The SEIU Massachusetts State Council, along with its member locals, is proud of our memberdriven endorsement process. Your responses to this questionnaire will help inform our decision on endorsement for both your party nomination process and the general election. Please note that your questionnaire responses are subject to public disclosure, including release to the media. If you choose to publish your questionnaire results, please contact us. With more than 90,000 members, SEIU Massachusetts State Council is the fastest-growing union in the Commonwealth. SEIU is dedicated to uniting workers in three sectors: healthcare, public services and property services. 1199SEIU represents 50,000 workers in hospitals, nursing homes and home care settings, and SEIU1957 CIR represents medical interns and residents. SEIU Local 509 and SEIU Local 888 represent 24,000 service workers in public and not-for-profit agencies. SEIU 32BJ District 615 represents over 18,000 workers in building janitorial and security industries, and SEIU 3FO represents another 1,000 in property services. Our goal is to organize un-organized workers in these critical sectors of our economy, improve wages, hours and working conditions, improve the quality of care and services our members provide, and build political and legislative power for all workers and their families. This questionnaire is focused on assessing your campaign and its core values, as well as specific policy positions. Additional questions may be posed at our candidate interviews and events. CANDIDATE STATEMENT I affirmatively seek the endorsement and support of SEIU, its members and their families. In seeking this endorsement, I support the rights of workers to join a union and collectively bargain. I understand that as a candidate and as an elected official, I may be called upon to help workers form unions, including support on picket lines, communications with employers urging them to respect these same rights, and in public rallies. As an elected official, I will maintain regular contact with SEIU local leaders and members. Any campaign contribution I may receive is from SEIU members who voluntarily give small monthly donations. Signature March 27, 2014 Name: Maura Healey Office Sought: Attorney General Other Information Primary Election Opponents (announced and likely): Warren Tolman General Election Opponents (announced and likely): John Miller, Republican Office(s) Currently/Previously Held (please list all): None Previous Campaigns for Elected Office (please list all): None 1
CAMPAIGN THEME AND VALUES Campaign Message: I am running because I know what a nation-leading Attorney General s Office can do for the people of Massachusetts. We need an Attorney General who stands up for working people enforcing wage and workplace safety laws, fighting misclassification of workers, and ensuring that all workers are treated with fairness and dignity in the workplace and on the job. As Attorney General, I will fight for opportunities for every resident, protect the public interest, provide a voice for the vulnerable, and ensure a level playing field. As the former Chief of both the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau and the Business & Labor Bureau, as well as the former Chief of the Civil Rights Division, I have direct experience delivering on those priorities and enforcing laws, taking regulatory action, and using the bully pulpit to ensure fairness, justice and equality of opportunity. For example, I brought the state s first civil rights case against a mortgage company for discriminatory lending in the Massachusetts housing market and oversaw a first-in-the-nation anti-foreclosure program that has kept thousands of Massachusetts families in their homes. I recently laid out comprehensive plans to address the root causes of gun violence in our neighborhoods and to shut down predatory, for-profit schools that leave vulnerable students deep in debt. And I will make sure that every woman in Massachusetts has access to reproductive health care, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court decides. My campaign and approach to governing reflect our shared, progressive values - fairness, accountability and innovation. Top Three Issues: 1. Standing up for individuals by fighting for civil rights, equal pay, fair wages, consumer protections, transparent public bidding, proper employee classification, environmental protection, and by prosecuting fraud and abusive practices. We need to ensure access to quality, affordable health care, including mental and behavioral health services. I will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to live, work and raise a family in Massachusetts. 2.Safeguarding communities by working to reduce gun violence, protecting children and the elderly, tackling drug addiction, and addressing the root causes of crime and instability in our neighborhoods through advocacy, prosecution and working with local law enforcement, municipalities, community and civic groups. We can make our communities safer and stronger by supporting criminal justice reform. 3. Leading an office driven by our shared, progressive values of fairness, accountability and innovation. As Attorney General, I will protect taxpayers and work productively with businesses to support economic development and healthy communities. I will fight for a level playing field by ensuring that businesses play by the rules. Our next Attorney General must be proactive and use all of the tools at her disposal to address emerging challenges for our state and residents. Please use the space below to describe the values that drive your campaign and your 2
