Over a year ago I became aware of Andy Stern’s proposals for change within the AFL-CIO. At first I thought this was a good thing – to have discussion in the labor movement about our direction. For example, under both Sweeney and Stern there has long been a call to the international unions to put more resources into organizing. What seemed lacking was an examination of how organizing campaigns had been done in the past and what needed to be changed.

In North Carolina we tried to have a general discussion, but without real substance to the issues. The discussion stalled at the need for democracy and anger at Stern’s proposal for forced mergers between unions. The discussion that I wanted never happened, because there was nothing concrete in the SEIU proposal, other than the forced mergers, for people to latch onto and talk about.

As the months passed, other unions joined with Stern: UNITE HERE, the Laborers and the Carpenters. The Carpenters had already disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO and had a history of raiding other unions, collaborating with management and having a top down, corrupt leadership. When they came on board, some of us really began questioning what was going on. The sense of unease increased with the inclusion of the Teamsters.

Even coming to Chicago, I was hoping there’d be some kind of discussion, and there just wasn’t at all. The Change to Win Coalition (CTW) had submitted a number of resolutions, but when the CTW unions decided to boycott, that ended any hope for discussion. Without another side, the convention was dominated by anger at the CTW for splitting the labor movement and increased support for Sweeney to keep the labor movement together.

In talking with many other delegates it was very unclear what the differences were between the Sweeney camp and the CTW Coalition. There certainly didn’t seem to be the ‘irreconcilable’ differences stated by Stern that would cause a split. At the Convention there was much talk of why this unholy alliance and how much of a coalition was it really? The general sense was that each union had their own agenda, with the bottom line being money, power and ego.

The Central Labor Councils: CLCs

What was most positive to me from all of the convention were the rank-and-file members of the CLCs getting together every night to discuss what was happening. The councils had become much more active since the 1995 Convention. When Sweeney first came to power in 1995, plans were laid to build up the CLCs. For a while this happened. In our small council, we are all volunteers, so we really benefited from staff from Washington helping to set up programs, figure out budgets and plan educational events.

There were national conferences of CLCs. We were recognized for what we are – the grassroots of the AFL-CIO. But over time, the emphasis shifted from organizing and education of union members to ‘politics’ – Democratic Party politics.

Where the split will be felt most sharply is within the Central Labor Councils. They will be hurt by the disaffiliation of per capita dues but more hurt by the loss of members who are working together on organizing campaigns, living wage campaigns, campaigns to Save Social Security etc.

The disaffiliated unions (including now the United Food and Commercial Workers) stated that they wanted to remain involved in state federations and CLCs. Sweeney looked like the bad guy by saying that those unions can not be involved in CLCs. A resolution was passed by the remaining Executive Board to up their dues and give a portion of that increase to the state federations and CLCs most affected by the disaffiliating unions (read: “AFL-CIO wants to make it easier for those bodies not to take money from the disaffiliates.”). On the last day of the Convention the E-Board and Sweeney made it very clear, in a letter and remarks that, “You are either in or you’re out.”

The really bad part will be the raiding of other unions for their members; this has a history between SEIU and AFSCME in particular, where they have both fought over the same bargaining units. So much for ‘new’ organizing. This raiding only weakens the solidarity of the labor movement. At the convention it was announced that SEIU has already begun raiding an AFSCME unit in California, which in turn was payback for AFSCME raiding an SEIU unit in Illinois.

Small councils like Western North Carolina, big councils and state feds and rank-and-file workers in the whole country have a common experience of having been left out of the equation by the top officials. Now we are going to have to cope with this new situation. How will we unite labor when we’re no longer in one federation? How will we stop raiding? If there’s a strike, delegates at the convention pledged, “We’re union members, we’ll support any union on strike.” But if there’s no federation affiliation between two unions at an employer, will members of one federation cross the other’s picket lines?

Labor Unity in the Councils

I think that people in the CLCs are determined to stick together. Pressure is on the internationals to allow, if not affiliation, at least participation with the labor councils. We want the money, but we also want members. Some locals send a check in every month, but they don’t send anybody as delegates. You have money, but what can you do without people?

#NorthCarolina #NC #Commentary #AndyStern #AFLCIO #CentralLaborCouncils

Ten years ago, John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO. Supporters of his New Voices slate rallied to oust the stale leadership of his predecessor, Lane Kirkland. Under Kirkland, workers had seen 20 years of declining wages, benefits and working conditions. For 20 years, attacks by the capitalists had come down, and the defenses put up by the unions failed to turn them back. In fact, most unions hadn’t fought at all.

