Even if you don't know much about organized labor, you may have heard about Andy Stern and the SEIU. Stern has been profiled on 60 Minutes and in many other venues; he is without question the highest-profile labor leader in the country, frequently celebrated for his innovation and the energy he has brought to the SEIU. DHinMI interviewed him in 2005 for this site, suggesting -- less glowingly -- that "Andy Stern is on a quest for whatever he thinks is new."
And lately, even if you don't know much about organized labor, you may have noticed just a few SEIU-related ads on this and other blogs (where "just a few" = ironic understatement). So what's up?
These ads, coming from at least three separate groups, come out of issues far too complicated to fully explain here, but here goes a shot:
As Daily Kos diarist (and my father) Dan Clawson points out,
Any time an individual or organization gets held up as a model of success it invites others to launch criticisms, and that’s certainly been the case for SEIU, which may simultaneously be the most admired and the most criticized of all unions today. Those criticisms focus above all on SEIU’s top-down staff-driven model, and the consequent lack of democracy, combined with the argument that this sometimes leads SEIU to collaborate with employers.
Recently, the SEIU is engaged in conflicts on two fronts. In March, ongoing competition between the union and the rival California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee escalated in Ohio, when the CNA/NNOC sent organizers to deter workers from joining the SEIU in a scheduled vote. The SEIU alleged union-busting; the CNA/NNOC alleged an unacceptable sweetheart deal with the employer. (And both took out a lot of BlogAds.)
The SEIU and CNA are expressing a major strategic difference. The SEIU is emphasizing union density -- to have as many workers as possible in the same industry or same area be unionized, because then non-union employers have to raise their wages to compete, rather than undercutting the wages paid by union employers. (For more on the importance of density, see NathanNewman's excellent 2006 diary.) To achieve this, the SEIU under Andy Stern has become known for reaching cooperative deals with employers in order to reach the greatest number of workers; the CNA argues that these deals go too far and eliminate many of the benefits of union membership, limiting the gains a union contract will make.
This, then, is not simply a turf war in Ohio, it's about the direction of the labor movement, not just about how best to serve union members but about how best to serve all workers, not just about how to gain strength but about the very definition of strength.
Dan Clawson:
The charge has been made that in order to get the Ohio fast-track to a union election, SEIU made a deal with the boss, Catholic Healthcare Partners. My response is: Of course they did, and so what?....For good or ill, these days ALL unions that I know of make a deal with the boss: they sign a collective bargaining agreement and have a process for handling grievances.
The question is not "did the union make a deal with the boss?" but rather "what kind of deal did it make?" The deal that is made generally depends on power: how many workers are committed to the cause, how militant are they willing to be, what strategic position do they have, what kinds of allies do the workers have among other unions, community groups, faith-based communities, and the general public? It depends as well on the union’s militance, leadership, and willingness to take risks. One of the best sessions at the Labor Notes conference focused on neutrality agreements: in what circumstances do they make sense? What sorts of conditions should unions resist no matter what, and what sorts of conditions are an acceptable compromise? What sorts of leverage enable us to win better agreements? SEIU’s seminal Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign involved not just a strike, but hundreds of people tying up traffic in downtown Los Angeles during rush hour, police beating workers, and the threat of re-doubled disruption. Under that pressure the boss, that is, building owners, made a deal.
One crucial issue in evaluating any neutrality agreement, or any other agreement with an employer, is: Does this build workers’ power, or undercut workers’ power? What does it do in the short-run, and what does it do for the long-run? An agreement can provide immediate benefits, but at the expense of undercutting workers’ long-run ability to build more power. Alternatively, a deal can look bad for the short-run but position workers and the union to make major gains at a later time.
And the thing is, we don't really know. We don't know the exact details of the SEIU deal with the employer in Ohio, but more, we don't know what would happen years down the road. When the first contract would be up for renegotiation, would having organized these workers have led to further organization and better wages and conditions in the area such that the next contract would be measurably better? Or would a poor contract have led to workers becoming frustrated with their union, to lowered incentive to join unions and lowered union power?
So it's entirely possible for this conflict to involve each union fighting for what it sees not only as its own best interest, but the interest of the workers and of the labor movement as a whole. The conflict has grown particularly bitter, though, with the SEIU aggressively disrupting a conference held by Labor Notes, an organization dedicated to union debate.
Meanwhile, the SEIU is in a dispute with one of its own largest locals, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW), led by local president Sal Rosselli, whose criticisms of Stern's SEIU leadership echo those of the CNA:
Rosselli has launched a war against Stern that has spilled out into the open in recent months. His complaints--that Stern has made the union too undemocratic, that he has cut secret deals with employers, that he cares more about enlarging the union than serving its existing members--are resonating with at least some of SEIU's rank and file. And they raise difficult questions, not just about Stern's particular ideas but about what a union in twenty-first-century America ought to be. Can a union be too large for its own good? How closely should a union cooperate with employers? Does a union exist primarily for the benefit of its members--or to serve the interests of American labor as a whole? And who, in the end, gets to make these decisions? How much power belongs to a union's members? And how much should rest with leaders like Stern?
Andy Stern's internal critics in the SEIU point to his practice of trusteeing locals that aren't on board with his plans, replacing their elected leadership with control from the top (in fact, many people believe that Rosselli's rebellion will lead to the UHW being trusteed despite its successes), and merging locals:
While mergers are often a useful tool for reform, some critics worry the power can be abused, not least because, under labor law, Stern is allowed to appoint the president of a newly merged local for up to three years before elections are held. Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, points out that the process can sometimes "be used to stifle dissent"--if, say, an unruly local is thrown into a much larger one.
Though the UHW has denounced the CNA's actions in Ohio, and has had its own problems with CNA raiding, several of its allegations against the SEIU -- of deals cut with employers against worker interests, for instance -- echo those of the CNA.
If the SEIU trustees the UHW, it will have cast serious doubt on its commitment to democracy -- which should be at the heart of representing workers. If, however, they embrace the debate, we might find in this moment of conflict a possibility for real advances, for a robust debate about how to take advantage of the opportunities unions might gain from a Democratic president, for involving workers in a debate about what direction unions should take, for producing healthy competition between different models of unionism as exemplars of each try to demonstrate their advantages to prospective members.
