Benson's Union Democracy Blog

Still here, still fighting...

2011-12-08T12:42:00.035-05:00

We all know about labor's struggle against its long, slow decline in membership. This fight, often against the relentless opposition of anti-labor business interests and also sometimes, sad to say, labor's own bureaucratic inertia, was compounded this year by the significant legislative assaults we have all grimly read about. But AUD is still being flooded with requests for help from people who know the importance of the labor movement, and want it to be there for themselves and others -- people working and risking to make sure this happens.

Each month, roughly 25,000 visitors browse AUD’s information-packed website, mine our storehouse of “how-tos” and links to relevant sources, and read stories from our Union Democracy Review and $100 Plus Club News. And if the web-surfer needs more, a call or an email to our office gets it -- last year we provided one-to-one help to a record number of unionists wanting to improve and strengthen their unions. And we are proud to know that our help has made a difference:

“Without your support, continued interest and writing of the struggles I sincerely doubt I could have kept the members interested through the long legal process....”
--Finn Pette, former financial-secretary, International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 501

“I was forced to defend myself against the overwhelming power of a union that I depend on for my livelihood. With no one and nowhere to turn for help, I found AUD. They listened attentively and asked responsible questions. I was very impressed with their great intuitive insight into my problem when they offered sound legal direction. My appeal is now on good solid legal ground.”
-- electrician

“When we were embattled reformers aiming to make our nurses association a more effective union we faced repressive disciplinary retaliation from an abusive controlling officialdom, even possible expulsion. AUD steered us in the right direction in Federal court and publicized our cause in Union Democracy Review. With your help, we successfully defended our rights and won our battle. AUD continues to be an essential resource for our caucus in building a stronger democratic union for registered nurses in New York State.”
-- Pat Kane, Anne Bove, and members of the New York Nurses United caucus.

“I cannot remember who put me in touch with AUD, however, I’m grateful they did. AUD’s guidance, support and encouragement are what I needed to replenish my drive for justice. A complaint of mine has been proceeding through the slow hands of justice. This is why AUD is so important. Its distribution of information to union members gives us what we need to fight back when there are unfair practices in our unions. My struggle goes on. I’m certain that I will be victorious in my efforts. Nichiren Daishonin puts our struggle in context when he states, “Struggle purifies us and brings forth benefits in our lives. Justice or happiness without a battle is an illusion.” Thinking that happiness means a life free of hard work is fantasy. You need AUD and now, AUD needs you to become a member or give a little extra if you can.”
-- union member

AUD does need your help. We are facing a serious budgetary shortfall this year. Most of our support comes from rank and file unionists, who we understand are themselves more and more stressed. Nevertheless, we continue to count on you so that we can carry on the struggle to do what we do -- what we believe you know needs to be done. And we hope you can come through for us once again.

Please give today.

Your partners in union democracy,

Judith Schneider (President)
Herman Benson (Secretary-Treasurer)
Kurt Richwerger (Executive Director)
Matt Noyes (Internet Coordinator)
Rashida Atkins (Program Associate)
Joshua Gaston (Program Associate)

Insurgents win in New York Nurses election but union management refuses to give up

2011-08-30T13:29:00.001-04:00

According to members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), the insurgent "New York Nurses for Staffing, Security and Strength" ("S-3") won a big victory in last week's union election. NYSNA is one of the largest state nurses' unions in the United States. Winning all their races, the insurgent "S-3" slate would have the majority of positions on the union's board of directors. However, NYSNA's current management refuses to concede, citing election complaints, and has made it clear that they will not certify the election until the complaints are resolved. The insurgents are exploring their options, including legal action. AUD has followed the insurgent nurses' struggle to democratize their union in previous stories in Union Democracy Review. Stay tuned for more information as the situation develops. See AUD's website www.uniondemocracy.org for background on the struggles of the NYSNA insurgents.

Benson Retirement

2011-08-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

Herman Benson will no longer come into the office as of September 13, but will be able to blog and receive and send emails....

