SEIU1000 Pres Elect Richard Brown On Election, Privatization, Democrats & SEIU

SEIU 1000 president elect Richard Lewis Brown talks about his election and his views about politics, the Democrats, the SEIU and corruption. He reports that police were illegally called to his home a day after he was elected on a false charge to threaten him.
He also discusses how the bureaucratization of the union and
the attacks by former governor Jerry Brown and present governor Gavin Newsom have angered him and the membership.
Governor Newsom he reports has outsourced jobs that state employees can do to his wealthy friends and lobbyists while attacking the wages and pensions of state workers.
He also reports that the outgoing SEIU 1000 leadership are planning to vote to give $1 million to the campaign against
the recall of Gavin Newsom before he takes office and this is being done without consulting the membership.
This interview was done on 5/29/21

Additional media:
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https://youtu.be/cEhNQwwSPGU

SEIU 2012 Convention SMART Report-Real Issues Covered Up By "Henry Team”
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CA SEIU 6434 CA United Long-Term Care Workers-out Against Corruption
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SEIU 6434 CA LTHW Homecare Workers Speak-out Against Corruption,
This video is about the speakout in Oakland, California by members of CA SEIU 6434 CA Long Term Homecare Workers LTHW Speak-out Against Corruption
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Andy Stern Responds to Critics of His Post-SEIU Career Including Joining Union Busting Privatizer's Board Of The Broad Center
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13608/is_andy_stern_selling_out_by_working_for_school_reform_group_private_equity/

SEIU CA Homecare Workers Speak Out About Corruption By Tyrone Freeman & SEIU Andy Stern
https://youtu.be/rgS16THF4Kk

"Stop Rigging The Election!" SEIU1021 Oakland Workers Demand Union Democracy In Midst Of Covid Virus
https://youtu.be/Ts9QZI_wMZM

SEIU1021 Oakland City Chapter Elections, Mergers, Temps, Nooses And Representation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4RHNaUl9zw&t=6s

Rigged Election In SEIU 1021 Run By Global Election Services? Members Demand New Election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cFP0pw3fg

SEIU Pres Mary Kay Henry - Members and Leaders Say Set Aside The Rigged Election In SEIU 1021!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhuMVG0kidY&t=19s

"Stealth Election" Issues Facing SEIU UHW in 2014 Election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11wo3plRb9I

SEIU Local 1021 Members Demand A Fair Election"
https://www.change.org/p/service-seiu-local-1021-members-demand-a-fair-election?
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Demo Gov Newsom Privatizing Public Healthcare With No Bid Contracts For Cronies
Newsom's reliance on Big Tech in pandemic undermines public health system, critics say

In his first year as governor, the year before the pandemic, Newsom denied a budget request from California’s 61 local public health departments to provide $50 million in state money per year to help rebuild core public health infrastructure — which had been decimated by decades of budget cuts — despite warnings from his own public health agency that the state wasn’t prepared for what was coming.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Newsom-s-reliance-on-Big-Tech-in-pandemic-16161367.php

Angela Hart
May 8, 2021
FILE - In this March 17, 2020, file photo, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gives an update to the state's response to the coronavirus, at the Governor's Office of Emergency Services in Rancho Cordova Calif. At right is California Health and Human Services Agency Director Dr. Mark Ghaly. In November 2020, California is reaching an unwelcome coronavirus record: its 1 millionth positive test. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, Pool, File)
FILE - In this March 17, 2020, file photo, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gives an update to the state's response to the coronavirus, at the Governor's Office of Emergency Services in Rancho Cordova Calif. At right is California Health and Human Services Agency Director Dr. Mark Ghaly. In November 2020, California is reaching an unwelcome coronavirus record: its 1 millionth positive test. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, Pool, File)Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press 2020

