Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Andy Stern

Bet on SEIU in West Coast Family Feud

jstuart — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:43:42 +0000

New Orleans In about a month the biggest union election in 2010 will be counted once all of the mail ballots are in from over 40,000 Kaiser Permanente workers who are being polled. Unfortunately this not another milestone of successful union organizing, but hopefully the final major battle in the intense and long standing, bloody war between SEIU and what is left of its breakaway dissident local of many names, but most recently United Healthcare West, old Local 250. Elections even in the constrained settings undemocratic workplaces are never easy to predict, because when it’s all said and done, workers vote with their feet and they’ve been running all different directions at Kaiser in the last several years of this internecine war. Nonetheless without talking to any insiders and without being privy to any internal voter assessments or polling from either side, I’m pretty confident that it’s not too early to declare SEIU the winner now, way before the votes are counted.

Here’s why I believe they will win:

Delays Always Favor the Company: This decertification election has been on and off too long to allow the challenger to maintain the momentum against the incumbent. In regular organizing that means the company wins more than 2/3rds of the time that the election is over 60 days from the filing. In this case the “company” is SEIU, and its ability to tie up the challenger means just on the numbers, before any work was done, if normal odds prevailed their chances of winning were at 2/3rds.
Change the Boss: One of the standard pages in any law firm or company side labor relations manual holds that when you are caught behind, it’s best to change the boss or whomever the workers see as responsible for the problem. SEIU’s boss has changed. In this very personal struggle between Sal Rosselli from Oakland and SEIU’s Andy Stern from DC, too much of the dissident’s campaign always presumed it was safe to individualize the attack and target Stern as the problem. When Rosselli saw me in the Detroit hotel hallway and told me he had heard that Mary Kay Henry had the votes to become SEIU’s president, he chortled that it was “good news for the union, but bad news for me.” Had Anna Burger, Andy’s longtime leadership partner prevailed in the board election, the dissidents would have easily just said “same ol’ same ol’” but in Henry the workers would see a new leader from California harder to brand with the problems in Stern’s legacy, yet someone who had fought Rosselli for 20 years and had been the losing candidate as Secretary-Treasurer to Rosselli’s winning slate when he took over Local 250 after that trusteeship. I’m not saying that Stern left SEIU because of this election, but I will say that SEIU’s organizing expert, Tom Woodruff, has been in too many hard fought company/union elections, not to have calculated the impact on this election.