Does his birth certificate read “Ozymandias"?

2011-04-28T17:19:00.000-04:00

Who is the real Andy Stern? He retired just as he was about to join with hedge fund managers and other cooperating managers of big capital in an inspiring campaign to rescue the labor movement. At the time, he said he was retiring to make room for a younger generation to carry on. But the colossal wreck of his legacy seems to be crumbling in the lone and level sands. That younger generation rejected his choice as successor to the SEIU presidency. Change to Win, the institution he created to rival the AFL-CIO, is crumbling. And now, the man he chose to stand right beside him in the crusade is has fallen, Bruce Raynor.

Raynor turned into an important power in the Stern entourage. He had been president of UNITE, the once powerful clothing union and became president of UNITE/HERE when it merged with the Hotel union. He transferred it out of the AFL-CIO into Stern's Change to Win. But when Raynor was defeated in a bitter factional battle and lost the UNITE/HERE presidency, Stern stood behind him and brought Raynor, along with 100,000 members, into the SEIU where he was immediately elevated into one of the highest SEIU posts: international executive vice president.

But now, with Stern gone, the SEIU leaders have pushed out Raynor, Stern’s close associate.

Raynor resigned to avoid trial on charges that are bound to mystify any normal observer. For one thing: he was accused of improperly spending a total of $2,300 on ten dinners which he says were actually concerned with legitimate union business. That's an average of $230 each. And so here's a man who was a bank president at the time, president of a 100,000-member unit of SEIU, and surely recipient of a generous salary as executive vice president. Did he really phony up a few $230 expenses? And with all those millions sloshing around in the SEIU in these perilous times, how did they happen to run across these alleged peccadillos?

In a related aspect of the same charges, he was accused of falsifying he records by eliminating the name of the female SEIU union officer who dined with him and substituting the name of a male colleague. So what? As a possible sex scandal, it is not so hot. His explanation seems as boring as it is simple. He says that she is embroiled in a dispute in Canada with UNITE/HERE, and Raynor feared retaliation against her in the SEIU if it became known that she was conferring with him.

That younger generation to whom Stern bequeathed his legacy? They look upon his works and reject another of his chosen continuators.

In Pipefitters Local 342 Employers' "Right to Reject...for just cause"

2011-02-08T15:12:00.003-05:00

Surfing Cornell's Library of Contracts on the internet, we were pleased to discover the following provision in the contract between Pipefitters Local 342 and its employing contractors in California: "The Individual Employer shall have the right to reject any applicant for employment referred by the Union for just cause..." What catches the eye are those three little words, FOR JUST CAUSE.

Unlike the Local 342 agreement, other construction contracts generally give employers the right to reject applicants for work, even those referred out of the union hall, for any reason whatsoever. No need to cite a "just cause" or any cause; the right to reject in those contracts is unilateral, arbitrary, not subject to appeal by the union or by the individual. (Of course, by law employer rights are limited. For example, they may not discriminate by reason of sex or race or even union membership. But only idiots would openly violate the law when they need state no reason at all for rejecting an applicant. Any contractor so stupid would not have what it takes to survive in the cutthroat world of construction.)

In construction, jobs are time-limited. When one project ends, workers must go back to the hall for referral or solicit work on their own. Armed with the unilateral, uncontestable right to reject, a right enshrined in their union contract, employers can easily blacklist union activists, the ones who insist that contractors comply with union standards for safety, wage rates, payment into benefit funds. And so, when union loyalists can easily be cut out by unscrupulous employers, the locals become weaker, the best unionists are intimidated.

"Right to reject" has been a hotly contested issue in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where local leaders have been trying in vain to pressure their international leaders to curb the employers' unilateral right. At two IBEW international conventions, over a period of more than ten years, convention delegates have passed resolutions directing their leaders to make that right subject to "just cause." But in vain. The international ignores the convention decisions. Local are still required to include that unqualified right to reject in their contracts.

