NO PAID OFFICIALS

SSEU picket line 1968

Without the historical experience of unions, union meant the act of uniting and the harmony, agreement, or concord that results from such a joining. Significantly, then, the definition of the word unionize is to cause to join a union; to make to conform to rules, etc. of a union. The beauty of the words harmony, concord, agreement are lost in the oppressive implication of the words to cause to join and to conform to rules, etc. SSEU then, by my experience is a union that does not try to unionize.

I am in union with SSEU as a group of individuals. I am not a member of a union ... I feel that there are many people like myself who don't like listening to the rhetoric, jargon and propaganda of union meetings and union leaders; who don't like organizations or individuals which make unilateral decisions that affect the lives of many people.

Cree Maxon, May 28, 1974, The Rag Times, Vol. 1, No. 16

The Social Service Employees Union of San Francisco appeared in 1966, just as a widespread revolt was sweeping the country. While most people look back at the 60s as a time of urban riots, the anti-Vietnam war movement, hippies, drugs and rock 'n roll, the SSEU represented a now-forgotten convergence of cultural and worker rebellion.

The SSEU aspired to be completely democratic. Its activities were carried on by the workers themselves, on their own time and sometimes on work time. Decisions about union activities were made collectively by both union and non-union members. During its entire existence (between approximately 1966 and 1976) it had no paid officials and signed no contracts with the Welfare Department management.

The 200+ workers involved in SSEU at its peak evolved a unique strategy for improving their own conditions as workers and for challenging the basic authoritarian relations that prevailed (and still prevail) around them. This strategy depended on the diverse and wide-open media they created, consisting of uncensored newspapers and leaflets. It was also based on a dialogue/confrontation process between the workers and their managers, welfare administrators and government officials.

The Trade Union as an Obstacle

In early 1966, some welfare workers banded together to defend co- workers from summary dismissals. They also began formulating and pressing a number of grievances. As soon as workers acted for themselves, however, their union (Building Service Employees International Union BSEIU -- Local 400, which later changed into SEIU) became as much an obstacle to their efforts as their employers.

For example, one of the first grievances raised was over space. People worked at desks jammed together in cramped quarters. When the welfare workers discovered a space code in the state regulations requiring more space-per-worker they wrote letters of complaint to the Social Services Commissioner and the State Dept. of Social Welfare. They gave the letters to their union to send, but found out later that the union hadn't sent either.

Shortly thereafter, the Executive Secretary of the union chastised the welfare workers for sending irate letters to administrators who were his friends and with whom he had political understandings. In response, the workers demanded to have the question of union representation put on the agenda of the next meeting.

The next meeting, obviously stacked by friends of the union's leader who owed him favors, had the largest attendance of any in the local's history. Then-Executive Secretary John Jeffrey pushed measures through which dissolved the union's welfare section, abolished the workers' uncensored Dialog newspaper, barred Dept. of Social Services (DSS) workers' leaflets, and prevented welfare worker members of the union from holding meetings at Local 400's office or electing any union officers to represent their section. About fifty of the affected workers then decided to start an independent union, which was named the Social Service Employees Union (SSEU). 

The Cultural Context

As U.S. prosperity seemed to be peaking and the welfare/warfare state assumed its present enormous size and importance in daily life, millions of people organized themselves in active opposition. Rising expectations and desires quickly exceeded what daily reality had to offer. While many focussed their oppositional energies on specific issues, all kinds of people rejected traditional roles and attitudes and attempted to find new ways to live, work and have fun.

In San Francisco, long a city with a bohemian underground and strong oppositional currents, the "flower children or hippie subculture bloomed and was made famous by the media-hyped Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district in 1967. For many people dropping out of the establishment meant a rejection of regular work. Still faced with the inflexible demands of a money economy, however, these dropouts often turned to the welfare system for survival. As counterculturists came into regular contact with the social workers of the welfare bureaucracy, the two groups began sharing ideas and perspectives. 

Very soon most welfare workers stopped seeing themselves as representatives of the state and the welfare system. Instead, they counseled welfare recipients on how to best take advantage of the system. But more importantly, they spoke out for themselves as workers trying to be creative in their work and helpful to people in need. They went along with the widely-held notion within the SSEU that it was part of a broader movement for fundamental social change. 

Curiously, though, this notion does not seem to have prompted the SSEU to a critique of the welfare system as such. There is little or no mention in its publications of the role of the welfare system in controlling the poor, nor much reference to the welfare workers' own role in maintaining this control. SSEU members challenged specific injustices both in their own condition as workers and in the allocation of benefits to recipients. But they seldom explicitly condemned the social relationships that make welfare necessary. Perhaps the feelings of self-acceptance and satisfaction gained from helping people get benefits largely blinded most SSEUers to the longer-term implications of the work.

The Dialogue

Basing its activities and tactics on the needs and desires of individual workers, the SSEU developed a strategy of non-violent, incessant pressure on the welfare hierarchy. The union eschewed individual acts of insubordination since these usually resulted in firings. Instead they evolved a dialogue/confrontation process, whereby workers would pursue grievances over nearly anything that concerned them via direct spoken or written communication with the pertinent administrators.

The pressure from below created by the dialogue strategy often led to administrative hearings with managers, commissions, the Board of Supervisors, etc. The SSEU demanded and won rights for employees to appear before such hearings to defend their own interests. They also won the right to introduce any evidence or call any witnesses that they felt would support their case.

