SEIU appears in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a recurring reference point in discussions of public sector union power rather than as the subject of a dedicated treatment. The excerpts mention the union in passing — as a comparator to other unions, as an employer of future legislators, and as one of the unions at issue in Janus v. AFSCME — while the surrounding arguments concern agency fees, pension liabilities, and union political influence.
Union power and California politics
In the 2013 episode on California government, Bob Zadek introduced a clip of testimony that he described as coming from the California Public Employees Union during a budget hearing on funding for home healthcare workers. In the clip, a union representative said that the union’s backing had helped many Democrats get into office who would not have done so without the assistance of the Homecare Workers Union, adding: “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory. And come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll help to get you out of office.” Zadek framed the exchange as illustrating what elected officials in California have to deal with California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government (2013).
Guest Steve Greenhut argued that the situation was worse than that, because Democratic leadership now comes directly out of the union movement itself. He cited John Pérez, the Assembly Speaker, as a United Food and Commercial Workers organizer, and Darrell Steinberg as a former SEIU attorney, saying that the ranks of Democratic legislators come right from the public sector unions California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government (2013). Greenhut also described a school board meeting he attended in Fullerton, where roughly three members of the public and a couple of reporters were present alongside about 50 or 60 union members in union T-shirts standing at the back of the room, shouting and pounding their fists over an outsourcing issue.
On pensions, Greenhut said that unfunded pension liabilities are legally binding promises that taxpayers are on the hook to pay, and that the average public employee is a millionaire in the sense that he would need millions in the bank to have an equivalent pension. He said the unfunded liabilities are killing municipalities, citing the $4.5 billion extra going into the general fund for payments to CalPERS and CalSTRS, and said cities like Stockton have to pay so much for retiree benefits that they have no money left for services to current residents California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government (2013).
Private prisons and the prison guards union
In the 2015 episode with Lucy Steigerwald on the drug war and private prisons, the discussion turned to which parts of the prison system profit from incarceration. Zadek argued that the prison industry is dominated by the various prison guard unions, and that the most powerful public service union in the entire country is not SEIU — “they are rookies compared to the California Prison Guards Union.” He said the prison guards union was responsible for California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law because it was good for business, and encourages solitary confinement because isolation requires three times the manpower of prison guards Lucy Steigerwald on The Drug War and Private Prisons (2015).
Steigerwald agreed that public sector workers have incentives to perpetuate policies their livelihoods depend on, and extended the point to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Prisons staff. She argued that private prisons are not meaningfully different from the public system: a company on its own cannot determine that a law has been violated and send someone to prison, so “this idea that private prisons are really private is false.” Zadek responded that private prisons operate under standards set forth by government and are subject to their contract with the government, and that abuse in a private prison receives disproportionate media attention compared with a public prison such as Rikers Island, which he described as a hellhole and like the Inquisition in its cruelty Lucy Steigerwald on The Drug War and Private Prisons (2015).
Janus v. AFSCME
In the 2018 episode, Zadek introduced Janus v. AFSCME as the Supreme Court’s much-anticipated decision from the term that had just ended. He described the case as asking whether public sector unions — “teachers, SEIU, and the like,” the unions representing workers in government employment as opposed to private — could compel a government worker who did not want to join the union to pay agency fees or fair share fees, a portion of what would otherwise be union dues, to support the union’s contract negotiations and contract enforcement efforts The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Zadek set out the arguments on both sides. In favor of compulsory payment, he said, was the free rider problem: if the union negotiated a higher salary, the benefit would go to the non-payer as well as the payer, so workers should not get the benefit of union negotiation without paying anything. On the other side, some workers argued that they were paying for the unions to promote political points of view they did not agree with, while the unions responded that members were only paying a portion of dues allocated to contract negotiations, not for compelled speech. Zadek said the Court decided 5-4, with Justice Alito writing for the majority, the more conservative justices supporting Alito’s position and the more progressive judges dissenting The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018). The decision, he said, caused a furor in the media.
Zadek introduced his guest Jonathan Tasini as an outspoken critic of AFSCME and a long-time supporter of workers’ rights in the marketplace, a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders in the last presidential campaign who had appeared on CNN. Zadek said the two would discuss the merits and issues behind the Janus decision on policy grounds rather than the legal precedent or whether it was decided soundly on free speech grounds The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Across episodes: what changed
The excerpts do not show a development in the treatment of SEIU across the three episodes. The 2013 California episode touches the union through Greenhut’s mention of Darrell Steinberg as a former SEIU attorney and through the union-testimony clip; the 2015 episode mentions SEIU only as a comparison in Zadek’s claim that the California prison guards union is more powerful; and the 2018 episode lists SEIU among the public sector unions at issue in Janus v. AFSCME. Each reference is brief and serves an argument about public sector union power, agency fees or pension obligations rather than about SEIU itself.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when SEIU was founded, how many members it has, what industries it represents beyond the references to government employment and home healthcare, or how its internal governance works. They do not describe SEIU’s official position on Janus v. AFSCME or its response to the decision, beyond Zadek’s general statement that unions argued agency fees covered only contract negotiations rather than compelled speech. They do not identify the California Public Employees Union clip’s speaker by name or state the outcome of the budget hearing it came from. Nothing in the excerpts establishes whether the home healthcare workers referenced in the 2013 episode were SEIU members or belong to another union.