That's why that qualifying clause “for just cause" in Pipefitters Local 342 contract could be so important. Electricians have no recourse if they are dispatched from the hall but are rejected by the employer. Local 342 Pipefitters, in contrast, have recourse to the contractual grievance procedure. If they feel they are unjustly rejected, they have the right to appeal to the Joint Referral Appeals Committee consisting of four employers and four union representatives. (In the event of a deadlock, the provision allows for arbitration.)

The Local 342 contractual provision limiting the "right to reject” by a requirement for "just cause" and subject to the grievance procedure, should be of interest in other construction unions. But how does it work out in practice and how is it actually enforced? The contract provides that this information "be posted on the bulletin board of the Union, in its office and...of the Individual Employers” and that actions taken in this connection "shall likewise be posted." It would be helpful if members and officers of Local 342 could inform other construction unionists of their experience with the relevant Article II of their contract.

Are Carpenter local unions still "labor organizations?"

2011-01-25T15:24:00.002-05:00

A discussion by Herman Benson

The question is startling but legitimate. The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act defines a "labor organization" as one "in which employees participate and which exists for the purpose, in whole or in part, of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours, or other terms or conditions of employment..." By that standard, Carpenter locals, totally disarmed under the current union structure, seem to have clearly lost the right to designation as "labor organizations."

In the Carpenters union, locals have been merged into district and regional councils where they are stripped of all participation in negotiating, signing, or enforcing collective bargaining agreements. Full authority over dealing with employers, from start to finish, is arrogated by an executive secretary treasurer, who is armed with extraordinary authoritarian power, not only over collective bargaining, but also over every other sphere of union life.

Council bylaws make clear how sweeping and authoritarian that power is: "The EST shall have the power and authority to appoint and remove representatives for and on behalf of its Local Unions to act as Trustees or all negotiated Employer/Union Trust Funds including, but not limited to, annuity, health and welfare plans... Accordingly, all trust agreements and/or plan documents shall be amended by the authorized representatives of the Local unions to reflect the foregoing appointment and removal process." And just to make it crystal clear: "The Council shall have the exclusive power and authority to negotiate and execute Collective Bargaining Agreements for and behalf of its affiliated local unions, except to the extent the International Union exercises its jurisdiction or authority." Carpenter councils may or may not decide to submit contracts for membership ratification, but that decision involves a relation between the council and the total membership. In such a decision and such a process, local unions are irrelevant.

All business agents, representatives, all personnel that have anything to do with contract negotiation or enforcement are selected by the all-powerful EST. And that power extends beyond the area of relations with employers into every aspect of union activity.

Locals, now walled off from collective bargaining, have been so weakened that they are incapable of doing anything effectively. Most dues money goes directly into the district council treasury. As required by Federal law, locals still elect local officers; but locals are expressly forbidden to pay them salaries or to hire any other staff personnel except clerical employees, no educational directors, attorneys, political action reps, no one. Not one person can hold any paid union position of any kind, except simple local clerical employees, unless selected by the regnant EST.

One carpenter in New York argues on the internet that all local unions in the Carpenters District Council should be abolished because the reorganization of the international union under International President Douglas McCarron has already squeezed all life out of them. As he says, with justification, local unions have been deprived of almost every autonomous right and have no effective constitutionally means of affecting what happens in the union, not even in their own assigned jurisdiction and certainly not in the district. And so he concludes, it is pointless and misleading to continue the fiction that locals still have any meaningful role. But while he describes the facts accurately, his conclusion would make matters worse. Precisely because the international has become so egregiously authoritarian, locals' unions, even in their eviscerated state, have become the only arena left where rank and filers can easily assemble to discuss union affairs, express dissatisfaction, and even just let off steam. Members have lost the right to act through their locals in collective bargaining; but so far, they retain at least the right to talk.

Where does all that leave local unions in the Carpenters structure? In their relationship to the union, they resemble the social committees, educational committees, women's caucuses, coalitions of black trade unionists, or any of the many other committees or subunits that unions create to carry on their activities. Like them, locals have no role in collective bargaining.

