What are we to make of the California Labor Federation’s decision to put a prominent Bay Area Democratic political consultant on a banned list that includes Wal-Mart, union-busting hotels, and a major donor to Prop 8?
In case, you missed it, consultant Jude Barry was placed on the fed’s “Do Not Patronize” list, a dishonor reserved for who “have been identified as unfair employers and adversaries of the labor movement.”
What was Barry’s sin? Did he work for a strikebreaking firm? No. Did he become a Republican?
No.
Barry’s sin was his involvement in a controversial electronic signature technology.
Barry is one of the founders of a firm called Verafirma, which has developed a technology that makes it possible to circulate initiative petitions and register voters electronically. Whether the technology matches up to the requirements of the law is a subject that’s now before the courts. But it’s very possible that an effective signature-gathering technology, by making it easier and cheaper to gain access to the ballot, offers an opportunity to progressives who would benefit by registering more voters (particularly younger voters) and qualifying initiatives that don’t have big money behind them.
And so far, progressives groups have gravitated to the technology. Sponsors of initiatives to legalize same-sex marriage, regulate and tax marijuana, and replace the 2/3 vote for tax increases and budget bills are experimenting with Verafirma’s electronic signature-gathering technology.
One might expect that union leaders would be doing everything they could to exploit such technology.
The California Labor Federation’s reaction was different. They came down on Barry.
Why? In addition to the three progressive initiatives that are trying out his technology, one conservative group—sponsors of an initiative to limit how unions use their dues on politics – sought to use the technology. Verafirma, as a company that is seeking legal approval for technology that’s going to be used in elections, has chosen to be non-partisan. And so it licensed its technology to that sponsor as well.
That decision alone, the fed’s Steve Smith told me, is what landed Barry on the list. So-called “paycheck protection” measures are a direct threat to labor, and the fed’s members, who were consulted on the decision, take any such measures very seriously.
Said Smith of the fed’s decision: “It’s simply and solely the fact that he made a conscious decision to work with a campaign that is the most anti-union, anti-worker campaign out there.”
Barry, in an email distributed Friday to friends and clients, gave this account:
“As for Verafirma, we lease our technology to legitimate initiative efforts. I personally was not involved in seeking the account in question and do not participate in any way, including any profits that may come from this account. I am one of seven stakeholders in the company and do not have majority interests nor sole discretion over our policies. Nonetheless, I was asked by the California Labor Federation to break our contract with the campaign. To do so without cause would be discriminatory and wrong and something I and the company were not willing to do.”
(Other sources have suggested that there’s more to the story—specifically, a Santa Clara County board of supervisors race that has Barry on one side and some unions on the other.)
I understand labor’s desire to fight “paycheck protection” on all fronts, but this seems like an over-reaction, the kind of kill-a-fly-with-a-hammer action that feeds perceptions of big labor as bullying.
California’s labor movement recently has been consumed by internal warfare. Since the Great Recession began, California has seen nasty, dumb, unproductive fights between different factions of the SEIU and between different factions of Unite HERE. Millions have been wasted on these labor civil wars, as unemployment has soared to 12.5 percent statewide, one of the highest such figures in the country.
Unions should stop fighting their allies and instead devote every minute of the day to efforts to restore the economy and reform the state’s dysfunctional governing system. Nothing else matters in these times.
More political blocking-and-tackling would help too. Consider this very clear expression of labor’s political troubles: In 2010, the nomination of the Democratic party was handed over without a competitive election to a 71-year-old ex-governor who argues that government needs to be downsized (and that the state has all the revenues it needs) at a time when state workers are being furloughed and teachers are being laid off.
Perhaps Jerry Brown could be added to the “Do Not Patronize” list. It makes more sense to ban him than it does to ban Jude Barry.