Candidate for
Democratic Party County Central Committee; Assembly District 9

This is not a full biography. That would be a major task. I only want to give a very small slice of it. I am active in CSEA, Seiu Local 1000, and have been very active in the organizing campaigns for the last 14 years (I was less active for about 7 years before that). I was an alternate member of the Civil Service Division Bargaining Unit 1 Negotiating Committee from 1990-1992, a District Labor Council President from 1992-1995, I reresented the Civil Service Division on the Statewide Government Affairs Committee 1996-98 (appointed by the Civil Service Division Director), Assistant Regional Director from the Sacramento area 1997-98, and Regional Director (a member of the CSEA Board of Directors) from 1998-2000. I am currently a member of the AD Hoc Information Technology Committee and Secretary of my DLC. I have won a couple of statewide grievances for IT workers, when required to be on call and work from home with a computer.

I strongly believe not only in unions but in my own union, and have always fought for contract improvements and pay raises. I have authored more than one resolution for state worker pay raises, and even got a change to the Democratic State Platform, when Wilson was Governor, adding a sentence in favor of an independent civil service for public employees. That may become important again some day when we get a governor who opposes basic employement rights for state workers. I could not have gotten the platform committee to win this change without the strategic help of Steve Baker and David Low(a member of the platform committee from the School Employees Association).

About unions, I think it is vitally important that unions support each other and be close to each other, and there not an above or below for union rights. Professionals should not win with employers at the expense of lower level workers, and members should have right and the tools to alter the direction and the leadership of their own union. The AFL-CIO is not perfect, and unions outside of the AFL-CIO are not worthless anti-unions (there may be some particular ones who may be, but generally this is not the judgement we can make). The AFL-CIO is extremely important because it is an organization of labor unions organized to support each other, and it is the vehicle in getting unions to cooperate with each other, and that is the only way unions can succeed and become strong. Working people do not have the concentrated wealth that makes for power and they don't own the production means. It is only by being cooperative in large numbers that they can succeed at all. Unions have been on the decline in numbers of members for many years which is very bad for ordinary people everywhere. Unions are the only power there is that keeps America from being an absolute autocracy of the people who rule the great corporations and have such a disproportionate amount of America's wealth. The more we build unions, the right sort of unions described above, the more open and democratic society we will be. The second great thing we have to fight for comes right from our founding as a Republic, at least in the thought if not in the accomplishment at the beginning. It is the everlasting fight to achieve and and protect civil liberties, but that has to be another subject for another time.