Where does it leave the district and regional councils? Since they bypass and preempt the now lifeless locals in collective bargaining, they should be required to fulfill all the obligations imposed on locals by Federal law, including the direct secret ballot vote by members in the election of council officers and in the levying of dues and assessments.

NLRB election offers a choice to Kaiser healthcare workers in California: A union leadership they democratically elected or one imposed on them.

2010-09-23T14:00:00.004-04:00

The NLRB is giving 44,000 Kaiser healthcare workers in California something that was denied to them inside the Service Employees International Union: a fair election to decide what kind of union leadership they want. The choice is between a leadership they had previously elected or a leadership that had been autocratically imposed upon them.

This was not your run-of-the-mill NLRB collective bargaining election. Voters are not deciding whether to have a union--they are already unionized--but whether they should accept continued representation by the Service Employees International Union or should shift to the National Union of Healthcare Workers, a new unaffiliated independent union.

On the eve of the election, Kaiser workers were already involuntarily imprisoned in the SEIU. But they finally got from the NLRB what they had been denied inside the SEIU: a democratic choice of union representatives. At the time of the election, Kaiser workers had been deprived of local union leaders they themselves had elected and were subjected to a union officialdom that had been appointed, without their consent, by the SEIU international president That's part of a long, convoluted, and depressing story.

Around 2004, these 45,000 Kaiser workers were members of United Healthcare Workers- West, a strong SEIU local whose 150,000 members were distributed all over California. Its elected president, Sal Rosselli, like the union itself, was respected as an influential progressive force in the labor movement and in state politics. Rosselli first emerged as an important SEIU leader in 1989 when, running as a progressive insurgent, he was elected president of SEIU Local 250. In the years that followed, his influence rose; he worked in harmony with International President Andy Stern; his Local 250 was merged with others and became the axis around which the UHW-W grew into the 150,000-member behemoth of workers in homecare, hospitals, and nursing homes--public and private.

All went well until sometime in 2007 when Rosselli concluded that Stern was signing sweetheart agreements with nursing homes on terms that undermined the conditions of his UHW-W members. When Rosselli criticized Stern publicly and led a petition campaign that forced Stern into a momentary retreat, that was the end of the happy relations between the two. But Rosselli was president only of a local, although a powerful one. Stern, however, as international president was armed with authoritarian powers. After a relentless campaign against Rosselli, Stern trusteed the local and removed Rosselli from office along with all the other top local officers. Usually when an union international president trustees a local, any recalcitrant local officer that stands in his way is fairly easily pulverized. But this time, Stern hit a hornets nest of unionists who would not submit supinely to dictatorial rule.

In his 20 years of local leadership, a small army of devoted followers had gathered around Rosselli; and he was armed with a buffer of respect from labor-oriented intellectuals around the country and community leaders in the state. Rosselli and his followers resigned from the SEIU, established the new National Union of Healthcare Workers, and gathered the thousands of petitions necessary to challenge the SEIU in NLRB elections that would enable them to take back the members left behind under Stern's trusteeship.

How much did the SEIU pour into this election to hold on to those 44,000 workers? The Rosselli camp says it was 40 million dollars. The SEIU claims it was "only" around one-tenth of that, an "only" that counts out to four million dollars. The SEIU could dig into the treasury of its 2,000,000 member and tap the dues money paid by those 44,000 Kaiser workers to finance this campaign to entrench local usurpers over them. In contrast, the NUHW had to rely largely upon donations and volunteer labor, because its leaders, previously on the paid staff, were now jobless and without pay.

In one ironic aspect, this campaign has shredded the facade of the SEIU's glittering image. In all the years of SEIU President Stern's rise to celebrity status, the SEIU boasted that it was striving for "Justice for All." It claimed to seek great social changes, to change to win, to change the labor movement, to change America, to change the world. Rosselli, they charged, was concerned only with the 'narrow' interests of his own members without regard for these grand goals.

