NathanNewman.org: More on Stern Labor Speech

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June 23, 2004

More on Stern Labor Speech

If you read the text of Andy Stern's speech at the SEIU National Convention, the vision he lays out for remaking the labor movement is somewhat breathtaking in its sweep.

He starts with calls to continue remaking over SEIU itself into a union that can negotiate nationally against its corporate opponents:

For SEIU�s first 60 years the responsibility to change our member�s lives depended almost entirely on local unions...

The local union independence that once made sense in a more localized world
needs to give way to a new interdependence with new roles and responsibilities to achieve an old goal to improve the lives of our members and all working families.

It starts with Industry Strength - long term plans to create truly national unions in each of our four divisions which yesterday you all signed pledges in your Division to carry out...

Today we are a bookend union. 60 percent of our US members are in just two states California and New York...At this convention, I will ask you to approve a United Strategy for Strength � so members in other states can gain the power members now have in NY and California and so we can start building the new strength we need in the South and the Southwest - until the day comes when every state is colored in purple!

Stern next turned to discussing how the union can help remake the larger labor movement, especially the AFL-CIO:

Next June, the AFLCIO will celebrate its 50th anniversary. At the time it was established, one out of three workers in the U.S. was in a union...Today, with only 1 in 12 workers in the private sector in unions and less than 1 in 8 workers in unions overall, non-union wages in companies like WalMart are dragging everyone down.
But the AFL-CIO is a loose trade association of 65 separate and autonomous unions instead of a strong, united organization.

It's a structure that divides workers' strength by allowing each union to organize in any industry, then bargain on their own even when workers share common employers...

And, sisters and brothers, it is time and it is so long overdue that we join with our union allies and either transform the AFL-CIO or build something stronger that can really change workers� lives.

The latter alternative is reference to the New Unity Partnership that Stern and a number of other unions have been talking about building to support multi-union organizing campaigns.

But then Stern takes his vision to the whole world, discussing how the union movement needs to go global to take on global multinationals:

Today�s global corporations have no permanent home, recognize no national borders, and salute no flag but their own corporate logo and take their money to anywhere where they can make the most � and pay the least.

Maybe you've heard of the multiservice outsourcing industry or know the industries largest companies, Sodexho based in France operating in 76 countries; Compass, based in Great Britain, operating in 90 countries; or, Aramark now based in the U.S. but already operating in 19 countries around the world...

So today I am asking you, SEIU�s 21st century leaders, to decide to go where no union has ever gone before to authorize SEIU to pursue alliances that will build the first truly global union in world history�.

A global union with the strength to win global agreements from global employers, and unite workers who do the same type of work whether in Albany, NY or Adelaide, Australia, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan or Stockholm, Sweden, San Juan, Puerto Rico or Sao Paulo, Brasil.

To our union allies who are here from around the world I ask that we join forces to learn from each other and replace old, outdated, weak International relationships with real strategies and real unity.

As for Wal-Mart itself, Stern called for a new unity between the labor movement and non-union workers and community members presently without a union contract:

As for WalMart, at this Convention I am asking you to help create a new global campaign�WalMart. No Bargain! that explains to the world that WalMart�s low prices cost too much - they cost workers too much, and small businesses, communities, and nations too much...

So I will be asking you to make a 1 million dollar investment from SEIU to start up a new network of workers and communities, united to bring WalMart�s standards up instead of bringing everyone else�s down.

At this Convention, you will be asked to approve a report of our Social and Economic Justice Committee to strengthen our work in our communities with a focus on two core issues that affect us all...

We also need to draw strength from the new forms of �community� that are developing because of the Internet � which is connecting millions of people who want to take action and get involved...

We need those people to be part of our movement

So I am asking you to authorize SEIU to create Purple Ocean, the world�s first �open source,� virtual union with a goal of uniting one million more people who want to join our campaigns for justice.

Between our Internet linked community and our current members and community allies, we're going to build the biggest movement for social and economic justice the world has ever seen.

And of course in an election, he raised new initiatives to build political power for union members:

This year, our purple political army led by two thousand and four fulltime "Heroes" backed up by 50,000 purple volunteers is the largest mobilization by any single organization in the history of American politics...

So I am asking you at this convention to set up a new political action fund to be used solely for two purposes. First, to support elected officials who our members say have shown unusual courage in standing up for working people.

And second, to take those who looked us in the eye and said they were for us but then went out and betrayed us. It�s time, no matter who they are or what party they come from, to pay them back.

At the end of the speech, Stern then evokes the oldest rhetoric of the labor movement, paraphrasing Solidarity Forever plus a bit of a Kennedyesque challenge:

We can bring to earth a new world from the ashes of the old because our union transforms us the powerless into the powerful. And I ask you to join together in using all that power � all that strength to make the dreams of all workers and communities around the world come true.

