Union wants city workers to have right to campaign
City employees want some sway over municipal elections — or at least the union representing a fraction of City Hall's workforce would like its members to be able to campaign for or donate to City Council or mayoral candidates.
As it stands, city workers are barred from taking a role in municipal campaigns, except for police and fire employees and City Council aides. The only way they can participate is by voting in an election.
“I think we all can agree that every person should have the right to have a full voice, the full citizenship rights of every other person in this community,” said Guillermo Vazquez, area field services director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME.
“Workers just want to have that full-fledged right to use their voice like in any other democratic process,” Vazquez added.
Allowing city workers to participate in council and mayoral races potentially would get candidates to pay more attention to issues affecting employees. Vazquez said those include old city trucks that don't have adequate air conditioning and female Convention Center workers' allegations that they were harassed on the job by male supervisors.
The change would require amending the city charter, a process that has been underway since late last year.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg did not include municipal employee political activity as one of the issues he wants his Charter Review Commission to study. The committee is working to devise a list of recommended amendments to the charter.
The mayor and the City Council will decide this summer whether to place the proposed amendments on the November ballot.
AFSCME, the union pushing the campaign-related proposal, counts 457 city employees as members. It has no collective bargaining power, unlike the unions that represent more than 4,500 police and fire employees. (The city employs a total of 13,700 people.)
The union found an ally in District 2 City Council Member Jalen Mckee-rodriguez, who urged the 15-member commission to take up the matter in a Feb. 1 memo.
“We would encourage the committee to support city employees' right to participate in the election of candidates they support, in their free time without use of city resources,” the East Side representative wrote. “While an employee may choose for a myriad of reasons not to engage publicly, they should have the right to make that decision for themselves.”
Prohibitions
State law allows uniform police and fire employees to “engage in a political activity relating to campaign for an elective office” when they are not on active duty and not in uniform. The only restriction is that police and fire employees can only solicit campaign contributions for a candidate from “members of an employee organization to which that person belongs.” Read: a police or fire union.
State law also bars any city employee from supporting or working on campaigns on city time or using city resources.
AFSCME would like municipal employees to be able to do paid or unpaid work for a municipal campaign, Vazquez said, but he anticipates most employees would contribute their support as volunteers.
Mckee-rodriguez said he'd asked Nirenberg to include a review of the section of the charter that outlines various prohibitions on civil service employees as part of the Charter Review Commission's work. He said he was disappointed that it didn't make the final charge, which Nirenberg unveiled in mid-november.
“Essentially it comes down to fairness and equality for all of our city employees and their ability to exercise their First Amendment rights,” Mckee-rodriguez said.
District 6 Council Member Melissa Cabello Havrda also flagged the charter prohibitions in a Jan. 11 memo to Nirenberg as something she wants the commission to tackle.
Mckee-rodriguez decided to press the issue after Nirenberg broadened the commission's scope in late January to include a review of how and when council members can call a special meeting.
“For me that was a signal that OK, I guess they can look at other things,” he said.
Section 78 of the city charter broadly defines prohibitions on civil service employees. They can't contribute to campaigns or take “part in the management or affairs or political campaign of any candidate for City office, other than for their own candidacy or campaign.”
That covers attending a campaign event, block walking, writing an op-ed in support of a candidate, posting in support of a candidate on a personal social media account or driving someone to the polls to vote for a specific candidate, according to an administrative directive that the city's Human Resources Department sends employees around election time.
Austin and Houston do not have such restrictions for city workers, Vasquez said.
But could lifting the restrictions open up employees to retaliation from sitting officials or city management were they to support an opponent?
San Antonio operates under a council-manager form of government, where the city manager handles municipal operations and budgets and the mayor and council set policy and oversee the city manager — and also approve all major budget decisions.
What if city workers were to campaign for an opponent of a sitting council member or mayor?
Vasquez said potential retaliation isn't a concern of his. The city code prohibits managers from trying to sway their subordinates from supporting a particular candidate, he said. And if that doesn't provide enough protection, “we have the media and the public to come forward and make sure that doesn't happen.”
Uphill battle
Getting the Charter Review Commission to act on Section 78, however, will be an uphill battle.
Commissioners won't take up any matters outside of what the mayor has asked them to focus on — at least until they finish work on the mayor's agenda, said co-chair Bonnie Prosser Elder. That includes whether to boost council members' salaries, to free the city manager from the salary and tenure caps that voters imposed in 2018 and to expand the number of council districts.
“We have to do the work that's listed in the charge,” Prosser Elder told the Express-news.
The commission's schedule only leaves a few meetings in late May for any consideration of what she called “parking lot issues” — proposals not on Nirenberg's agenda.
Vazquez isn't deterred. He plans to lobby the commission himself March 4 about employee participation in municipal elections. That will be the first time residents will be able to share their thoughts during the public comment portion of the commission meeting.