Now, to induce workers to submit to a prefabricated officialdom, they appeal to their narrow, nervous, even unreasoning fears. If you vote against the SEIU, they warn, your union contract with Kaiser will be voided, and all your union gains will disappear. The alarm is fright-inducing and it is false. Yes, if NUHW takes over, the contract with Kaiser is no longer in effect, but the company is required to maintain all previous working conditions while the new contract is negotiated. The point is that the SEIU relies not on noble ideals of Justice for All, but on elemental fear. Meanwhile, the NUHW message is about the dignity of workers, the right to choose their own leaders, and the shame of bowing one's head to autocracy.

Kaiser workers must choose, either to insist upon their democratic rights or yield to authoritarian overseers.

Join us for AUD's Annual Beach Party!

2010-09-07T12:27:00.002-04:00

Join the Association for Union Democracy and Herman Benson on Sunday, September 19th in honoring Union Reformers in the Maritime Trades. We will have an afternoon by the sea in the historic Long Beach District from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. for swimming, food, drinks and speakers from the labor movement! Tickets are $40 for individuals, $20 for students and only $60 for families.

Ticket prices includes food and drink and all proceeds will go to the Association for Union Democracy so we can continue our work to fight for the rights and interests of working people! Please email Patti to reserve your tickets: pwhittier@uniondemocracy.org.

NYS Nurses Association in Bitter Union Election

2010-07-26T13:28:00.005-04:00

In August ballots go out for a partial election, by mail, of members of the Board of Directors on the New York State Nurses Association. The dominant management team is closely contested by a full opposition slate running as Nurses for a Better NYSNA. A contested election is nothing new; the opposition has run before, with a measure of success. What is unusual, this time, is the quality of campaigning. The roles of establishment and opposition seem to be reversed.

The opposition, union-oriented experienced bedside nurses, some with a long record of rank-and-file leadership, have been running a restrained, almost subdued, election campaign. They criticize the NYSNA management of behaving like authoritarian corporate officials who restrict information to "a chosen few" and base their actions "on 'policies' that neither elected leaders nor rank and file members have access to." And, in fact, NYSNA is part union and part corporation. Because it is the collective bargaining representative for some 34,000 staff nurses, it is a labor organization as defined by the LMRDA. But it is also a corporation under state law (a status which gives its Board of Directors expansive powers) and it accepts management representatives as full members.

A website that supports the current management slate has been conducting a screeching campaign that occasionally borders on hysteria. It flails out with vitriolic personal attacks on each member of the opposition slate. Out of the blue, apparently irrelevantly, it launches a personal assault against Pat Kane, who is not a candidates for any office. Kane, one of the outspoken leaders of the opposition, is actually a current member of the NYSNA Board of Directors. Although the website is obviously inspired by the management team, its sponsors remain anonymous. No one takes public responsibility for its contents.

The management team has good cause to be nervous, which surely accounts for its being thrown off balance and for the note of desperation in its propaganda.

Of the 13 members of the current NYSNA Board of Directors, four who had been elected in earlier elections support the opposition. The directors' terms of office are staggered. In this election, only six come up for reelection: vice president, secretary and four at large. Ann Bove', an opposition at-large candidate, is now an incumbent director (facing an official investigation that could lead to disciplinary charges against her, she has retrained a defense attorney).

On the eve of the election, management abruptly faced an formidable challenge from a new group: NY Nurses Coalition. Its formation was provoked by the discharge of Sonia Echevarria, a popular nursing rep, by the NYSNA CEO in April this year. The group and its website originated as a protest against the firing but soon expanded its concern to charge the NYSNA management with highhanded administration of association affairs. At first, unaware of the existence of an opposition slate, it endorsed a single independent candidate for Board of Directors. But once it learned of the earlier opposition, it endorsed its full slate. The opposition ticket is headed by Judy Sheridan Gonzalez, its candidate for vice president.

