Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Andy Stern

A New Wal-Mart Workers Association

dine — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:19:57 +0000

Belva Whitt from the original Wal-Mart Workers Association in Tampa, FL

Ottawa The UFCW’s effort to assist the development of a workers’ association for the so-called “associates” of Wal-Mart finally has made its debut after a long period of work, claiming thousands of members and organization on the ground in California, Texas, Washington State, as well as efforts in Florida and elsewhere that are well known. The coming out party was predictably a piece by one of the last of the labor reporters, Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times. He interviewed Dan Schlademan, the director of the UFCW’s Making Change at Wal-Mart division.

Schlademan is well respected in the labor movement and rose over his years at SEIU to a key position as officer and organizing director of Local 1 based in Chicago with responsibilities from the Midwest through Texas, including the recognition drives for janitors in Houston, whose success surprised many observers. Dan is a solid and straightforward organizer, who contributed greatly over the years with insight and imagination to several Organizers’ Forum dialogues where he participated actively, was good company, and a friend.

His argument was stated plainly and is inarguable:

“Mr. Schlademan said Wal-Mart employees should not have to wait until Wal-Mart someday recognizes the union through an organizing drive before they have a voice on the job.”

Greenhouse mentioned our effort to build the Wal-Mart Workers Association among workers in Florida between 2004 and 2009 as the predecessor to this new initiative following in many of our same footsteps and now called OUR Wal-Mart (Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart). For some reason he calls it the “foundation-backed” effort which is interesting, though wishful thinking and inaccurate. We did get some small – and much appreciated — support from several foundations, but as he knew the bulk of the resources came from SEIU, as part of its overall initiative and convention pledge to reform the company, and the AFL-CIO, which also put in staff and resources. The UFCW was a more begrudging partner at the time, suspicious of SEIU’s intentions at one level and still trying to sort out how to politically sell the new “majority union” associational model that we were promoting within the existing grocery locals around the country. We had in fact concentrated in Florida for many excellent reasons, but were mindful that it was also easier to develop the workers association model there since no strong grocery or retail locals existed in the state at that time. I can still remember vividly my conversations with President Joe Hansen of the UFCW and telling him we had good news and bad news. The good news was that the pilot worked, workers joined, we won issues and grievances at the store level, and people paid dues and built organization. The bad news for him was that the pilot worked, workers joined, we won issues and grievances at the store level, and people paid dues and built organization, and I did not know if there was a deep enough consensus within UFCW to adapt to a new organizing model with Wal-Mart. The question was unanswered until now.

While directing the project I wrote several pieces about the strategy and techniques (available under “writing” on www.chieforganizer.org) and talking with Rick Smith, who was on the ground with me in Florida, we could both count a number of conversations with organizers and consultants going through with us the steps we had taken to build the 1000 members we had in more than 30 stores in central Florida at the high water mark of the effort. It is gratifying to see this new effort and fingers are crossed and we are sending good love in their direction.

The real death knell for the Wal-Mart Workers’ Association had nothing to do with the success of the association or the actions of the leaders and members in the stores on the ground. The indecision and suspicion within UFCW made our project untenable there, and in the unraveling of the labor movement between the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, where SEIU and UFCW were founding partners, we became an uncomfortable friction point and aggravation at the level of top floor politics that trumped the work on the ground. When Andy Stern, then President of SEIU, embraced Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart in trying to create a health care reform coalition and UFCW’s Hansen was not in the room, we were dead within days, as Hansen demanded SEIU shutoff support for our project and reaffirm their pledge that Wal-Mart was squarely in UFCW’s jurisdiction. Within two weeks I had to lay off 20 organizers in the field, cutting the heart out of the capacity of the project. Diminished and without labor institutional support at best we could only maintain the Wal-Mart Workers’ Association. Rick and I were able to keep the work robust on the site fighting program in Florida much longer, finally stopping construction of 32 consecutive superstores, and the India FDI Watch Campaign thwarting the company’s development there continues to this day, but despite herculean hustle, subcontracting, other initiatives in California by 2009 I couldn’t keep the pieces together any more on the Florida program and we pulled the plug. Talking to one of the old organizers with the WWA a couple of weeks ago in Florida, she reported that she still hears from the leaders in Orlando and St. Pete, and they are still hunkered down in the stores, but that’s what’s left of the heartbeat.

