In a series of reports on KDKA-TV News, investigative reporter Andy Sheehan has asked city officials this question: Who is running the City of Pittsburgh? The elected mayor or officials of SEIU Healthcare, the union that is credited by many with getting him elected, spending $350,000 to support his campaign?
After his election, Mayor Ed Gainey appointed SEIU officials to powerful positions in his administration. SEIU vice president and political director Silas Russell was co-chair of the mayor’s transition committee, former SEIU vice president Lisa Frank is now the chief operating officer and former SEIU communications director Maria Montano is the mayor’s press secretary.
Russell has recently guided the mayor’s dealings with UPMC, our region’s largest employer, which SEIU Healthcare has been trying to unionize. According to emails, Russell gave the mayor his talking points for a meeting with UPMC, telling the health care giant that the city’s cooperation on taxes and future development would be conditioned upon favorable treatment for SEIU Healthcare.
Sources told Sheehan that Gainey rejected a UPMC offer of $40 million as a payment in lieu of taxes to the city, because UPMC refused to agree to the union’s demands. That might be politics as usual for the administration and the union. Whether it crosses any legal lines will be for others to decide, but it should be a cautionary note for other candidates who accept the union’s support.
I don’t know Silas Russell, but his pro-labor zeal would have been a big hit in the industrial valley where I grew up. My family fought to unionize the mills and factories along the Monongahela River. A grandfather that I never met was barred for years from the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock because of union activity, only to be killed there in an industrial accident after he was allowed to return.
As for UPMC, it reminds me of U.S. Steel in the old days. We loved to hate the industrial giant — often with good cause — but we knew that we were joined at the hip, that our respective prosperity required both of us to give it our all.
We knew, above everything, that the workers deserved a seat at the table, across from management, with the sides equally matched. But we also knew that neither side should be at the head of the table. That was for our civic leaders, those who could see both sides, who could negotiate and mediate, and find a way for all of us to move forward.
Mayor David L. Lawrence, a Democrat and the father of modern Pittsburgh, faced numerous labor disputes in 1946, his first year as mayor. According to Mike Weber, author of the Lawrence biography “Don’t Call Me Boss,” the mayor “would challenge any group, no matter how politically loyal they had been, if he felt their actions were detrimental to the city.”
Lawrence worked for months to avert a Duquesne Light workers strike, volleying between labor and management. When his efforts failed, and the city was plunged into darkness for 27 days, Lawrence worked both sides relentlessly.
The famous picture of an exhausted Lawrence, asleep at his desk after the settlement of the strike was announced, cemented his national reputation as a civic statesman.
Maybe it’s time for Ed Gainey to realize that he is supposed to be at the head of the table, not taking sides, but mediating the disputes that are holding the city back.
Joseph Sabino Mistick can be reached at misticklaw@gmail.com.