And if not us then who?

And if not now, then when?

This is a speech by the leader of one of the largest membership-run institutions in the world, an organization that spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year organizing. For anyone concerned about social change, it's worth paying attention.

Posted by Nathan at June 23, 2004 05:25 AM

Related posts:

Fight Over Labor Movement Begins - Nov 10, 2004

NY Times on Union Discord - Aug 01, 2004

Labor Organizing Non-Union Population - Jul 11, 2004

SEIU Endorses Gay Marriage - Jun 30, 2004

SEIU's Stern Blasts AFL-CIO - Jun 22, 2004

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Comments

This is certainly a grand vision. I especially like his vision of bringing unions global. It is the only way to compete against the global corporations. I think though, China is going to be problematic. This is still a COMMUNIST country whose leadership professed goal is continued suppression of its citizens, especially in the area of labor rights.

Posted by: SlcINcny at June 23, 2004 07:56 AM

Stern certainly is a big thinker, and his ideas merit serious discussion. But I still don't know if the consolidation, raiding, and potential erosion of democracy proposed by NUP is the answer to all of labor's problems. For example, the NUP prescription seems to me to be largely inappropriate to the building trades.

That said, at least Stern and the SEIU are trying something new.

Posted by: Trapper John at June 23, 2004 05:14 PM

Nathan,

I caught Meyerson's great piece this morning, too. Follow the link for my thoughts.

Posted by: Melanie at June 23, 2004 07:08 PM

Stern's parahrasing "Solidarity Forever" not "The Internationale", by the way.

I am sympathetic to Stern's views on restructuring the union movement, however, it seems long on vision and short on specifics.

I have no idea how to persuade dozens of small unions lead by turf-conscious bureaucrats to consolidate. It will be interesting to watch
the attempt.

I think the web site/virtual unionism thing really amounts to a way to harvest lots of e-mail addresses for SEIU political campaigns. A good idea, but lets not over-hype it.

Posted by: aenglish at June 23, 2004 10:43 PM

Andy-- Absolutely right. Shame on me.

As for Andy's specifics-- we'll see what he does. There is a simple way to force the turf-conscious bureaucrats to consolidate.

Threaten to start raiding their jurisdictions.

It's worth remembering that one of the principle results of the CIO splitting off from the AFL in the 1930s was not just a burst of new CIO organizing. Under threat of CIO raiding their turf, the AFL starting organizing like mad and actually added more members than the CIO did, if I remember my history.

Posted by: Nathan at June 23, 2004 10:52 PM

If raiding is the answer, than the SEIU and other NUP unions will have to follow the Carpenters out of the AFLCIO. And SEIU's current jurisdictions also become fair game for other unions. That would be a big step.

Frankly I don't like the idea of unions spending member's money on decerts and slinging mud against one another. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Posted by: aenglish at June 24, 2004 04:20 PM

Andy- I actually doubt it comes to that-- and it's not like raiding and jurisdiction fights don't happen all the time in SEIU's public services and health care areas. One of Stern's complaints is that jurisdictions are too weak now. All sorts of unions organize "anything that moves" without any industry strategy and often divided unions within the same industry.

But I hope that the very threat of secession will lead to a better set of rules and coordination within the AFL-CIO.

Posted by: Nathan Newman at June 24, 2004 04:33 PM

Meyerson notes:
Currently, the AFL-CIO has 65 member unions, the vast majority too small to fund organizing campaigns, though some -- or their locals -- have been known to pick up new members when employers, facing the prospect of real unionization by the likes of the SEIU, have cut sweetheart deals with them.

I was working for UNITE in Miami organizing nursing home workers ( we eventually turned that campaign over to SEIU ) and I was leafletting a facility with some member organizers when the manager came out and gave me the card of a Longshoreman's rep who he said was the rep for the workers at that home.

Well the workers had never been told that they had a union. They didn't. They were paying dues out of their paychecks to help their employer stay union free. And the Longshoremen were taking the pay off.

In that case, raiding was the only responsible thing to do. The labor movement owed those workers the union that they had been paying for.

That's an extreme example, but when uber-democracy advocates complain that consolidation will rob union members of their local traditions. At best those traditions amount to organizing a weekend of golf to raise money for the United Way. More often the main tradition is concession bargaining.

I would guess that at least half of union members in this country thick their union isn't worth a s%$^ but it's better than nothing. I talk to them all the time.

I don't think that's the case for most SEIU members.

I think that consolidation is going to get ugly. But it has to happen.

As for the Purple Ocean, I was told by an SEIU local president that the main purpose is that the union can spend unlimited funds doing politics to their members. So if anyone can be a member . . .

Posted by: Marc Brazeau at June 25, 2004 11:58 AM

June 23, 2004

More on Stern Labor Speech

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