In organizing we all stand on each other’s shoulders. It would be great to see OUR Wal-Mart become the workers’ voice in Wal-Mart. There’s much to be done and much to be won. The problem today though is no different than it was several years ago. To build the organization of workers will take years, huge resources, and deep commitment. My assessment continues to be that we need 100,000 to 150,000 dues paying members in a Wal-Mart Workers’ Association to be a sustainable force with sufficient voice and strength to leverage the company.

A good start isn’t enough. We’ve done that and been there. We need to finally get the job done. It’s worth doing. It could change the entire labor movement, and that’s worth the work as well.

Are we Hearing the Death Knell for Unions?

dine — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:14:10 +0000

New Orleans The backdrop to the great excitement and fight back in Wisconsin, Ohio, and India for the labor movement seems to be a very black curtain that some are trying to pull across the stage. The evidence seems everywhere. Steven Greenhouse, one of the last labor reporters, sounded the death knell in the Times while watching the pushback in Madison. Reporters today in the Times tried to compare the lack of support for unions with the positive support for collective bargaining. What does that mean? There is no collective bargaining without unions as the representatives across the table from the employer? It’s like saying you like marriage but don’t like either women or men.

More depressing to me was reading an Ezra Klein interview with former SEIU President Andy Stern in yesterday’s Washington Post. I wish it were a case of misunderstanding or mistaken identity, but Andy seems happy enough with how his views were presented that he linked to the interview on his twitter account, so I guess this is what he really thinks. Long and short he seems to say, his well ran dry:

“What I would say is I felt that the next strategy of change would be different. I had tried everything I knew. I was too much of a victim of the model I created. I tried Change to Win and helping Obama, and then I just ran out of Andy Stern ideas.”

I actually don’t believe that is either true or what Andy really thinks. The rest of the interview in fact belies that quote as does his interest in broadcasting the interview. Andy has never been short of ideas, what he seems to have realized is two more fundamental things in leaving SEIU. First, that he could not convince people to follow his ideas, and, secondly, after having led people to follow him through past ventures like Change to Win, sometimes they don’t work. It may have been the right idea, but it was the wrong strategy or set of tactics. The rest of the ideas in the interview are feints in different directions. I can remember how he scoffed at the German workers’ councils a dozen years ago, so it’s a little hard to see him touting them now. I’ll think about all of that and get back to you….

But worse in all of these comments whether high or low, Twitter or Times, is that even when expressing hope they still reflect the old post-Katrina refrigerator slogan: Hope is Not a Plan. There still seems to be no coherent strategy or plan that pulls labor together in a more fundamental direction to rebuild and reassert. In some ways it is too easy to see Wisconsin as a last gasp of the old school. I heard recently that the Madison AFL-CIO was debating calling a general strike. If called, who would come? If we came, what would we really stop? I want to see this and count the feet on those streets!

In the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago a breathless story about a possible $100,000,000 organizing campaign being launched by SEIU in more than a dozen cities around the country was attributed to an anonymous SEIU board member and other sources. Whatever the merits and truth of those reports, SEIU and every other union need to pull all of their last dollars together and figure out how to survive and turn the tide and do it now, make it real, and make it very, very different, because the bell has rung on the old school and the old ideas, as Stern acknowledges, and we are running out of time and money with the tide coming in hard against us.

Time for speeches is over. It’s only sweat that counts now.