Of course, there were always workers willing to fight. Those workers were excited that a new period in labor was being ushered in by Sweeney’s rise to power. Sweeney promised to turn things around. He called for organizing millions of new workers into unions and getting workers to register and vote so that the politicians couldn’t ignore unions. He also called for building coalitions and taking action against abusive bosses. Where Kirkland wanted to build bridges with management, Sweeney said, “I’d rather block bridges than build bridges.”

Today, the Sweeney/New Voices period is coming to an end. Judged by the goals that were declared at the outset – to end the decline in wages, benefits and working conditions for U.S. workers and to turn around the decline in the membership and influence of unions here – Sweeneyism has failed. Less than 8% of private sector workers are in unions and only 12% of employed workers overall. While many new workers have joined unions, the union leaders have not been able to stop the de-unionization of manufacturing.

Reform Proposals Spark Debate

By now, everyone in the AFL-CIO agrees that there is a crisis, and that the unions must organize new members faster or die. A new debate has emerged in the federation in response to a proposal for drastic changes. The reform proposal comes from union leaders who believe the decline in labor can be stopped (despite the Republican Party’s domination in politics today), but only if unions change their structure and strategy, merging to create bigger unions in each part of the economy.

The defenders of the current set-up say the answer is more political efforts. They want to increase money spent on supporting Democrats running for office, in hopes of getting changes in labor law that would make it easier to get union recognition in organizing drives.

You could say that the old leadership emphasizes changing the external environment, while the challengers see changes to the internal workings of labor as a key to labor revival.

The two sides can’t be described as left vs. right. Each side has some correct ideas and some wrong ones.

The reformers see an entrenched group of union ‘fiefdoms’ that are resisting change. The defenders have criticized the upstarts as arrogant and undemocratic. The charge of being undemocratic comes from the old leadership saying that individual unions must have autonomy about where to organize and whether to merge or not. Also, lower level officials who are supporters of the current state of the Federation defend some of its structures, especially local labor councils, civil rights caucuses and departments, and the expanded executive board, which includes more union officials that are Black, Latino and women.

The reformers include some of the more liberal unions: SEIU, UNITE-HERE (garment and textile workers and hotel workers) and the Laborers, but they also include the pro-Bush Carpenters and the notoriously corrupt Teamsters.

The defenders include president Sweeney, AFSCME (American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees), the USW (recent merger of Steelworkers and PACE, the Paper and Chemical workers) and the Machinists.

Sweeney’s main antagonist in the debate, Andy Stern, like Sweeney himself, comes out of SEIU, my own union. It makes sense that it would fall to Stern to challenge Sweeney, who preceded him as president of SEIU, as SEIU has been the most successful union in the country in the last decade. They have grown more and added more new union members than any other union in many years.

This debate is intense. SEIU has said it will leave the AFL-CIO if there isn’t reform along the lines proposed.

It is exciting that there is a debate going on. When a rank-and-file worker says, “The union leaders have failed us,” it is commonplace for serious union activists to dismiss it as cynicism. When frustrated unionists declare, “Union officials are in bed with management,” the standard response is, “What choice do they have but to make concessions?”

But when a president of a union of 1.8 million workers says, “[The AFL-CIO] has no enforceable standards to stop a union from conspiring with employers to keep another stronger union out – or from negotiating contracts with lower pay and standards than members of another union have spent a lifetime establishing,” this reinforces what militant unionists have argued. The fact is that most leaders of the international unions in the U.S. see themselves as partners with management. As the corporations and politicians have demanded concessions, most union leaders have gone along, ‘conspiring with employers.’

What’s Missing from the Debate: Class Struggle Unionism

There are big problems with President Stern’s “New Strength Unity” plan. A lot has been written about his arrogance and about union democracy having no role in the big plan. Also missing is a commitment to the national struggles of African Americans, Chicanos and other oppressed nationality peoples against racism and oppression. Another argument has been made in some places that organizing in the service industry isn’t the same as organizing in basic industry, because service industries don’t face production moving away or out of the country.

But mainly what’s missing from Stern’s proposal is class struggle.

In a Jan. 30 New York Times piece, “The New Boss,” Matt Bai wrote this about Stern:

“He came to embrace a philosophy that ran counter to the most basic assumptions of the besieged labor movement: the popular image of greedy corporations that want to treat their workers like slaves, Stern believed, was in most cases just wrong. ‘What was good for G.M. ended up being good for the country,’ Stern says.”

In various articles and speeches, Stern explains his belief that corporations should accept unions because unionization will aid them in their business plans.