aspirations to this office. I am running for Attorney General because I know what a nation-leading Attorney General s Office can do for the people of Massachusetts. I am not a career politician. I have spent the past seven years in the Attorney General s Office building and leading creative, forward-thinking and effective teams of attorneys and staff to make a difference for the people of our state. I was brought up as the oldest of five children in a small town. My mother was a school nurse and my father is a high school history teacher, coached high school sports and headed his teachers union. To help pay for college, I spent summers in high school and college waitressing and coaching youth sports, and worked throughout college in the equipment and laundry room. As a beneficiary of Title IX, I got to captain my college basketball team and played professional basketball in Europe for two years after college. As the oldest child in a large family, as the shortest player on the basketball team, and as an attorney for the people of Massachusetts, I have always been driven and worked hard to get results through collaboration. When we took on the federal government and sued to abolish the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, we enlisted labor unions as an important partner in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, because those unions and their members understood and could help us advocate for equality in the workplace. As Chief of the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau, I worked with legislators, education experts, guidance counselors, veterans groups, and students, to help develop nation-leading regulations on abusive, for-profit schools that disproportionately target communities of color and our gateway cities. To tackle predatory lending, I helped build and lead the teams that held banks and mortgage brokers accountable, but also then partnered with legal aid groups, community organizations, and registers of deeds to stop unlawful and harmful foreclosures, reduce homelessness, and keep families in their homes. Our campaign recently released a plan to reduce gun violence in Massachusetts that I developed alongside leading community activists, victim advocates, criminologists, and law enforcement. I believe we can achieve our progressive agenda to support poor and working people in Massachusetts so long as we champion bold ideas and bring people to the table to solve problems. Please use the space below to describe how you will use the office you are running for to advance the cause of working people who have unions and those that do not in our Commonwealth. To support working people in our state and take on growing income inequality, we have to first do three things: 1) Raise the minimum wage and tie it to the rising cost of living, 2) Achieve a progressive tax structure so that the investments we must make in our future are not shouldered by those with the least, and 3) Support unionization across industries and workplaces to give workers the voice and collective bargaining power to partner with government to create good paying jobs that support healthy, working and middle class communities. As the next Attorney General, I will be a champion for those reforms, and I will also add resources to strongly enforce our fair labor laws. Working people need the full resources of a proactive and effective Attorney General s Office to 3
ensure that they can work, live and raise a family in our state. Labor organizations have been and will continue to be vital partners in fulfilling the office s mission to serve the public interest and to uphold the rights of working people in Massachusetts. As Attorney General, my approach to supporting working people who have unions and those who do not is informed by my background as a civil rights and consumer protection lawyer. When I was in the Attorney General s Office, I worked on the state s human trafficking law and I have seen firsthand that too many workers face exploitation that goes unnoticed or not addressed. The Attorney General s Office is often the only place workers can turn to for help. We must develop community partnerships and additional partnerships with labor organizations to meet and assist people where they live and work. As Attorney General, I will go to the Legislature for more resources to build the most effective, proactive Fair Labor Division in the country, specifically to take on wage theft enforcement and misclassification, enforce fair bidding, and promote awareness of our office to working people. I will also utilize the resources of the office s civil rights, consumer protection, insurance and financial services, not-for-profit, and health care divisions to protect workers and their families. As Chief of the Civil Rights Division, I worked to ensure that Massachusetts residents have fair access to housing and handled or oversaw hundreds of fair housing cases on behalf of victims who were denied housing because of disability, children, lead paint or because they held a