A growing movement for reform has developed; rank-and-file delegates from various locals – and one well-known dissident local president – have come together in a reform movement. They will present a platform for change to challenge the officers in Washington D.C. that are concentrating power in their hands. Their slogan is “One member, one vote.” This means members voting for contracts, contract proposals, international officers and even agreements between the union and companies about how elections for union representation will take place.

The movement includes the SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART). SMART grew out of a network of members, staff and local officers in California. These unionists first found common cause as they resisted the forced mergers of locals over the last several years.

SMART and the reform movement got further momentum last year when Stern was exposed in the media for making secret deals with nursing home owners in California and Washington state. These deals included allowing the companies to dictate which homes could be unionized and the union having to agree not to publish criticisms of the companies – for three, or even ten, years! In exchange for some of the employees being allowed into the union and contracts at those companies which included small gains for the workers involved, the union also committed its political muscle to support legislation supported by the companies.

In the media eye has been Sal Rosselli, president of California’s United Healthcare Workers-West. This 150,000 member local is the third largest in SEIU. Rosselli refused to keep quiet about Stern’s terrible deals. Stern has responded with threats to put UHW into trusteeship and to take away 65,000 members from UHW. UHW has the most successful record of organizing new workers of any local in SEIU. Stern has been the main spokesperson in the union movement for organizing the unorganized. It is ironic that he is punishing this model local.

Partnership with Employers in Exchange for Membership in SEIU

The convention debates revolve around the different approaches to the union movement. Stern’s view is business unionism, where the company and the union make common cause. Class struggle unionism is the other approach, recognizing that the working class and the capitalist class have opposite interests. What brings workers and owners together is the profit motive of the employer, and the workers’ need for a job. The bosses want as much labor for as little money as possible. Workers, especially in the service industry, have to fight desperately to earn enough money to keep their heads above water. The real relationship of workers and bosses is one of constant conflict.

The question for workers in SEIU is what is traded off when partnership with an employer is sought in exchange for membership growth. For example, how can a union fight the way it needs to when there is an agreement to not criticize the employer?

SEIU’s convention documents admit that it’s getting harder and more expensive to organize workers and successfully represent the members. This also shows that the class struggle is getting fiercer and continues after unionization.

SEIU has been enormously successful in gaining new members, adding almost one million to the union over the last decade and a half. It is also true that joining the union has meant progress for these workers. While the gains haven’t been spectacular, it’s a general rule that first contracts for newly organized workers aren’t perfect and don’t include giant wage gains. Unionization brings advances over the course of years.

But at the same time, there is an intensified class struggle growing within work places, including public sector employers that are already organized. SEIU has a strategy with one overarching aim: gains for workers by increasing new membership. There is no strategy for the fights by a majority of the workers – the current members in the union – to defend gains made in the past.

The international officers have charged that the publicity over the controversy is hurting the union. Tom Burke, a former executive board member of Local 73, responded to this. “Secret deals – with more in them for management than for workers – lead to public debates.” Burke enthusiastically defended the debates. “This is the first real contest over ideas in the history of SEIU conventions. Let it rip.”

Will the Stern program of exchanging ‘partnership for membership’ lead to continued and real gains for workers? Or will workers make more gains by building a fighting workers movement? The test of which approach is better will be in practice over the years to come. Shirley McIntosh, a retiree from Local 73 that will be attending the San Juan convention, already has her opinion: “From my experience, we can never trust management. We just have to organize to fight.”

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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.

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