JH: If we can get past CSEA's legal maneuverings, incorporation could occur within the next 6 months.

DW: OK, say we incorporate sometime in the months ahead, what immediate effect would we realize?

JH: One thing that is being obstructed right now is our effort to organize support for our bargaining teams going into our contract campaign. That has been continually disrupted and interfered with by the CSEA president and the general manager, to the point where they wrote to the state of California in an attempt to block union leave for our activists who are trying to organize state workers in order to win the best contract.

The board of directors along with the president recently outlawed the purple t-shirts, which are a visible indication of work-site support for our bargaining teams. This sort of harassment will end after incorporation.

Getting members off to help organize our co-workers will be very difficult without incorporation.

DW: What about the quality of representation?

JH: Higher quality representation from the union will take a little time.

Incorporation does not automatically give us the right to hire and fire staff. The only thing incorporation does, and it is a powerful thing, is allow our division or affiliate to negotiate a service agreement with CSEA to provide us with the services that we want, rather than wasting our dues on things we don't want.

So that does give us leverage in terms of the quality of representation our members will receive.

DW: Is there anything else you can think of to help clarify incorporation for our members? Anything else you want to say.

JH: I think we can all understand this because we have households, we have earnings and we have bills.

When you are not incorporated all of your dues money goes to CSEA's bank account, and then CSEA takes out what they say you owe them, and they say they deposit the rest in an account for you.

However when we have asked them to write checks from our account for various union purposes, CSEA has refused.

When incorporated, the dues money goes directly into our own bank account and CSEA will bill us for services they say we owe them and we will pay them. If we have a dispute we would take that up with CSEA as we would with any service provider.

The process for working out disputes would be going to arbitration with the American arbitration association.

That is a much more powerful situation for a group of working persons, to have their earnings coming directly to them rather than a higher power.