Section 8 voucher. I also handled and oversaw enforcement of disability rights laws to protect people in housing, employment and education, enforced civil rights laws against perpetrators of hate crimes, and fought to ensure workplace protections against discrimination. As Attorney General, I will vigorously enforce fair housing, employment and other civil rights laws. I also know that predatory, discriminatory and/or abusive lending practices harm working people trying to purchase homes, rent apartments, go back to school, get insurance or cash a paycheck. I also know that many Massachusetts families are still reeling from the abuses of recent years. Because of lawsuits that the Attorney General s Office brought against big banks, mortgage lenders and servicers, Massachusetts is the first state where it is now illegal to sell someone a mortgage that they know the person cannot afford. We need to continue to push forward and stop similar abuses by predatory for-profit schools and online payday lenders. We returned nearly $500,000 in tuition to students and shut down schools that saddled students, including singlemothers and veterans, with bad debts. As Attorney General, I will strongly enforce our laws to combat new tricks and deceptive practices that are marketed to working people and keep communities in poverty. The Attorney General must be proactive and innovative. As Chief of the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau, I helped set up and oversaw the state s HomeCorps program, which works directly with distressed homeowners to help them negotiate new mortgages they can actually afford to pay. This innovative, first-in-the-nation program has brought together legal aid attorneys, community action programs, and staff in the Attorney General s Office to combat the foreclosure crisis and provide direct relief to thousands of families and stabilize neighborhoods. As Attorney General, I will continue to utilize innovative approaches to solving problems and protecting the public. 4
Finally, while the DOMA challenge is sometimes viewed solely as an equal rights issue, it is a pocketbook issue as well. When I argued the first successful challenge to DOMA, 20,000 couples in Massachusetts, many working and raising children, were being denied access to hundreds of federal benefits and protections. As a result of winning that lawsuit, those dollars have now come back to those families to support themselves and their children. As Attorney General, I will enforce laws to protect people s pocketbooks. POLICY POSITIONS As Attorney General, you will have the authority to make appointments to boards and commissions that directly impact the work of SEIU members. As Attorney General, will you work with us to ensure your appointments are committed to raising quality standards, protecting workers stability, and that they will fully represent voices of workers in the public service, health care and property sectors? Yes. Workers and the organizations that represent them need a voice on state boards and commissions, whether they deal with health care, gaming, transportation, infrastructure or licensing. I will not only make those appointments, I will make the argument publicly why unions deserve a voice. In the past decade, we have seen tremendous shifts in the healthcare marketplace. Rapid growth in health care costs, significant market consolidation and increasing price disparities have all had a direct and negative impact on communities, consumers, and workers. The Attorney General s office has strong regulatory, oversight, and enforcement power. As Attorney General you would oversee five bureaus multiple divisions, including the Public Charities Division, the Business and Labor Bureau and the Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau. How do you expect to use the powers of the AGO to mitigate the impact of health care market shifts, regulate charitable organizations (including non-profit hospital systems) and ensure affordable access to quality health care services in Massachusetts? As former head of both the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau and the Business and Labor Bureau of the Attorney General s Office, I know well the important role the Attorney General s Office plays in ensuring that public interests are reflected in our health care landscape, including high quality care, affordability and access, and worker protection. I will use the authority of the Attorney General s Office to challenge hospital closures, transfers and consolidations that contravene the public interest and inhibit access to quality, affordable health care. The recent events in North Adams are nothing less than a travesty, risking the jobs of nearly 600 workers and throwing a community s access to needed health care into jeopardy. As Attorney General, I will work closely with the Department of Public Health, the Health Policy Commission, CHIA, and others to make sure that our health care organizations are responsive to worker and patient concerns. I will ensure that the multiple divisions within the Attorney General s Office (Health Care, Antitrust, Non-Profit Organizations/Public Charities, Consumer Protection, Fair Labor and Medicaid Fraud) communicate regularly and are jointly tasked on health care matters so that the office is able to take the most informed, and most 5
