LOCAL 347’S LATEST FIASCO IS ANIMALISTIC

By “The Anonymous Animal”

At Monday’s Board of Animal Services Commissioners meeting, Julie Butcher and her SEIU Local 347 crew went off on a misguided tangent on behalf of Department of Animal Services management that turned into an embarrassing display of unprofessional behavior on taxpayer time.

As was recently posted on Sister City, L.A.’s animal activist community is unhappy with the performance and attitude of the department’s general manager, Guerdon Stuckey, who’s just completed his first year in the position. Most mainstream humane activists are vociferously unhappy, while the more extreme versions have taken to the streets, demonstrating at events attended by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and elsewhere. The most extreme, the so-called “underground,” have committed several acts of vandalism and harassment in the last couple of months.

Their gripes: lousy customer service, a too-eager willingness to kill animals in the City’s shelters for space-saving purposes or as the “medical” treatment of first resort (despite a modestly declining euthanasia rate), low morale amongst a divided department workforce, a bunker mentality approach to dealing with the city’s active animal rescue community, and the open defiance of laws, department policies, the Animal Services Commission and even Mayor Villaraigosa’s office by Stuckey and his key staffers. Add to that their unhappiness for Villaraigosa for behaving like a disinterested doormat in the face of all this and you have the recipe for a disaster in the making.

It all boiled over Monday, when Butcher, clearly in league with Stuckey, led a cadre of department staffers (many in uniform) to the Commission meeting in City Hall. Their mission was to express public support for Stuckey before commissioners who, they had been told (by Stuckey & Co.) demeaned department staff during policy discussions and were unhappy with Stuckey’s job performance. They also felt the commissioners were “in the pocket” of the extreme activists.

Problem is, few of these department staffers had been to Commission meetings during the Stuckey era, so their only knowledge of what was happening at them came from department management. Another problem, and perhaps a more serious one: their participation in the meeting quickly deteriorated into an unruly display of rudeness, catcalling, muttered profanity and the recitation of party line, pro-Stuckey talking points during public comment period. Worse, a number of the department staffers were there on orders from their supervisors, on duty, wasting taxpayer money even though they had no other business with the Commission other than to glorify the boss and, it turned out, embarrass the Commission and themselves.

An observer reminded this writer how pathetic it is that these workers would carry Stuckey’s water when he routinely calls his staff unprepared or ill-equipped to carry out various assignments he’s given by the Commission. Perhaps workers disinclined to extend extra effort appreciate their boss going to bat for them. Or perhaps they don’t know enough to know any better when ordered to spend their work hours shilling for him when he throws them under the bus whenever he thinks it will provide him with an excuse to defy a Commission that has the legal authority to direct his activities.

In the meantime, what is Local 347’s role in all this? Apart from the fundamental question of why the union would be so firmly in bed with a general manager who is so readily critical of its members, how can the local make its demands for a better City contract credible when negotiations start next year if it’s so eager to aid and abet its members when they’re engaging in these activities on company time instead of doing their jobs?

A look at the 347 website reveals that it is actively involved in organizing further actions by Animal Services workers. A December 1 meeting is set to review what they did at the November 14 Commission meeting and plan next steps. A rabble-rousing electronic newsletter, “Basta Ya,” is featured, containing exhortations that could have been written by Stuckey’s personal PR person. And Butcher herself has taken to writing letters to the Commission and City Council on behalf of Stuckey.

This is what organized labor has come to in City Hall? It makes you wonder why the Council and Villaraigosa are so slavishly devoted to their union friends when labor bosses are going to spend so much time helping management types who aren’t even members. What happened to the workers themselves? Department management says they’re incompetent and Butcher defends management while Villaraigosa twiddles his thumbs.

Obviously this is a story with more chapters to be written. Most of the animal activists who were present at the Commission meeting were appalled at the show Stuckey and 347 put on. Word is spreading like wildfire through humane community e-mail chains and the Mayor is being challenged to find his backbone before it’s too late. Coming on the heels of a “60 Minutes” interview with L.A.-based radical activist Jerry Vlasek (who said he “understood” why extremists might want to kill someone on behalf of their cause), the timing of this escalation by Stuckey, Butcher and crew probably couldn’t have been worse.