant. Mosher’s main work had been as a campaign consultant on most but not exclusively, Democratic Party campaigns. Most observers assumed his main worth was to get the legislators across the counties, who make up the Metropolitan Transit District governing BART, the state legislators and Governor Brown whom he and SEIU had helped elect, to support their cause, and push management into a reasonable and quick settlement. If this was his main worth, he failed miserably. Most legislators and Governor Brown read the political winds and either sided with management or did nothing at all, which amounted to the same thing, forcing SEIU and ATU into no option but to strike.

Where was the direct contact with the ridership and their constituents?
The leadership of 1021 did not prepare the public for the upcoming war. Mass transit riders were painted as collateral damage by the politicians and rather than blame management, most riders blamed the union. Why is this? If SEIU 1021 had done a sober organizing assessment of their members’ interactions and interface with the public including their own ridership they could have foreseen this outcome. Every public sector worker who goes on strike today must do this assessment. All public workers are being attacked today, but some have advantages the BART workers did not.

Police, firefighters, nurses and most teachers are generally looked at sympathetically by the public. Why? For one thing those we serve know us. They see us often when they are vulnerable and need something from our work. Our interface with the public is often direct and one on one. If they don’t have direct dealings with us, it is rare that a family member or friend has not. Even negative interactions are often off-set by the majority of positive ones and the most pro-management biased media cannot discount these inter-actions with our members.

How does the commuting public interact with BART workers? They don’t. One barely catches a glance of the train conductor as the trains speed into the stations and we jump on or off into the third, fourth or eighth car. There is no interaction with humans when paying our fares unless BART security officers are checking our passes, often an unpleasant experience. Even the maligned Muni bus drivers are more sympathetic because we often walk by them as we board the front of the bus. If we are regulars, we see the same drivers coming and going on the same route as our regular commute. We see can see them smile or frown and they are sources of information to new riders and lost tourist. We hear their voices as they tell passengers approaching stops and crowds to please move back to make way for new passengers, and we may even sympathize with their working conditions as we see bicyclists weave in and out of lanes, watch how they get stuck behind private Google buses and delivery trucks, double parked taxi’s and slam on their brakes for jay-walkers.

We have no idea what a BART conductor is doing or dealing with, the train just moves and stops. If management tells us it can all be done automatically by a computer program, we think maybe it can. We have no view of the conductor separated from the riders in his caged booth at the front of the train. Riders have even less knowledge of what mechanics, electrical techs, car cleaners or other workers do to keep the trains moving. These workers often labor in the middle of the night on the train tracks or in rail yards closed to the public. We have no idea how dirty, hard and dangerous their jobs are. We have no idea about the skills, training or education these workers have obtained through years both from BART and often before at technical colleges and other trade apprenticeships, before they crossed over to their BART jobs. Ironically an example of job safety reared its head when two strike breakers were killed during the strike while a train was on auto-pilot, exactly what management had wanted to do on a more routine basis in their proposed work rule changes.

“SEIU 1021 was aware of this history and public perception yet did not do the public education they needed to make their working conditions share common ground with the riding publics commuting conditions. This education should have commenced one full year before the start of bargaining. Better yet it should be done as a component of organizing their membership internally in a permanent program.”

The only contact the public has with a worker is with some of the BART station agents and this often is a negative experience because they seem to be the frontline bearer of bad news without any ability to fix problems. The toilet, escalator, elevator, change machine, ticket machine is out of order again; “sorry go to the other ones on the other side of the station”, seems to be their main message to most riders. They cannot dispense tickets, collect fares or make change yet are enforcers against gate jumpers, homeless squatters or just drunken sports fans who often take out any inconvenience on this sole BART employee they can see. Sadly, the second biggest safety issue on the table this year, besides the maintenance workers dealing with walking on the train tracks and dealing with the high voltage lethal third rail, is the lone BART station agent who has increasingly been assaulted by members of the riding public, who experience real or perceived slights from a transit system that over charges and under-serves them.