effective, action. I will continue to ensure that the Attorney General s Office continues to provide transparency on what is happening in the health care market, especially with respect to cost trends, and I will be prepared to take action as necessary using the full authority of state law and regulation to ensure affordable access to quality health care services in this state. We also need community benefits targeted to provide better access to health care for struggling communities. As Attorney General, I will make sure that our divisions and state agency counterparts work cooperatively with unions to make sure that workers and families have a voice. Independent behavioral health clinicians are essential to the fabric of health care in the Commonwealth. The vast majority of clinicians have contracts with multiple insurance companies and have seen a steady decline in reimbursement rates over the past 20 years. Because of Federal anti-trust law, insurance companies are considered consumers they purchase our services and clinicians are therefore unable to discuss rates and business fees with each other -- or collectively bargain with insurance companies. Podiatrists in Texas and MDs in New Jersey have changed their State laws to specifically remove themselves from these anti-trust provisions. CliniciansUnited, affiliated with SEIU Local 509, wants to pass similar legislation in Massachusetts on behalf of independent mental health providers. Would you support this piece of legislation? Yes, strongly. In industries where SEIU boasts a large number of members, some employers routinely skirt labor laws and intimidate employees, preventing claims from being fully investigated. Are you willing to institute, as a preliminary step in all wage and hour investigations, an strong warning letter to employers on the consequences of employer retaliation? Yes. But, we also know that warning letters are not sufficient. The best cure for employer abuses is an Attorney General s Office with no tolerance for wage abuse, misclassification or employee intimidation. This demands both vigorous enforcement and more resources for investigators. We have to be more proactive. Reacting to abuses by the worst employers after they have already harmed their employees is not enough. I will work with unions and other stakeholders on plans to publish names of repeat offenders to shape consumer behavior. Several years ago in Hoffman Plastics, the Supreme Court held that even though an employer unlawfully interfered with employee rights, an undocumented immigrant employee couldn t receive back pay and thus had no remedy (no reinstatement either). As Attorney General what will you do to limit the reach of Hoffman and encourage immigrants to claim their rights? I will fight to protect all workers in Massachusetts no matter their immigration status. It is the duty of the Attorney General s Office to make sure undocumented workers and employers know that the office will aggressively enforce worker rights and protections. Outreach and education to 6
empower workers and deter retaliation is critical. Under current law there is no prohibition against any worker, including undocumented workers, getting restitution or owed wages. These rights must be backed by the full support of the Attorney General s Office. It is worth noting that retaliation is one of the most pernicious wage and hour violations and consistently undermines the exercise of those rights. The culture of fear instilled by repeated retaliation by abusive employers undermines the rights of all workers. As Attorney General, I will make fighting retaliation a key priority. The state personal care attendant (PCA) program operated by MassHealth is a proven cost-effective and supportive consumer-directed option under which home care services are available to seniors and persons with disabilities needing assistance with activities of daily living. However, despite gains in recent contract bargaining, PCAs face difficult working conditions, low wages, and no health care benefits. This impacts the stability of the program and the quality of care that the consumers receive. This workforce and 1199SEIU also now face additional challenges presented by the pending Harris v. Quinn case before the Supreme Court. If the Court overrules the lower federal courts and restricts the ability of home care workers to effectively collectively bargain, this would put at risk both the vulnerable PCA workforce and the ability of seniors and people with disabilities to get the reliable care they need to remain in their homes. As Attorney General, would you support legislative and/or regulatory efforts to respond to an adverse ruling in Harris v. Quinn, expand access to this successful consumer directed home care program, and stabilize and grow the PCA workforce? Yes. The PCA program provides vital services to our most vulnerable populations, seniors and those with disabilities, communities of particular concern to the Attorney General s Office. I will work closely with legislative leaders to plan for immediate state legislative response in the event on an adverse ruling. I will also work with the National Association of Attorneys General and our Legislature and Congressional delegation to effectuate solutions and end the free-rider problems that continue to undermine labor organizations. 7