This is wrong. It is wrong historically – taking the G.M. example, it took a fighting workers movement at General Motors to win basic advances for workers there. Even when G.M. was at its peak in the post-war era, when the ruling class was honoring a social pact with big labor, working in auto factories still shortened workers lives and made the bosses wealthy while the worker’s family earned a decent living – nothing more.

Stern is wrong strategically. He negates the old adage in the trade union movement that, “What management gives with a teaspoon, they take away with a shovel.” In fact, in the recent period, the working class has been on the defensive, engaging in sporadic and limited battles against a sharpened employer onslaught. The temporary acceptance of unions by some employers can’t be seen as anything more than a concession to certain strengths in specific markets.

Stern is wrong fundamentally. The future holds nothing but more struggle between workers and the ruling class. The way forward for the labor movement isn’t ‘market density.’ The way forward, as it has been in every historical advance for workers, is class-struggle unionism. Those unions which in the last decade or two have started down this road, however fleetingly, such as the Staley workers, the Detroit newspaper workers in the mid-1990s, the mineworkers at Pittston coal in the early 1990s, and Local P9 at Hormel in the 1980s, have shown us the path to a renewed labor movement. In these examples, the workers fought all-out, militant battles against the bosses. They rallied workers across the land to support them. Without these kinds of tactics, and even going further, like stopping production, there’s no hope of turning back the attacks on us.

Class struggle unionism means broadening the outlook and demands of the unions – a return to solidarity unionism. That means organizing and mobilizing the membership to fight management and support other struggles. Our demands and our slogans should reflect class demands. We should draw as sharply as possible the lines between the workers and the bosses in our work. Hormel, Pittston, and Staley – these are the models we need to emulate.

Transform the Unions

There are some who say that the debates in the AFL-CIO are not important. Some class struggle unionists [like Tom Laney, a militant from the United Auto Workers – see letter to editor] argue for unionists to leave the AFL-CIO unions or start new unions that are founded on class struggle, not class collaboration.

To them, I’d point out another ten-year anniversary this year. In February 1995, the Staley workers of Decatur, Illinois charged into the AFL-CIO executive meeting in Bal Harbor, Florida. They were there to ask why the hell the richest union federation in the world couldn’t help them defeat a corporation from Britain that was destroying their lives. Their protest got them on the front page of the New York Times. The Staley workers, members of the Paperworkers union, together with other striking workers from Decatur (Rubber Workers at Bridgestone and UAW workers from Caterpillar), exposed Kirkland, and helped to compel him from office. This helped open the way for Sweeney to come to power later that year.

A militant minority of rank-and-file workers learned a key lesson from the War Zone of Decatur. By getting the masses of workers involved in an all-out battle for their felt and urgent needs, we build a fighting workers’ movement that can transform the unions.

The Staley workers took advantage of the debates among labor leaders to advance their cause. We should do the same. The developments in labor create better conditions for building a fighting workers movement. New organizing is positive. Market density will, to a degree, help workers bargain and union leaders that want new members have to take a fighting pose at times.

And as mentioned above, the debates bring out the failures of the labor bureaucrats and get many more involved in debating which way forward. For sure, the current debate doesn’t go far enough, and doesn’t involve the masses of current union members, let alone the majority of workers not yet in a union. We should help spread the debate.

A Fighting Workers’ Movement

Workers and our allies who want to see the cause of the unions advance remember the old song, “Solidarity Forever.” At many labor rallies, this is dusted off. Many know the first verse, which raises the banner of power through a union. Like many old songs, far fewer people know the second verse:

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite -

Who would lash us into slavery and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight -

For the union makes us strong.

We face a “greedy parasite” that proves every day he is willing to “crush us with his might.”

What the labor movement needs is to develop fighting unions – unions that break beyond the bounds of the current ways of doing things and engage in all-out fights against the bosses. Like the founders of the CIO in the 1930s, we need militant picket lines, sit-downs and class-on-class battles. Like the Staley workers ten years ago, we need to unite with the reformers in the labor leadership, while pushing forward rank-and-file struggle and organization toward our strategic goal of transforming the unions. To John Sweeney and Andy Stern, we say, “Yes, let’s organize, but organize to fight.”

![Photo montage of 4 big strikes](https://i.snap.as/t3ACu6Fi.jpg “Photo montage of 4 big strikes Unions with the class struggle at the center. From upper left: Staley workers in Decatur, IL; 1937 Flint, MI sit-down strike; UMWA miners at Pittston, WV; Local P-9 in Austin, MN.

