City unions out in force to picket Oakland mayor
If the tenor and tactics of the city workers picketing outside Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s annual State of the City address are any indication, she could be in for another rough year.
Schaaf picked the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California as the site of her speech Thursday night to send a message of community inclusion and harmony. Unfortunately for the mayor, the gathering was anything but. Hundreds of unionized city workers blocked Madison Street in front of the center in the hours before Schaaf was to speak, forcing anyone who wanted to go inside to walk a picket-line gantlet.
Those who braved the trek were treated to
shouts of, “Shame!”
“A lot of people were intimidated,” said Payman Amiri, board chairman of the Islamic center.
The unions played another trick on the mayor. In the days leading up to the event, members reserved hundreds of tickets to the speech — then they didn’t show up. When Schaaf spoke, it was to a half-empty hall.
It’s no secret that tensions are running high between Schaaf and the unions. The city has offered a 2 percent a year raise for two years, but the unions are upset that it would not be retroactive to the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
“We are already six months into the year, (so) essentially it would equate to 1 percent in the first year,” said Gary Jimenez, vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, whose members include librarians, police dispatchers, traffic enforcement officers and public works crews.
“Two percent doesn’t even keep up with the cost of living,” he said.
The unions are reaching high — asking for 11 percent over two years.
In the days leading up to Thursday’s speech, Schaaf herself showed up at a bargaining session, telling the unions the city didn’t have that kind of money.
So at the last minute, the unions turned their scheduled “informational” picket line into a sanctioned strike picket. No elected official, including City Council members, dared cross it. In fact, council members Noel Gallo, Abel Guillen and Desley Brooks joined the pickets.
Amiri noted that in addition to hosting the mayor’s speech, the center has a prayer room — and that observant Muslims on their way to evening prayer were among those targeted with the “shame!” shouts.
“All in all, however, it went well inside,” Amiri said.
As for the pickets, he said, “they were doing exactly what democracy is all about.”
Gas fight: Bay Area lawmakers gathered the other day in Dublin for a smiling photo to celebrate the new gas tax and the multibillion-dollar bump in transit spending it means for the state.
“It’s about time,” Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty said to a big round of applause.
Just how long the bump lasts, however, is an open question. Republicans are moving on a November 2018 state initiative to repeal the tax. Democrats who see the tax as a boon for the economy — it would pay for a host of infrastructure improvements — are fighting the GOP plan every step of the way.
It could get ugly for the tax’s backers, however. A Berkeley IGS statewide poll in June found that 58 percent of those surveyed opposed the 12-cent-a-gallon increase.
Even in the usually tax-sympathetic Bay Area, the “no” votes edged out the “yes” side, 46 percent to 45 percent.
And the gas tax comes just as the Legislature has given the go-ahead for a regional measure to raise bridge tolls by up to $2 to pay for additional transportation projects.
Getting the gas tax repeal on the ballot, however, is proving to be a fight in itself. The first round is all about how it will be worded on the ballot, something that can make or break an initiative.
The ballot title and summary approved by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra didn’t even use the word “tax” and instead said the measure would eliminate transportation funding by repealing revenue.
Assemblyman and gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach (Orange County), who is heading the repeal, called that misleading and sued. A Sacramento judge agreed and changed the wording to explicitly state that the measure would roll back gas taxes.
Becerra is appealing, “so we will have to fight it again,” Allen said.
Once the summary fight is settled, Allen and his allies will have 180 days to collect the 366,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify the measure.
In the meantime, Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton (Orange County) is already facing a recall effort for having voted to raise the tax.
So the fight is already on.
All in the family: Assemblyman David Chiu’s longtime aide Judson True is getting married Saturday to attorney Andrea Bruss ,a San Francisco City Hall veteran who just started her new job as an aide to Board of Supervisors President London Breed.
It should make for an interesting life for the newlyweds, because their bosses — Chiu and Breed — are expected to take the plunge themselves and compete for mayor in 2019.