Excerpts from
The Rag Times
Volume One, Number
Five
social service employees union (sseu)
March 4-10, 1974
BEFORE WE GO OUT...
1. Why isn't the legal staff of the AFL-CIO Service Employees International Union fighting the proposed termination of cumulative sick leave and Election Day holidays through the Courts? In 1970 after the last city strike, Mayor Alioto admitted that the proposed deletion of Civil Service increments, which spun many workers into the picket lines, was not legally tenable as shown by a court decision in Nevada in 1943.
2. If all city workers are asked to honor the picket lines, why can't all city workers vote on striking?
3. Is a person not a member of a striking union who decides to come to work a scab?
4. If someone walks through the line, will there be violence, or will the right of individual choice be respected?
5. Will all aspects of negotiation between the AFL-CIO and City Management be made public?
6. The Board of Supervisors is presently asking each City department to cut back on personnel by 10%. It is stated by you that the City would be losing "potential qualified employees". Are such employees of temporary status, or are they those who would be potentially hirable? How would such a strike prevent layoffs or hiring?
7. Does SEIU have a strike fund? If so would this fund be available to all who went out on strike?
8. How can SEIU expect non-members of SEIU unions to honor or support their strike when they supported and pushed through an ordinance which would not have joint collective bargaining? As the Employee Relations Ordinance stands, where SEIU will have exclusive bargaining rights, non-SEIU unions and independent individuals will have their rights of representation curtailed and will not be able to negotiate their working conditions or standards of living. Should workers adversely affected by such an Ordinanace be expected to support those who actively supported it?
9. Will the Municipal Railway go out in support this year? When they did not work in the 1970 strike, they lost four days' pay. These questions have been posted to the SEIU Joint Council with invitation for comments. Responses will be printed in THE RAG TIMES.
—Herb Weiner, x5934
STRIKE...WHAT STRIKE?
Last Tuesday morning my supervisor stopped by my desk.
"Do you plan to work during the Strike?"
"What Strike?"
"Local 400 is striking because the Civil Service Commission wants to take back Election Day as a paid holiday"
"If I work will I get time-and-a-half?"
"No, but if you don't work you won't get paid at all."
"What if I get sick ... for real?"
"You can't get sick when there's a strike."
Oh.
Local 96 (AFSCME) has been reminding me for many weeks, with Kentucky Fried Chicken. ballpoint pens, and balloons, that Collective Bargaining Unit elections are going to have to take place sooner or later, and they'd really like me to vote for them. The AFL-CIO hasn't fed me or ballooned me, but it looks like they do intend to give me something to remember them by: either time off the job without pay, or the experience of crossing a picket line for the first time in my life.
Of course, they do have a good issue: if we don't get election day off. we may not bother to go out and vote their boy Joe into the Governor's Mansion. However, with the money the city saves from strikers' salaries, they'll be able to give us election day off, and we will gratefully give both Joe and the AFL-CIO our vote at their respective polls.
"Your name is on the list."
"What list?"
"The list of people who'll be allowed to cross the picket line."
"Who's allowing me to cross the picket line? Who gets that list?"
"Oh, I don't know. The Administration, I guess."
Oh.
—Rachel Heyman
Eligibility Worker
SFGH
THE GRINDSTONE
If your nose is close
to the grindstone rough,
And you keep it there long enough,
In time you'll think there is no such thing
As brooks that babble and birds that sing.
These three will all your
world compose---
Just you, the stone, and your silly old nose,
—Submitted by Ferdinand Fabian