The New Kaiser Contract Helps: The other thing that SEIU’s legal team bought the International and their folks in the bunkers of Northern California was enough time to negotiate a new contract with the employer, Kaiser Permanent, and its chain of hospitals and clinics in the state. NLRB lawyers are maddening to union organizers and have driven many to drink and screaming as they argue from their training manuals that the contract ratification vote is a bellwether for a decertification vote, so “why do you care if there’s a decert; you ratified the contract?” The dissidents needed to bleed the new contract, make the ratification close, or block the ratification entirely and for whatever and a number of reasons, they were unable to do this. In fact the published reports indicate that the new contract was wildly popular with the Kaiser members and approved by 80%+, as I recall. The tactical advantage lay heavily with the incumbent, and SEIU seized the advantage and powered it home, but this also hurt the dissident campaign, since much of Rosselli’s framing has been that SEIU’s merger-mania in California would “reduce standards.” People like Dave Reagan (originally from SEIU Local 1199 WV/OH/KY, Woodruff’s old local) and Hal Ruddick (who worked at my SEIU Local 100 for 10 years) know how to negotiate a contract and made the most out of it.
Majority Signs SEIU Election Support Petition: Another classic tactic that all of us have used in elections with the company focuses on rebuilding the majority during the election campaign. This is a huge barometer and seeks to restore the momentum that usually falls off at the point of filing for the election, which is usually the union’s strongest moment against the company. The 30%+ showing of interest that Rosselli’s forces mustered both before and during the original chaos and rage at the SEIU trusteeship has long dissipated, and the ability of the current SEIU ground forces to produce and show a “public” majority that workers at the hospitals and centers will see sends a huge blinking message to the full Kaiser workforce that SEIU has the majority and is going to win. Workers like it or not, vote overwhelmingly with whichever side they believe is going to win. That’s why companies are willing to break the law, coerce, intimidate, and fire leaders to send a message of power to back off workers and convince them that struggle is futile and victory impossible. Workers have to survive. Individual bosses and union leaders come and go. A majority on a petition within 2 months of the vote count should make SEIU the heavy voting favorite.
SEIU Ready for the Ground War on GOTV: In the last huge test in this blood battle SEIU proved it was willing to do what was necessary in the Fresno home health care challenge and eked out a narrow victory after pouring in millions and moving thousands of people into the Fresno get out the vote effort. The dissidents and their supporters took some comfort and counted some coup, because they were able to keep the margin down with SEIU only narrowly holding the unit. That was then, and this is now. Time has traveled and other benchmarks have been set, but SEIU will spend millions again and every indication is that they will once again put a thousand or more people on the streets in the GOTV effort. The dissidents are in less of position to match this effort now than they were.
SEIU Has Crippled the Dissidents Financially: One thing I have learned as a union organizer over the last 30 years is that when the company really wants to beat you, they can absolutely beat you: it comes down to will. The real story financially in the SEIU battle is their willingness to barter their future and “play for anything” stakes in this internal fight. They isolated the dissidents financially by cutting off the critical outside sources of money and organizing talent. Stern did this first by making peace with what used to be called the California Nurses Association, now an AFL affiliate, and essentially giving up the fight that SEIU had made for nurses jurisdiction for years, helping his cause first within Kaiser where they would have been a formidable problem and inside the workplace voice against SEIU had he not neutralized them. The price was high and included walking away from thousands of workers that SEIU had everything but won in Ohio and elsewhere, but this is part of the “below the line” calculus on this deal. Mary Kay Henry finished the job with Stern’s departure by making peace, also at a huge price, with John Wilhelm of Unite HERE and his former co-president Bruce Raynor, now an SEIU VP with Workers United. A couple of months ago when I was in northern California briefly it was clear that HERE’s interjection of money and organizers into this family feud was effective and was hurting SEIU. This was not a deal that Stern turned out to have been able to make, but Henry made it job #1 and got it done, and done in time to impact this election. Wilhelm didn’t have many cards but he played what he had, particularly his strength in Local 2 with Mike Casey and his ability to leverage Maria Elena Durazo in Los Angeles with the county federation, perfectly. Oh, yeah, they lost a lawsuit, too, but who cares that was just garnish and no money has changed hands. With these two deals, SEIU cut off the outside bankers and made the fight totally uneven in terms of resources.
Mail Ballots Favor GOTV Outside the Workplace: We love mail ballots. We never lose them. We’ll do almost anything to get one in an election. Clearly, a unit of 40,000+ had to have a mail ballot, and with such a ballot the odds roll over to whichever side can get to the voters where they are voting and in this case that means at home, not at work. The dissidents can’t match the home field advantage here. What they have is at the workplaces where they still have committed workers in place. I don’t need to talk to anybody to know that SEIU’s willingness to gear up a huge GOTV operation means that their assessments and polling indicate that the more that people vote; the more likely they are to win. They obviously feel now that their real campaign is against apathy and not Rosselli, and that they can only lose if they get a light turnout and the diehards are both sides are left to decide.

Anyway you look at it, this is life or death for both sides, and SEIU knew it and has taken advantage of it powerfully to paint the dissidents into an impossible tactical bind, regardless of the support and sympathy they have in California and in much of what passes for a chattering class in the rickety house of labor. I’m not saying that Stern’s sudden and still largely inexplicable resignation from SEIU was motivated by this election, since by all accounts much credibility should be given to the fact that he was “tired” as he’s said publically, and winning the health care vote at least left the rationalization of leaving well, but no one will ever convince me that all of these factors didn’t come to play in the decision and all of its aftermaths. If he was going to leave mid-term anyway, then the spring was the perfect time so that all of this business could get done the way SEIU needed it to be done.

SEIU will retain its support among Kaiser workers and keep this unit. I would bet they will get more than 65% support when all the votes are tallied.

I could be wrong, but I sure would be surprised if it turned out any differently than all of these signs are pointing.