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced Silicon Valley tech companies and health care industry titans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic like no other governor in America — routinely outsourcing life-or-death public health duties to his allies in the private sector.
At least 30 tech and health care companies have received lucrative, no-bid government contracts, or helped fund and carry out critical public health activities during the state’s battle against the coronavirus, a KHN analysis has found. The vast majority are Newsom supporters and donors who have contributed more than $113 million to his political campaigns and charitable causes, or to fund his policy initiatives, since his first run for statewide office in 2010.
For instance, the San Francisco-based software company Salesforce — whose CEO, Marc Benioff, is a repeat donor and is so tight with the governor that Newsom named him the godfather of his first child — helped create My Turn, California’s centralized vaccine clearinghouse, which has been unpopular among Californians seeking shots and has so far cost the state $93 million.
Verily Life Sciences, a sister company of Google, another deep-pocketed Newsom donor, received a no-bid contract in March 2020 to expand COVID testing — a $72 million venture that the state later retreated on. And after Newsom handed another no-bid testing contract — now valued at $600 million — to OptumServe, its parent company, national insurance giant UnitedHealth Group dropped $100,000 into a campaign account he can tap to fight the recall effort against him.
Newsom’s unprecedented reliance on private companies — including health and technology start-ups — has come at the expense of California’s overtaxed and underfunded public health system. Current and former public health officials say Newsom has entrusted the essential work of government to private-sector health and tech allies, hurting the ability of the state and local health departments to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future threats.
“This outsourcing is weakening us. The lack of investment in our public health system is weakening us,” said Flojaune Cofer, a former state Department of Public Health epidemiologist and senior director of policy for Public Health Advocates, which has lobbied unsuccessfully for years for more state public health dollars.
“These are companies that are profit-driven, with shareholders. They’re not accountable to the public,” Cofer said. “We can’t rely on them helicoptering in. What if next time it’s not in the interest of the business or it’s not profitable?”
Kathleen Kelly Janus, Newsom’s senior adviser on social innovation, said the governor is “very proud of our innovative public-private partnerships,” which have provided “critical support for Californians in need during this pandemic.”
State Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly echoed the praise, saying private-sector companies have filled “important” roles during an unprecedented public health crisis.
The state’s contract with OptumServe has helped dramatically lower COVID test turnaround times after
a troubled start. Another subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, OptumInsight, received $41 million to help California rescue its outdated infectious disease reporting and monitoring system last year after it crashed.
“Not only are we much better equipped on all of these things than we were at the beginning, but we are also seeing some success,” Ghaly said, “whether it’s on the vaccination front, which has really picked up and put us in a place of success, or just being able to do testing at a broad scale. So, I feel like we’re in a reasonable position to continue to deal with COVID.”
The federal government finances most public health activities in California and significantly boosted funding during the pandemic, but local health departments also rely on state and local money to keep their communities safe.
In his first year as governor, the year before the pandemic, Newsom denied a budget request from California’s 61 local public health departments to provide $50 million in state money per year to help rebuild core public health infrastructure — which had been decimated by decades of budget cuts — despite warnings from his own public health agency that the state wasn’t prepared for what was coming.
After the pandemic struck, Newsom and state lawmakers turned awayanother budget request to support the local health departments driving California’s pandemic response, this time for $150 million in additional annual infrastructure funding. Facing deficits at the time, the state couldn’t afford it, Newsom said, and federal help was on the way.
Yet COVID cases continued to mount, and resources dwindled. Bare-bones staffing meant that some local health departments had to abandon fundamental public health functions, such as contact tracing, communicable disease testing and enforcement of public health orders.
“As the pandemic rages on and without additional resources, some pandemic activities previously funded with federal Cares Act resources simply cannot be sustained,” a coalition of public health officials warned in a late December letter to Newsom and legislative leaders.
Newsom has long promoted tech and private companies as a way to improve government, and has leaned on the private sector throughout his political career, dating to his time as San Francisco mayor from 2004 to 2011, when he called on corporations to contribute to his homelessness initiatives.
And since becoming governor in January 2019, he has regularly held private meetings with health and tech executives, his calendars show, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“We’re right next door to Silicon Valley, of course, so technology is our friend,” Newsom wrote in his 2013 book, “Citizenville,” arguing that “government needs to adapt to this new technological age.”
With California’s core public health infrastructure already gutted, Newsom funneled taxpayer money to tech and health companies during the pandemic or allowed them to help design and fund certain public health activities.
Other industries have jumped into COVID response, including telecommunications and entertainment, but not to the degree of the health and technology sectors.
“It’s not the ideal situation,” said Daniel Zingale, who has steered consequential health policy decisions under three California governors, including Newsom. “What is best for Google is not necessarily best for the people of California.”
Among the corporate titans that have received government contracts to conduct core public health functions is Google’s sister company Verily.
Google and its executives have given more than $10 million to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns and special causes since 2010, according to state records. It has infiltrated the state’s pandemic response: The company, along with Apple, helped build a smartphone alert system called CA Notify to assist state and local health officials with contact tracing, a venture Newsom hailed as an innovative, “data-driven” approach to reducing community spread. Google, Apple and Facebook are sharing tracking data with the state to help chart the spread of COVID. Google — as well as Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and other platforms — also contributed millions of dollars in free advertising to California, in Newsom’s name, for public health messaging.
Other companies that have received lucrative contracts to help carry out the state’s COVID plans include health insurance company Blue Shield of California, which received a $15 million no-bid contract to oversee vaccine allocation and distribution, and the private consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which has received $48 million in government contracts to boost vaccinations and testing and work on genomic sequencing to help track and monitor COVID variants. Together, they have given Newsom more than $20 million in campaign and charitable donations since 2010.
Private companies have also helped finance government programs and core public health functions during the pandemic — at times bypassing local public health departments — under the guise of making charitable or governmental contributions, known as “behested paymentss,” in Newsom’s name. They have helped fund vaccination clinics, hosted public service announcements on their platforms, and paid for hotel rooms to safely shelter and quarantine homeless people.
Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic organization started by Facebook founder Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have been among the most generous, and have given $36.5 million to Newsom, either directly or to causes and policy initiatives on his behalf. Much of that money was spent on pandemic response efforts championed by Newsom, such as hotel rooms and child care for front-line health care workers; computers and internet access for kids learning at home; and social services for incarcerated people leaving prison because of COVID outbreaks.
Facebook said it is also partnering with the state to deploy pop-up vaccination clinics in hard-hit areas like the Central Valley, Inland Empire and South Los Angeles.
In prepared statements, Google and Facebook said they threw themselves into the pandemic response because they wanted to help struggling workers and businesses in their home state, and to respond to the needs of vulnerable communities.
Kaiser Health News writers Elizabeth Lucas and Samantha Young contributed to this report.
Angela Hart writes for California Healthline, is a service of the California Health Care Foundation produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Letter From Former Cal-OSHA Staffer Garrett Brown