Fight Back! photo illustration by Steff Yorek (Fight Back! News/Illustration by Steff Yorek)”)

#UnitedStates #Analysis #AndyStern #AFLCIO #JohnSweeney #LaneKirkland

The officers withstood this challenge from the reform movement, pushing through their program and plans. However, the reform movement gained some important ground as well. Delegates representing about 10% of the membership challenged the officials. SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART) was formed, and promises to continue the fight for ‘one member, one vote,’ on contracts, contract proposals, negotiating committees and national leadership. And the reform movement clearly won the contest of public opinion. In this past six months, Andy Stern has gone from the symbol of change in the labor movement,to becoming the chief representative of business unionism.

The convention did authorize more centralization of money and decision making in the hands of the top officers. We know where SEIU will go next. We’ve seen the future, in Stern’s book, his appeals for corporate partners and his statements that the era of class struggle has passed. As the economic crisis unfolds, working people will need to struggle for wages and job security. The SEIU leadership will be tested in the class struggle. If they fail, a cry for new direction will grow among the members. If the officers in Washington don’t alter course, then the movement for reform will only grow.

#UnitedStates #News #AndyStern #SEIU #SEIUMemberActivistsForReformTodaySMART

The critics in UHW charge that the president of SEIU, Andy Stern, is leading the union into becoming a business union, where the union and the bosses that they face try to work out a common approach. This is different than the way unions have made gains throughout history. Class struggle unionism is what workers need, where the union recognizes that the workers and the capitalists have different interests, fights hard for the workers’ felt and urgent needs, and negotiates the best contracts possible based on the current strength of the workers.

The following book review was written by a member of SEIU in Chicago. Joe Iosbaker is a chief steward for 1500 clerical and administrative workers at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a member of the executive board of Local 73 SEIU. As SEIU approaches its international convention this May, there will be tremendous debates about the direction the union is heading. This review is a contribution to that debate, supporting class struggle unionism in opposition to business unionism.

In 2006, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) wrote the book, A Country That Works. His ideas are worth talking about because Stern is important to the union movement. Many of the ideas in the book are good, including that unions need to be more democratic, more involving of our members and we have to grow. Some of Stern’s ideas go against the traditions of the unions in the U.S. And some of the ideas that break with old traditions are good, like being willing to talk to the world’s largest union, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). However, reading the rest of the book, especially those ideas about unions not being ‘problems’ for corporations, I found myself shaking my head in disagreement.

As president of SEIU, Stern has been among the most successful labor leaders in recent years. Under his presidency, our union has organized hundreds of thousands of new workers. Perhaps what he is best known for outside the union movement is starting the debate over the failures of the AFL-CIO. The debate didn’t go the way SEIU wanted it to, so President Stern led us out of the AFL-CIO. Together with the Teamsters, UNITE HERE (Union of Needle Industrial and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and several other unions, a new union coalition, Change to Win, was formed.

The title, A Country That Works, refers to the fact that America doesn’t work for workers. Stern mentions that most people in U.S. say the economy is poor or not so good; most workers don’t have guaranteed pensions; and in three years, 25% of all workers will be in contingent jobs. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. In response to this, he points to the importance of the Chicago home healthcare victory, the successful drive by janitors in Houston and the struggle of the janitors at the University of Miami. His message is that workers have to fight to get decent wages and benefits and unions need to be strategic in order to win.

His stories about China and the ACFTU are very interesting. Last year, Wal-Mart agreed to recognize the union for the 30,000 workers in their stores in China. His point was that U.S. unions had to engage with Chinese unions because China was impossible to ignore. There are hundreds of millions of low-wage workers in China and resisting the pressure to lower wages in the U.S. has to include unionizing the workers of the U.S. corporations there.

Stern recounts some of the approaches that have been successful for SEIU in organizing workers. In a New Jersey campaign to organize janitors, sub-contractors complained of non-union cleaning companies underbidding them. His approach was to make companies with unionized workforces competitive by organizing competitors. He couldn’t find many employers to partner with, but even getting a few employers to stop fighting a union drive would be helpful.

A useful phrase Stern employs is the option of using the “power of persuasion” or the “persuasion of power.” Talk companies into accepting the union, or organizing the workers and the union movement and its supporters to fight the company until they give in. In my opinion, persuasion in the class struggle doesn’t really work. Always underlying the substance of discussions where bosses are persuaded is the “persuasion of power.” In other words, if we couldn’t hurt them, they would never listen to a thing we say.

As the book went on, I found more and more things I disagreed with. Stern said the “class struggle mentality is a vestige of an earlier era.” I don’t see how he can argue for this, when he also said that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. If the capitalists are engaging in attacks against us, we have no choice but to respond in kind.