Just in time. Andy Stern retires from SEIU

2010-07-02T00:35:00.002-04:00

(From Union Democracy Review #185)

Andy Stern's retirement as SEIU president took everyone by surprise. He is only 59 and voluntarily stepped out at the height of his power inside the union. Why? It was a rare initiative among top leaders who usually try to hold on until they are tottering on canes. If he said that he yearned to spend more time with his loving family, who would believe him? But he explained that he always felt that leaders should quit early to make room for the younger generation. Believable, even admirable --- except for one element that may not ring quite true:

It was only two years ago that Stern was reelected by inspired colleagues on a platform of changing the labor movement, changing America, and changing the world. You'd think that he would want to hang around for at least until the end of his term to make sure that it worked out.

However, regardless of why he really retired, he couldn't have picked a better time. He is at the height of glory and influence with President Obama with easy and frequent access to the White House and appointed by the president as the (only) labor representative on the 18-person National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The commission is charged with nothing less than figuring out how to improve the nation's fiscal position; they will start out with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. As SEIU president, Stern accumulated experience handling big money.

In past years, Stern had acquired an enviable record and reputation as a new type of dynamic union leader, hailed in the mainstream media and respected by a staff of idealistic union activists, civil rights campaigners, and community organizers. But he managed to squander all that by projecting an authoritarian style of unionism, in principle and practice.

President Obama's staff may not have known, and obviously did not tell him, that Stern had just begun a free fall in status everywhere outside the White House. It began with a hundred writers, academics, and assorted intellectuals all over the country who criticized his attack on Sal Rosselli's 150,000-member West Coast SEIU local; those critics were joined by a similar group in California, and then by public and community leaders in the state. In the labor movement, AFL-CIO leaders denounced him for his attack on John Wilhelm, president of UNITE/HERE. No one except his own staff and International Executive Board came to his defense; he lost the support of his own former partners in the Change to Win Federation which he had inspired and led. Inside his own SEIU, people he placed in high union positions turned out to be corrupt. Officers who he had appointed to run two important locals were defeated by rank and file oppositions.

The unkindest cut of all came from his own International Executive Board which, under the SEIU constitution, was authorized to choose the successor to fill Stern's unexpired term of office. Stern's choice for SEIU president was Anna Burger, presumably second in command as secretary treasurer and the natural choice for the job. Under Stern's tutelage, she had emerged as head of the Change to Win coalition. She announced that she was a ready and willing candidate and she seemed to be the routine choice. But it was not to be. Now that the retiring Stern had lost the power to dispense perquisites and inflict pain, the members of the International Executive Board, who had seemed so supinely under his thumb, seem to have broken loose. Anna Burger, Stern's choice, never had a chance. She was obviously unable even to mount a campaign. Within two weeks of Stern's withdrawal, the board chose the new president: Mary Kay Henry, had been an executive vice president and a leader of the union's healthcare division.

In choosing a new career, Andy Stern may have performed one last service for his union. The new president and the old international board are free to try to mend what has begun to tear the union apart.

In IBEW Local 103: A crazy application of a murky grievance system

2010-06-24T21:06:00.002-04:00

Construction workers know it can be dangerous to file a grievance under their union contract: win or lose, you can end up blacklisted as a troublemaker. Nothing new about that. But for mystification bordering on the irrational, you must go to the decision of the appeals committee on April 8 dismissing the grievance filed by Peter deMont, a member of IBEW local 103 in Boston.