Deficit Commission’s Assault on Workers and the Poor

jstuart — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:30:18 +0000

New York Staying in the guest room of an old ILGWU coop near Grand and FDR with a view of Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Bridge from one window and across the street the sprawling Hillman complex named after Sidney Hillman the old Amalgamated Clothing Workers leader, I could remember the vision of unions – and even government – to provide life to death strength for our members. I say government, because these coops were all built as worker and retirement housing through federal financing programs in the 1950-60s. To complete the cycle I was the guest of Sam Mitchell, a retired Canadian professor from Ottawa, who had inherited the place from an uncle, who had far outlived his father, my old friend and colleague, H. L. Mitchell, founder of the historic Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) in eastern Arkansas almost 100 years ago.

There were some brief moments over the last 100 years where it was not politic to victimize the poor and workers. Reading the propositions of the bi-partisan Deficit Commission and its total assault on citizen wealth, if there was any doubt, it’s crystal clear that at least many of the blue ribbons on this commission think those times are long gone. The headlines have focused on spending cuts and adjustments, but this is much, much more and much, much less, and I don’t say this because all of the adjustments are wrong.

Sitting with my view of Brooklyn, I could read the morning paper, the New York Times, and its chart on the cuts which mislabeled some of the most severe anti-poor attacks as “tax increases.” I assume they mean revenue increases, since the point was to eliminate entitlements like the critical ones for working families and low income workers, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the child tax credit, both of which have long enjoyed total bipartisan support whether Clinton or the Bushes or Obama at the top.

They want to save $24 billion by freezing federal and non-combatant salaries for three years moving the concept of an “all voluntary” army bias to public workers without reckoning with the impact there on families, communities, or anything else. In the same spirit this commission’s leaders argued for cutting social security benefits for retirees, and remember those of us who need social security the most are lower income workers without fancy salaries and benefit programs. Reducing automatic cost of living increases also would guarantee that we impoverish senior citizens depending on social security for their subsistence living. I hope Mexico is read for all of the undocumented seniors that will be swarming across the border looking for lower living costs.

Some of the big headline “gasps” doesn’t worry me as much, frankly. Changing the retirement age for social security to 69 by 2075 wouldn’t affect any workers alive now and is so far off in the political and economic future that it’s something that intellectually doesn’t bother me as much as not supporting real workers and their families now.

I argued in Citizen Wealth that we needed to redirect the lost tax revenues that have become nothing more than giveaways to the rich when they receive mortgage interest rate deductions. The tax benefits that might make the difference in a working family entering home ownership do not really matter up the income scale and there’s evidence. The rich continued to buy second homes (and third and fourth) even after the deductions disappeared there, and are still going to buy homes even without a deduction.

The other point I made before repeatedly, and that hopefully is being drummed in by the disaster of the great recession, is that we need to incentive other affordable housing options in multi-family housing, apartment construction, and, yes, public housing. The ILGWU coop where I was staying was no long price capped, but had gone to market rates. Estimates on the value of this “worker housing” in Manhattan were now between $450,000 and $1 million. The coop itself, no longer in the business of safe guarding worker housing now gets 20% of any sale, though in my brief stay I couldn’t find out where that 20% goes. So though the real estate lobbies and interest will lather up on this one, I actually believe that we need to reappropriate the tax revenues from reforming mortgage interest rate deductions to more effective affordable housing programs. Unfortunately even agreeing on some of the Commission’s recommendations doesn’t really mean consensus, since they don’t want to reallocate, they want to recover the funds and pretend that workers and the poor don’t exist, never age, don’t need affordable housing options, and the rest.

What mischief! Read Paul Krugman’s column in today’s Times for even more here.

Fortunately Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Chicago is on this Commission, and she’s a freedom fighter.

Andy Stern, former chief of the Service Employees, is also a member. There’s hope there as well though he was quoted as saying “at least people stayed in the room” in concern for the Republicans walking out. I hope Andy doesn’t get to comfortable in this chair, because frankly I was surprised on reading the early reports that he was still in the room.

Someone has to stand up for the poor and workers here, because there is no question they are under assault both now, and as we can see, in the future.

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.