SEIU 1021 was aware of this history and public perception yet did not do the public education they needed to make their working conditions share common ground with the riding publics commuting conditions. This education should have commenced one full year before the start of bargaining. Better yet it should be done as a component of organizing their membership internally in a permanent program. Compare this with the California Nurses Association’s approach. CNA has been able to garner the most support in their campaigns when they have made the working conditions of registered nurses the quality care conditions of the patients left in their charge. The slogan “RN’s are patient advocates” was not an accidental slogan. They sent their member nurses out to talk at senior centers, community groups and anyone else that would listen about how hospital administrators cutting corners is not just about the nurses losing pay or working harder but forcing them to make mistakes, which they were unwilling to carry out, causing injury or death to their patients. CNA has worked on this for years and not just during contract bargaining and a large section of the public now believe this. In many polls on public perception of public workers registered nurses consistently ranked highest as most well liked and trusted. The only group with a higher ranking is firefighters.

Can we not imagine how different things may have played out in the media if BART employees were looked upon by the riding public as mass transit advocates? As advocates who wanted to build an efficient, safe, affordable, public alternative system of commuting to the grid-lock of private automobiles, and the privilege of the private Google buses that the 99% has no ability to ride on. Ironically this mantle is currently held by the President of the BART board of directors; Tom Radulovich, who took a hard line against the workers’ demands through much of the negotiations. He is the resident mass transit advocate and environmentalist. He has held this position for many years not only because he does believe in mass transit as an environmental option, but because the unions have conceded this mantle to him by not speaking out and claiming it for themselves. In another twist of irony the only person quoted against the new policy of allowing bicycles on BART trains at all hours was Antoinette Bryant, president of ATU 1555, representing the train conductors. She was cast as the dissenting voice against all the environmentalist and public transit advocates at the end of the strike.

In sum, one of the problems with ATU and SEIU’s public campaign was that they seemed not to have a vision of how to improve public transit or that they even cared about it. That how the BART system works was part of union’s vision too. We do not want to imply that health care workers or teachers have always paid attention to the concerns of those we serve, but we are getting better and our thoughts on how to make the systems we work under and the same system that serves the public has to be part of our discussion with the membership. Our contract demands including our working conditions must be related to what the public gets from us. A teacher’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions is one of our union slogans, comparable to the one for the nurse’s mentioned.

Where was the media strategy?
More important, we need to have enough media savvy to bring our ideas to the public and the best people to do this is our working members. All during the strike the unions seemed not to have any communication strategy and the spokespeople who were paraded before the media seemed unprepared. Often the best quotes came from workers interviewed extemporaneously. There was no visible, planned, regular alternative outreach done directly to riders or what could have been a wider base of community support. Under this condition, the mainstream media’s bias was amplified.

Management became the spokespeople for the pain and suffering of the riding public during the strike. Many Democratic Party politicians and the mainstream media jumped on this bandwagon highlighting the inconvenience of the strike, overwhelmingly placing blame on the unions, subverting the recalcitrance of management which gave both ATU and SEIU no other option, forcing them to strike. SEIU did not do much educational outreach to their poorer union cousins in the private sector, who were often also part of their ridership. This was particularly disappointing because SEIU has a long history of good coalition work with community groups and collaboration with other unions and they could have easily done this, months in advance of the strike. With the funds they paid Mosher and Mooney they could have put tens of organizers and members on the ground to carry it out. Instead they went through the normal channels of strike support, from the Central Labor Councils and the California Labor Federation. These bodies are detached from working rank and file members, and sound bites from their leaders can’t be the only source of communication about a labor struggle, where direct sacrifice is required, in the cause of solidarity. In a last minute effort when the strike was already in full swing, some members of SEIU set up meetings with community groups through Jobs with Justice to discuss the issues of the strike with community members. This was a noble effort but too little, too late. If this outreach started earlier it would have spread beyond the usual suspects.

What Next?
The strike is now over and there’s a contract in place for a few years and it seems to be a fair contract, but came at a heavy cost; two dead workers and an unpopular strike. The worse thing the unions could do is to be lulled into inaction until the next contract. The war against public transit workers is still on. Management has already hinted about a fare increase and guess who the media and politicians will blame? Should we let the riders believe that a large fare increase, with no increase in service, is solely due to the SEIU/ATU getting a mildly decent contract? Politicians, with the backing of business and media are again clamoring for the prohibition of transit strikes, with no mention of binding mediation requirements to give the unions some impartiality, in top down changes. We hope that SEIU and ATU realizes that the war is not over and start retooling to deal with these attacks and mobilize all their public sector workers on constant alert. The attack to dismantle public sector services, including mass transit, has just started.