SEIU Local 1000 to see another contested election next year as VP announces challenge

California state government’s largest public employee union could be headed for another contentious election in the spring, following one three years ago that split SEIU Local 1000’s leadership into two groups that remain divided.

Tony Owens, a union vice president who was elected on a platform of change in May 2018, recently announced his run for the presidency. The union election will be held in May of next year.

Owens was elected as part of a three-candidate slate along with vice presidents Kevin Menager and Anica Walls. The trio’s differences with Yvonne Walker, the union’s president of more than a decade, only deepened after the election.

In a recent interview, Owens said he’ll campaign on his own for the top leadership spot.

“Now that we’ve gone through this process, I have this view of where things need to be changed or improved,” he said. “Right now, my focus is on trying to transform this thing.”

Walker, through a spokesman, declined comment for this story and didn’t say whether she plans to run for re-election.

In past campaigns, Walker, a former U.S. Marine and legal secretary, has emphasized her experience leading the union. She was first elected president in 2008 and guided the union through the Great Recession, when all of the state’s unions navigated difficult relationships with former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The union’s policy file says nominations for elected office must be submitted by the second Monday in February — next year, that’s Feb. 8. Ballots must be received by May 20. The union represents about 100,000 workers in a range of classifications including custodians, office administrators and analysts.

Owens said Walker still hasn’t allowed him or the other vice presidents to take on meaningful leadership roles, forbidding them from accessing critical information about the union’s members, finances and plans.

Walker has said the vice presidents never detailed their plans or visions for the union’s future sufficiently to convince her they should be given union resources. The trio has said they shouldn’t need her blessing to fulfill their duties as elected leaders.

The dispute culminated late last year with a vote by the union’s board of directors to reduce the vice presidents’ union leave time by three-quarters, leaving them one week per month to conduct union business.

The trio has retained an attorney and weighed legal action under California’s corporations code, but so far hasn’t taken formal action, Owens said.

In a recent interview, Owens said that if elected, he would take a more aggressive stance in negotiations than the union did in talks with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration earlier this year.

Most state workers took a base pay cut of 9.23% following negotiations, with details varying from union to union. The agreements gave most workers two flexible days off in exchange for the pay reductions and suspended workers’ contributions to their retirement health care for the duration of the agreements.

Local 1000’s agreement was unique in that it allowed workers to keep health insurance stipends worth about $3,100 per year, and the agreement maintained planned pay increases to bring the union’s lowest-paid workers up to $15 per hour.

“What I’m looking at is how can we do what we do better,” Owens said. “In terms of service to the members, in terms of contract bargaining.”

All of the state’s unions reached agreements with the administration after the Legislature approved budget language saying the state would impose traditional furloughs on unions that didn’t reach agreements. The furloughs likely would have forced workers to take two days off per month, rather than letting them bank the days, and would have had to keep contributing to their retirement health care. Local 1000 workers contribute 3.5% of pay toward the health care.

In videos Walker recorded at the time, she said the reductions were inevitable.

“We knew that at some point they were going to look to us, the state workforce, as they were building the state budget,” she said in one of the videos. “You knew it, I knew it, and yes indeed they did.”

Owens said a priority of his would be to try to get the state to remove the no-strike clause from Local 1000’s contract.

A CalPERS IT specialist, Owens said he would work to make the union more digitally connected. He said state departments should create the digital equivalents of union office bulletin boards, creating similar spaces on state intranet sites.

“These two years, it’s basically been exclusion,” he said. “I think what I’m trying to bring is a different way where we’re being inclusive.”