Major Sacramento labor leader Bill Camp fired over Kevin Johnson's strong mayor initiative
Bill Camp, the outspoken executive secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, has been fired, apparently because of an internal dispute over Kevin Johnson’s strong mayor initiative.
Camp, who has held the job for the last 15 years, and who has become the face of the local labor movement, is still fighting to keep his job. He says the labor council’s board violated its own rules on terminating staff. “Some people say I am fired. Others disagree.”
And the national AFL-CIO is conducting its own investigation of what some are describing as a “coup” in the local labor council.
The Sacramento Central Labor Council is made up of dozens of local labor unions. The people who fired Camp were labor council board president Lino Pedres, with the SEIU Service Workers West Union, and Margarita Maldonado, the labor council board’s recording secretary, who represents SEIU Local 1000.
Camp said he was not told why he was fired. “They just told me ‘you’re fired, clean out your stuff.’”
But events leading up to Camp’s dismissal suggest a power struggle in the local labor movement over the divisive strong mayor proposal Measure L, which will appear on the ballot this fall.
The Sacramento Central Labor Council has historically taken a position against strong mayor. And as executive secretary Bill Camp successfully sued to get strong mayor kicked off the ballot in 2010.
But last week, Mayor Kevin Johnson convinced enough members of the central labor council’s executive board–Camp’s bosses–to recommend that the larger labor council membership vote to endorse Measure L.
But at a subsequent meeting of the larger body of labor council delegates–from more than two dozen local unions–Measure L failed to get enough votes for an endorsement.
Then unions supporting strong mayor included SEIU 1000 (state workers), the fire fighters, sheet metal workers and grocery workers, among others. Opposed were stationary engineers (city workers), teachers, and electrical workers, among others.
The votes were weighted according to the number of members in union, but even with the advantage of SEIU’s 24,000 members–the largest bloc in the Major Sacramento labor leader Bill Camp fired over Kevin Johnson's strong mayor initiative - Page Burner - August 27, 2014 - Blogs - Sacramento News & Review: