“RLB Can Suck a Dick”: CalPERS Board VP Theresa Taylor Debases CalPERS, Sneers at Workers and Little People in Unhinged, Factually False Attack on SEIU California President

CalPERS’ misplaced sense of entitlement has sunk to a new low. By telling the head of California’s biggest union to “suck a dick,” in an unprovoked, unhinged, factually false rant, CalPERS board Vice President and Investment Committee chair Theresa Taylor has shown she lacks the professionalism and emotional stability to manage a lemonade stand, let alone act as a steward of over $400 billion in retiree assets.

On top of that, as we will show via texts that she agreed to have made public, Taylor said she cares only about her district labor council, which has on the order of 2200 members.¹ In other words, Taylor has said for the record that she is not concerned about the other 96,000 members of SEIU 1000, the California local, and by extension, the other 1.9 million CalPERS beneficiaries.

Taylor’s repudiation of her fiduciary duties to CalPERS members alone is grounds for demanding her resignation. But on top of that, she has also flagrantly violated the CalPERS Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation Prevention Policy, which we are embedding at the end of this post.

And we are also entirely serious about questioning Taylor’s lack of self control. Her conduct is pathologically, self-, and most important, CalPERS-destructively at odds with the California nice/Democratic party fetishization of polite, low friction interaction.

Now to the “suck a dick” incident. SEIU 1000 staffer Alex Hernandez, on behalf of recently elected President Richard Brown, sent a text to SEIU members to encourage participation in a rally in Sacramento to protest the planned closing of a correctional center, in this case a minimum security prison in Lassen County. This operation is a significant local employer. Its closure would severely damage Susanville, the county seat, and the area. That level of loss of employer contributions and hit to the tax base would also hurt CalPERS contributions.²

The screenshot of the exchange via text, embedded at the very end of this post, is rattling around SEIU 1000. I am told it’s generating a lot of ire. Sadly the image isn’t the easiest to read. Here are the key parts:

Alex Hernandez, Staff Member, SEIU 1000: Hello Theresa, this is Alex from SEIU Local 1000….We are reaching out to you today to let you know about a rally….Are you interested in attending this protest?

Theresa Taylor, CalPERS Board Vice President: Absolutely not and how dare this Union president use Union dues for a rally that is political AND pay Union Leave for a rally. He has not done his job and met and conferred with the state.

Taylor: DLC 786 [Taylor’s district labor council] says RLB [President Richard L. Brown] can suck a dick.

Hernandez: Can we quote you on that to your membership? I’m sure they’d be embarrassed at this comment. Hundreds of people and families will be affected by the closure of the California Correctional Center in Lessen County. We need to stand in solidarity with our Union brothers and sisters.

Taylor: Sure…And who are you? I assume you are a member and not staff? If you are staff you should keep your opinions to yourself….Union busting idiot

We will shortly turn to the fact that Taylor’s effort to smear Richard Brown, even if only initially in front of his staffer, is factually inaccurate.

First, Taylor is delusional. In addition to fabricating, Taylor acts as if she can speak on behalf of DLC 786 when she is not its president. It’s her daughter, Anna-Marie Taylor, who holds that position. Yet Taylor presumed she could make an official, offensive statement on behalf of that district labor council as a matter of right.³

Since when, except states like banana republics run by family dynasties, is an elected office owned by several family members at once? Wait, don’t answer that…

The Taylor mean girls team quickly went to work trying to cover up Theresa Taylor’s power grab by falsely presenting Theresa’s impulsive lashing-out as a joint campaign, when in fact daughter Anna-Marie has run in to cover up her mother’s mess. From the CAStateWorkers Reddit page:

This aspect alone confirms that Theresa Taylor has no concern about governance, as if that fact were ever in doubt. So her delusion also confers upon her a cringe-making sense of entitlement.

And we’ll also explain, this row reveals another layer of Taylor’s distorted view of her rights. Despite Taylor attempting to present herself as the better representative of labor than SEIU president Brown, her fury is substantially due to Richard Brown cutting off perks to Taylor that she arguably never should have gotten.

In other words, Taylor is on a personal vendetta against Brown and grasping at straws to try to justify it before her fellow union members.

Second, Taylor has let loose with a jaw-dropping violation of CalPERS niceness, um, board conduct requirements. CalPERS has so weaponized them that a woman board member complimenting a woman employee on her attire is bruited about as possible sexual harassment (this with a straight female board member, no less). So how, pray tell, is CalPERS going to try to brush aside a board member telling a prominent black official to suck a dick? Taylor’s remark has undeniable racist undertones. And she has unquestionably pulled CalPERS into the mud with her gutter-sniping.

But putting CalPERS policy aside for the moment, Taylor’s abusiveness, laying claim to authority she did not have, and distortion of facts come off like pre-pubescent-girl-bullying meets Donald Trump. Normally, females this nasty learn either to abandon this behavior or use it selectively when they grow up, if for no other reason that it allows men to accuse them of being hormonal.

Trump and Taylor instead appear proud of their lack of class, meaning understanding basic human decency, and act as if browbeating little people like Hernandez somehow proves that they are powerful.⁴ In fact, one of the signs of true class (which is independent of economic status or educational attainment) is treating people in subordinate and service positions with courtesy, and saving the swordplay for those at your level or higher.

Iin fact, resorting to force of nastiness is a sign that the perp is trying to claw back from a losing position, and unable to make a coherent case for their position, instead attempts to browbeat the interlocutor into submission.

Taylor was clearly pulling rank when she dared to bludgeon an SEIU staffer from an apparent position of authority, confirmed by her improperly invoking of “DLC 786.” But since that wasn’t a legitimate basis for her superior ‘tude, the attempt to clean up the over-reach only made matters worse.

The Reddit banner shown above, clearly posted with the approval and likely and the instigation of Taylor mother and daughter, has “CalPERS VP Theresa Taylor” as the joint spokesmen of the toxic remark. So unless Theresa Taylor disavows having made that statement in her capacity as a senior CalPERS board member, she owns it.

Remember also that Hernandez gave Taylor the opportunity to recant and instead she doubled down.

Taylor seems to believe that going all potty-mouthed somehow makes her a force to be reckoned with, as opposed to pathetic. And CalPERS policies clearly and forcefully repudiate the sort of statement Taylor made. Remarks like hers clearly violate both its Board Governance policy, which requires “Civility and courtesy, to both those with whom the Board members interact and between Board members” as well as its Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation Prevention Policy. The latter prohibits:

“Sexual harassment” as used in this policy is harassment based upon the person’s sex. This may include unwelcome sexual advances, conversations about sexual activities, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. It can also include offensive remarks about a person’s sex, but need not be motivated by sexual desire….

Unlawful harassment for the purposes of this policy includes, but is not limited to, the following…:

•Making or using derogatory comments, epithets, slurs or jokes based on any protected characteristic;
•Sexual comments including graphic comments about an individual’s body;
•Sexually degrading words used to describe an individual

Even though the harassment policy is written primarily for the benefit of CalPERS employees, it also bars abuse of parties doing business with CalPERS. That includes Hernandez and Brown in their capacities as beneficiaries.

Both policies expatiate about how board members who violate them will be investigated and are subject to discipline. If you think this will happen to a member of the power faction like Taylor, you are smoking something strong.

Third, Taylor is using her office to pursue a personal vendetta, irrespective to the damage she does within the labor community and to what little is left of CalPERS’ shrinking reputation.

Let’s examine how Taylor’s unprovoked show of fury can only be explained as vindictiveness. Richard Brown defeated a close Taylor ally, Yvonne Walker, to become head of SEIU 1000 as of this June. One of his priorities is to focus union efforts more narrowly on tangible, value added issues and not on broader social campaigns. The aim is to lower spending so that SEIU can lower dues. With unions under attack, being able to tell members that their organization is laser focused on delivering concrete material benefits is a survival strategy.

As part of this initiative, Brown has stopped having SEIU use dues to pay for union members sitting on boards like CalPERS to goof off rather than work part time at their current employer, as provided for under CalPERS’ governing law. Board members like Taylor who are current government employees have CalPERS pay for the time that they spend on CalPERS matters, which is called “release time”. Board members provide estimates of what percentage of their work hours should be allocated to and paid for by CalPERS. This estimate varies by board member since they have different committee assignments and duties.

For the last seven years, Taylor has been paid by SEIU for doing nothing during her non-CalPERS time rather than work for her nominal employer, the Franchise Tax Board. Brown has decided it’s not sound from a budget or PR standard to have individuals in leadership positions enjoy what amounts to permanent union-paid vacations.

Taylor has one of the lowest percentages of employer time, 20%, due to her being the board Vice President and chair of the Investment Committee. Apparently she regards it as an affront to have to work full time like her fellow union members who get full time pay.

Fourth, let’s turn to Taylor’s bizarre misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation of the state of play with the pending prison closure. Richard Brown has indeed not met with or negotiated with the state because he can’t yet. The process is that the state posts a formal notice and then the union can meet to negotiate for relief. The state has made clear its intent but had not yet put this the formal notice process in motion as of the date of the Taylor attack on Hernandez and Brown. Taylor’s position is even more of a smear when you realize that Brown has been petitioning the state to post the official notice so he can begin talks.

The point of the rally is to show the degree of opposition in advance of this meeting and hopefully give Brown and SEIU more leverage when they sit down with the state.⁵

Is Taylor so dumb that she doesn’t understand how political pressure works? If she is, it’s yet more proof that she is unfit to serve on the CalPERS board.

In fact, Taylor has repeatedly shown she fancies herself the labor analogue of a mob enforcer. But real mob enforcers implement very well understood rules of their gangs, By contrast, Taylor makes own rules as she goes along under the benign neglect of the CalPERS Godmother, Marcie Frost

As a result, not only is Taylor not very good at her self-assigned role of thug in chief, but her arrogance, ignorance, and abusiveness are fundamentally at odds with core labor values of mutual support and solidarity. It’s no surprise that Taylor blew off going to a rally and tried picking a fight with Brown to justify her lack of interest in standing up for fellow union members. Taylor is clearly always and ever about Taylor alone.

_____

¹ It is not practical to operate a sizable union on a statewide basis in a state as large as California. SEIU 1000, which is still technically a “local,” has 55 district labor councils, organized on a geographic basis, which handle matters than require an on-the-ground presence. Anna-Marie Taylor is the president of her district labor council, which consists mainly of other staffers at her employer, the Franchise Tax Board.

² Yes, not significantly, but CalPERS staff and board have repeatedly chosen stand pat when jobs are cut, even though it hurts employers and beneficiaries. They instead defend their unseemly alliance with private equity. Private equity firms reduce employment to a greater degree than similar workplaces, as Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt have shown through careful reading of academic studies that attempted to spin their own data otherwise. Loss of employment hurts state and local tax revenues, which in turn makes it hard for employers to meet current pension contributions, let alone make up for underfunding.

³ Even if Theresa Taylor was confident her daughter was prepared to make precisely the same statement about Richard Brown, that does not give Theresa Taylor the authority to speak on behalf of the district labor council. Nor does the fact that daughter Anna-Marie apparently got a co-worker to help cover for her mother on Reddit legitimate it either.

⁴ Actually, staff members of the salon Pierre Michel in New York City, who would go to Trump Towers to prepare Trump, his family, and upon occasion The Apprentice contestants for TV shoots, all said Trump was very considerate of them and they looked forward to that gig. So Trump appears more capable of behaving courteously towards minions than Taylor.

⁵ Another flagrantly false charge by Taylor is her bizarre effort to depict SEIU trying to defend the jobs at the correctional center, or at least improve the terms of the closure, as somehow improper. Huh? If a union isn’t about running to the rescue of livelihoods at risk, what the hell is it for? Oh, apparently instead to provide high profile sinecures for the likes of Taylor.

00 CalPERS harassment-prevention-policy
00 Taylor Attachment A