Dear Colleagues: The vacancy rate of unfilled field inspector positions at Cal/OSHA has doubled since Governor Gavin Newsom took office in January 2019.

The vacancy rate was 12.5% in February 2019, but in April 2021 (the latest statistics available) the rate is 25.5% -- see the attached summary charts.

There were 64 vacant positions for Cal/OSHA compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs) as of April 1, 2021. In addition to field inspector positions, there are critical vacancies in key manager positions in District Offices, both District Managers and Senior Safety Engineers in the district office.

The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) claims that it has filled 30 CSHO positions since last fall – but a position-by-position comparison of the “organization charts” of Cal/OSHA show that between November 2020 and April 2021 only 10 CSHO positions were filled by new hires from outside the Division. Four of the 10 positions are in the Mining & Tunneling unit.

In March 2021, DIR ended a 25-year-old practice of issuing the six-page “organization charts” generated monthly by Cal/OSHA’s human resources staff and released in the first week of the month. Instead, DIR is now withholding the staffing information until the following month. The purpose of delaying the release of the staffing information and in a different format is unclear.

In July 2021, Cal/OSHA is scheduled for a budget increase to add an additional 70 field inspectors, including approximately 40 industrial hygienists to conduct “health” inspections related to chemical exposures, noise, ergonomics, and communicable diseases like Covid. This increase was made dependent by the enabling legislation on DIR filling all CSHO vacancies in Cal/OSHA by July 1st. It is unknown what will happen with the Cal/OSHA budget and staffing increase if the 60+ vacancies are not filled in the next five weeks.

In addition to CSHOs, Cal/OSHA is riddled with vacancies in the Legal Unit (38% vacancy rate in April), and in the Consultation Service (17% in field consultants and the top two program positions have been vacant for years).

The lack of hiring and failure to make internal promotions has weakened Cal/OSHA protections for the state’s 19 million workers in the midst of the pandemic, and now as workplaces reopen throughout the state.

Best, Garrett Brown