In another place, he refers to SEIU’s sponsored project, Wal-Mart Watch, having “sparked a national conversation” about employer-sponsored health care coverage. In 2007, the news had stories about Stern meeting with CEOs, including the head of Wal-Mart, to encourage them to be socially responsible and provide health care for their employees. Unfortunately, Stern’s biggest meeting with Wal Mart was protested by the workers from the UFCW, who are trying to organize in those stores. His ‘national conversation’ about health care coverage seems to be promoting the kind of gifts to the insurance companies that Arnold Schwarzenegger developed in California, where healthcare still won’t be affordable.

Stern talks about leveraging, where we get companies to agree to accept the union, after a majority of workers sign cards, in return for concessions from the union that will help boost company profits. Also in 2007, there were controversial articles about nursing homes in California and Washington where deals were worked out like this by SEIU, but where the workers didn’t know the deals. The International union agreed not to criticize the companies for years, and the companies got to dictate which nursing homes could be organized and which ones could not. These arrangements were brought to an end when the large United Healthcare Workers of California, the SEIU affiliate there, exposed them.

The last example I’ll mention is Stern’s suggestion that unions and employers should form “value added” relationships. “Employees and employers need organizations that solve problems, not create them.” This is missing the point – workers join unions because there is a problem: they don’t make enough money, or they’re working too hard, or they don’t have any security. Unions exist to solve the problems that are created by the employers.

In conclusion, I’m not surprised that ‘disappointingly’ only a few employers have joined him in his labor-management cooperation plans. I’m happy when he concludes with a section of the book where he warns working people not to be fooled by the corporate propaganda about the great shape the economy is in. And it’s comforting when Stern says things like, “If the going gets rough, SEIU is more than adept” at fighting management. President Stern should focus on helping to bring workers together and strategizing to get them more power on their jobs and in their lives.

#UnitedStates #SEIU #AndyStern #BookReviews #ACountryThatWorks #CaliforniasUnitedHealthcareWorkersWest

The trade union bureaucrats in SEIU (Service Employees International Union) are moving to crush the California local that refused to sell out.

On Jan. 27, the conflicts in SEIU came to a boil, with the rank-and-file members and the officers of United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) standing against the officials in Washington, D.C. The SEIU international moved to take power from fighting leadership of UHW President Sal Roselli and the executive board that wouldn’t knuckle under – installing stooges who would do what International says to do.

The UHW said they refused to accept the trusteeship. “The only people who are happy about all of this are the employers who want to negotiate back-room deals with [the international],” said John Borsos, Vice President of UHW in press accounts.

Earlier in January, the international executive board had voted to take away 65,000 of the 150,000 members of the large west coast local. Those being ordered to join a new local are workers involved in long-term care of the elderly and the disabled.

However, 10 out of 56 international e-board members stood against President Andy Stern in a never before seen split vote, with seven voting no outright and three abstaining.

This trusteeship is an attack on democracy and on the best militant tradition of the workers’ movement in the U.S. Members in SEIU want the right to choose which local they belong to. Tens of thousands of UHW members have spoken out, rallied and organized against Stern’s breaking up their local.

Driving the movement for democratic rights is class struggle. The D.C.-based leadership of SEIU has a program of deal making with employers. In recent years, SEIU has accepted contracts with minimal advances in exchange for the right to organize new shops. Members can see when union leaders are more interested in getting dues from new members than improving the lives of working people. In contrast, the California UHW is a local union with a history of organizing its members to fight. The rank and file of UHW actively supports their local union's militant leadership because they make more gains through fighting management than by collaborating.

President Andy Stern is behind these attacks on UHW and as a dues-paying member with 20 years in the SEIU, I condemn his actions and applaud the spirit of the UHW.

One day after the trusteeship was imposed, leaders of the UHW stated they were forming a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Furthermore, the plan of the workers in UHW is to decertify SEIU. Tens of thousands of workers in nursing homes and hospitals in California are poised to break from the class collaborationism of Stern and company. This is a very exciting development for the trade union movement.

The workers in SEIU in California are acting like the workers at the Republic Windows and Doors Factory here in Chicago. The Republic Workers sit down was a remarkable advance in the fight against the bosses; similarly, the fight being waged by the UHW represents a tremendous step forward in the struggle to transform the unions into class struggle organizations.

Joe Iosbaker is a clerical worker at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He is chief steward and a member of the executive board of Local 73 SEIU.

#California #CA #SEIU #UHW #AndyStern #ClassStruggle