Andy Stern and the Long Goodbye

jstuart — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:40:14 +0000

Washington As I made my way back from half-way across the world, I watched the story unfold even before leaving Mumbai of first reports that Andy Stern would resign as President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and then a message from him by the time that I arrived at Dulles that there was a “time to lead and a time to leave.” There seems to be rampant speculation about what all of this means for Stern, for SEIU, and for the labor movement. There should be concern at the White House and among the progressive forces as well. Labor union meetings and decision making is still a lot like watching for smoke to signal from the Vatican that a new Pope has been chosen (speaking of a “time to leave”), but the SEIU International Board is meeting in DC for a couple of days, and I’m sure this is occupying a lot of attention as the jockeying and elbowing about the present and future is in full earnest.

When Local 100 was part of SEIU, I served for 8 years on that board having been elected on Stern’s slate during his first two terms before stepping down largely to move the Wal-Mart organizing pilots. I would not pretend to know what is on the agenda now and since Local 100 is no longer an affiliate of SEIU, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I wouldn’t pretend to be a fan of everything Andy has done, but that’s the nature of the beast, nonetheless, if I were still on the board, I would be rising to speak in favor of the long goodbye for Stern.

He’s made his announcement and would be technically a lame duck, but I wouldn’t worry about that within the SEIU culture. Speculation that he is being forced out is ridiculous. He may have had some folks knocking at his door in hopes for anointment, but the board is Andy’s board from SEIUs Puerto Rican convention less than 2 years ago, and there’s no pressure there for him to leave. His last couple of chapters may have been more fraught with conflict given the split from the AFL, which has accomplished so little, and the internal problems on the West Coast and with other former union allies in HERE, and there’s a big hit coming whenever the final chapters of the problems with Tyrone Freeman in Los Angeles hit the front pages, but this is a guy who added 1.2 million members under his watch to all of the locals sitting around the big tables in whatever hotel is hosting the meeting, and he was the architect for about ½ million as Organizing Director under John Sweeney before he became International President. The Greenhouse article in the Times and some of the other pieces make it look like he’s got legacy issues, but there are none inside SEIU. Andy could stay another dozen years probably before facing much real heat.

In SEIU he’s earned a long goodbye on his own terms. I’m not sure how the current rules work on a special election, but given what it took to unlodge Sweeney’s successor, it’s probably a quick turnaround. Andy should serve out his term for another two years and help in the hand off transition, the Obama re-election, and and the thousand other things on the “want to do” list before he leaves. The successor might be a little fidgety, but given the polarization in American politics now, letting Andy be the lightening rod for some of that for another couple of years makes sense while the successor straps it up. Trumka waited forever at the AFL-CIO and had no problem commanding the new space, and might could have used a two year transition internally there even though he had been around the building for more than a dozen years.

We have few real leaders in labor, so no one should sweat the small stuff. Andy did the job and made a difference. SEIU would be crazy not to keep him for every day they can. I would move the “long goodbye!”

Finally Left Leverage on Healthcare

dine — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:32:16 +0000

Niagara Falls, Ontario Maybe progressives and liberals are finally willing to exercise some leverage rather than watching painfully as conservatives and moderates strip every bill that arises down to the bone with health care reform being the latest front page casualty? There are signs of a stirring.

SEIU and Andy Stern after having seemed for so long to have been a White House annex office at their headquarters on Dupont Circle finally is snapping back at the evisceration of health legislation. Trumka and the AFL-CIO are unhappy and balking at the compromises. MoveOn which has been indistinguishable from Obama’s Organizing for America is sending out emails targeting Lieberman and praising Senator Bernie Sanders and his threats to NOT vote for the health care bill’s Senate version. There are real discussions everywhere that people gather where folks are trying to find a way to still rationalize supporting so little at this late date in the fight.

My assumption is still that enough no’s will be held to get the votes come hell or high water. That assumption is based on the premise that once passed, evolution would improve the features of the package over time.

Talking to my colleagues in Canada is sobering, since here the evolutionary record is a dilution of health care benefits rather than improvement. Vision coverage for example In Ontario national health care pays for nothing. Not the glasses. Not the eye check even.

I’ve talked earlier about the problems with “opt outs” which are also prevalent in Canada. Each province (think states Americans) can add or subtract some parts of the package especially when it comes to paying for the costs of drugs and other add-ons to the basic health care package.

We need to be careful that we don’t go down from here, like our northern neighbors.