Although they pursued numerous legal avenues of protest, the SSEU never relied on paid officials to represent the workers involved. Their efforts in the area of commission hearings and dissimilar settings were devoted to allowing people to speak for themselves. And while they would do their best to get as much as possible from the authorities in any given situation, they never signed away any rights (such as the right to strike or to take any other actions to help themselves), nor did they ever agree to stop trying to gain further concessions from management.

Fundamental to the success of the SSEU's strategy was the publicity they created to keep each other, and any interested outsiders, informed about the situation. The monthly newspaper Dialog served as an open forum for the exchange of ideas and information. During most of its existence (1966-74) its policy was to print everything any welfare worker sent in, completely unedited. Later (around 1971) The Rag Times, a weekly 8-page mimeographed news-and- opinion sheet, was created by workers in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) section. Dialog continued to appear concurrently until they both gradually died out around 1974.

For almost five years, a mimeographed leaflet appeared nearly every morning on every desk through five or more welfare office buildings. These leaflets were created by over a hundred different workers, both members and non-members of SSEU, and addressed a wide range of subjects. Individuals would make their grievances known to co-workers and the administration in leaflet form, demand action from management, and then follow up by publicizing the results, or lack of them, in a new leaflet.

This technique puts management in a difficult position. Any heavy-handed reactions will only further the anger and independence of the workers. On the other hand, if they just give in to the demands of the aggrieved worker, other workers will be encouraged to present their grievances and expect immediate results. Exposed like this, authority loses either way.

Direct Action

Equally vital to the SSEU's success was their willingness to take immediate collective action to confront problems. One time, fifty welfare workers left work in mid-morning and went to a Civil Service Commission hearing. All were reprimanded for leaving work, but they were given the right to send five representatives to future Commission hearings.

In another instance of direct action in late summer 1968, twenty-one workers went to the Dept. of Social Services administrative offices to discuss impending layoffs. Although they received 5-10 day suspensions for sitting in the administrative offices for four hours, the layoffs were rescinded.

Some months later, sixty workers participated in a symbolic case-dumping in the office of the division's Assistant Director after a big increase in their workload. Their willingness to do things like this in relatively large groups gave them leverage against intimidated administrators reluctant to challenge them through speedups and other forms of harassment.

Union and Party Attempts to Take Over

The SSEU didn't find the welfare administration to be its only enemy. In early 1968, the same Local 400 of the SEIU which had earlier expelled the welfare section dispatched a paid organizer to recruit members. At that time, the SSEU was growing rapidly, making the administration uneasy. Although the Local 400 organizer didn't have much success with the workers in the Dept. of Social Services, he did manage to recruit some members in other areas of the welfare bureaucracy.

Dialog, and in short order began printing a barrage of pro-"collective bargaining articles and onions (i.e. in favor of affiliating with AFL-CIO, signing a contract with the administration, censoring the newspaper, etc.). And, as is always the case with Leninists, the PLP prevented the publication of any ideas that didn't fit their mold of political correctness.

In the early 70's, the Service Employees International Union created a national local (#535) for federally-employed welfare workers. After some initial success at unionization in the Los Angeles area for Local 535, SF's Local 400 gladly turned over its welfare workers jurisdiction. Local 535 recruited some welfare workers in San Francisco, and soon began a strategy to build the union: a yearly ritual strike, used by Local 535 as a way to gain members and to establish exclusive bargaining rights for itself.

SSEU members, now a dwindling minority in the welfare bureaucracy, found themselves in the awkward position of being against these strikes. This extended passage by welfare worker Judy Erickson from the March 4-10, 1974 edition of The Rag Times, is a telling expression of the practical and emotional effects of this bind:

The yearly morality problem is upon us again. In making a decision not to strike one hopes not to lose friends who feel strongly that to strike is the best tactic to improve conditions. Again I plan not to strike yet I believe in fighting the same injustices as those who plan to strike.

I feel the yearly SEIU strike is programmed by union leaders who currently are battling each other for membership in order to establish more power when collective bargaining units are created. Strike in the past ten years has replaced real organizing and become a method to recruit members. The pattern is: Condense and exert all energy a month or two before salary raises. City Hall anticipates the strike action and so makes their bid impossibly low. Union leaders then respond angrily and have a platform for the media and can speak with outraged moral conviction. They who risk nothing set up and control the proceedings from beginning to end. Finally the strike-which may produce an additional one or two percent. Little precaution, if any, is taken for people involved because it is "scheduled to last only a few days. The possibility that it could go on indefinitely is hardly considered... 

Traditional unions work for conformism, for a mass undifferentiated way of acting, for precisely what we are ordered to do every day for the city and county of San Francisco. It substitutes for real organizing year after year.

Finally, I feel by striking I would reinforce a process which means I could retire in 20 years after 20 strikes and be assured 20 miniscule raises. But by working for change without controllers, I have hope the administrators will one day meet such opposition as transcends even my liveliest imagination.

The SSEU slowly dissolved in the 1970's, like other small independent unions that grew out of the rebellious 60s. The last official SSEU meeting was in 1976. By some accounts the dissolution process began as early as 1970, although different workers still pay dues to this day, and publication continued until 1975.

--Chris Carlsson, originally published in Processed World #4, 1982

Howard Dewitt and Norma Johnson — their dismissals led to the first protests...

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