SEIU’s Good Obama Bet

jstuart — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:02:14 +0000

Andy Stern, SEIU

New Orleans Recent press reports and a big story in the Wall Street Journal have been sniping at the huge $85M set of contributions that the Service Employees International Union made on the Obama campaign. On one hand they seem to be insinuating crass influence buying and on the other hand they are hinting at financial mismanagement. Poppycock! Pundits, pols, and others can throw a lot of brickbats at SEIU and its leadership, but not for these decisions that actually show real leadership, risk taking, and exactly what it should mean to accept the challenge in these hard times to run a union and try to organize the unorganized.

Unions are dying and bleeding members on a daily basis. SEIU under its president, Andy Stern, made a huge bet with Obama once they came into the Obama camp in the spring of 2008, and understood that their stewardship of membership dues only mattered if they could prove it really meant something in terms of real change, and that means a different set of labor laws and a chance at real health care reform for members whose wages can’t afford most policies now and members who work in that industry.

Stern is quoted as in the Journal reminding people that a union “is not a bank,” and it’s a point well made. Too many union leaders believe that the way to serve a membership is to present a big, fat balance sheet filled with investments, property, and conservative investments of the “members’ money,” and forget that the members are paying dues in the hopes of good representation on the job and the hope for a better life – not investment advice! My good comrade, Jonathan Tasini, has written pointedly and correctly about what he terms the “edifice complex” in too many unions that sunk the dues into real estate rather than organizing. In fact I would worry more about the strain of the huge $90 M building loans for the new headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue at DuPont Circle than for trying to change the political and business climate for workers! I can live with the building over time a lot more easily, since my dues money and the dues of my members also was leveraged on trying to make real change.

The Journal tries to insinuate that the appointment of Patrick Gaspard, as White House political director, and the pending appointment of Craig Becker to the NLRB are examples of early dividends on the investment. The dividend on $85 M better be a lot more than those two great friends of ours! In California there are constant editorials and reports in the press out there that SEIU has leveraged its “Obama cards” into a holdback on bailout funds to the state because they don’t want to see cutbacks to their hundreds of thousands of home health care members or layoffs of their state worker members. Hello, anybody home out there? A union is a NOT a public interest group or a policy advocate, but a membership organization that is supposed to use its good offices, resources, and, yes, even power, to stand for its members. If SEIU converted its leverage to the good of low waged home care members in Cali, that’s exactly what it is supposed to do!

Furthermore this is big time stuff not just petty backroom deals and the Obama administration is getting way more than a bang for its buck in the partnership as well. The big news this week at the centerpiece of saving the Obama health care reform initiative was the announcement by some of the big healthcare operators that they would deliver MEGA-SAVINGS to help make the health care reform happen. Not surprisingly Andy Stern was there along with Dennis Rivera, head of SEIU’s health care division, and they were the only labor leaders there for good reason. Buried in the story in the New York Times lead report that day was the following sentence: “Dennis Rivera, coordinator of the health care campaign of the Service Employees International Union, led efforts to bring the industry groups together, with help from Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform.” Dennis delivered for SEIU and the White House in only the way that he can. Tell me that 1199’s former political director, Patrick Gaspard (EDIT: This line used to contain a reference to Patrick Gaspard working for NY ACORN. This is untrue, he never worked for ACORN. To see Wade’s correction: http://tinyurl.com/y9bscr8) didn’t reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I’ll tell you to take some remedial classes in “politics 101.”

Payback is hell. My local has sent $100,000 almost from held in our strike reserves in the good cause as well as our per capita to SEIU, and we were the least of it. Stern was quoted saying that $10M of the $25M political loan had already been retired. The layoff of 40 managers and 80 organizers (for some reason the WSJ said about 40 organizers, but that understates other reports) is even more painful within the organization. God only knows who they might have all been in a huge organization like SEIU and some may have been good to go and get, but there were also some great organizers I have been honored to work with for decades that were caught in this bureaucratic and financial bind. My best friends have managed to land on their feet elsewhere in the organization where their skills will be more appreciated, but still it is painful to see a bet on more organizing lead to less organizing and that is happening throughout the union now it seems.

Everything being equal though, win, lose, or draw, I’m proud to have voted in San Juan almost a year ago to give the union the capacity to make just this kind of bet, and for a change I feel pretty darned good about my dues dollar having been spent for exactly the right kind of risk to gain a just reward for my members and all other workers.