Local 103 and the Boston Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association [NECA] agreed to change the job referrals requirements of the union contract, essentially by diluting provisions that require referrals from the out-of-work list in chronological order --- earliest to sign the list, earliest to get the job. When deMont argued that the agreement was invalid, the appeals committee rejected his protest in a 22-page decision whose labyrinthine windings touched upon two decisive points:

deMont pointed out that Section 1.3 of the contract between Local 103 and NECA clearly required that “Any such change or supplement agreed upon shall be reduced to writing, signed by the parties herein, and submitted to the International Office of the IBEW for approval…” Since the international never approved the change, any ordinary mortal would conclude that deMont had a powerful case. But watch how the appeals committee ducked out of that one:

“Whether approval is necessary to satisfy para 1.3 is the essential disputed point in this case,” the appeals committee wrote. The only action necessary, the appeals committee replied in reply to its own question, is “the act of submission for approval, not the receipt of approval” (committee’s emphasis.) Moreover, deMont had “never raised the contention that the Memorandum had not been submitted.” Here, there would appear to be a kind of double duck: the committee does not contend that the changes were ever submitted for approval, only that deMont has not charged the union and company with not sending it for approval.
Apart from what is required by the contract between Local 103 and NECA, the IBEW International itself requires locals to submit contacts and changes to the International for approval. But that was an easy hurdle for this agile appeals committee; it simple brushed it aside: “The argument that the failure to obtain the approval of the International or follow the steps detailed in the July, 2003 International policy, violates the International Constitution is a matter between the local and the International, not the Appeals Committee.” The point is interesting but somewhat puzzling because one of the members of the Appeals Committee is a member of IBEW Local 3 and a signatory of its decision.

The three-member Appeals Committee consists of one representative of Local 103, one from the employers, and the third from the public. The issues raised by deMont have complexities but they boil down to this:

Most IBEW contracts require contractors to hire out of the union hall where referrals are supposed to be made in chronological order: earliest to sign goes to the top of the list and gets first crack at referrals. There are exceptions for workers with special skills, for foremen, for older workers, and some others; but, on the whole, workers get jobs through the hall and order on the list prevails. But Local 103 and NECA agreed to sweeping contract modifications that effectively disrupt the priority referral system.

Over the years, efforts had been made to chip away at the basic chronological system. In 1981, the business manager allowed 300 electricians on the list to solicit their own jobs; but, on protest/appeal by Basil Paicos, the practice was voided. However, as this appeals committee wrote, the incumbent business manager “has encouraged the use of solicitation to obtain employment.”

And so, the current appeals committee has OKed a system which permits a least the top percent of people on the list --- and no fewer that 250 --- to solicit their own jobs. The record of the appeal shows that the international has never approved of this system, nor does it show whether any request for approval had ever been submitted.

New constitutions for UNITE HERE and for NUHW: Calling for democracy, Resisting authoritarianism

2009-09-28T00:00:00.006-04:00

By now there is something to be learned from the bitter internecine battles that embroil Andy Stern of the SEIU, Sal Rosselli of the new National Union of Healthcare Workers, John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE, and Bruce Raynor of Workers United. It is becoming clearer that this is no mere struggle for power among ambitious union leaders. It involves a sharp challenge to Stern's favored conception of a labor movement highly centralized at the top and regimented below. It marks an important break in the trend toward superbureaucratization of the American labor movement. That challenge is manifested in two new union constitutions: one, adopted in haste as the founding constitution of Rosselli's NUHW; the other, the extensively revised constitution of Wilhelm's UNITE HERE, just adopted at its convention in July.

In 'normal' times (if any times are normal), both constitutions would surely be of great interest to union activists and civil libertarians. However, in our times, they have a special significance. Not that they are flawless, certainly not. But in the context of the current internal labor battles, these new constitutions must be read not only for what they propose but for what they reject. They propose some steps toward democratization; they reject aspects of Stern's bureaucratization.

The NUHW constitution:

Andy Stern and Sal Rosselli once cohabited in a happy family and jointly envisioned the SEIU as the vanguard of a newly invigorated labor movement. But that bond was broken when Rosselli criticized Stern for a top-down organizing strategy bordering on "company unionism." After Stern trusteed the 140,00-member United Healthcare Workers-West and removed Rosselli, its president, along with all officers, they left the SEIU to form the new independent National Union of Healthcare Workers. Their new constitution bears all the marks of a hurry-up job, quickly put together to position their union for challenging the SEIU in collective bargaining elections. Nevertheless, at least two features stand out:

The NUHW constitution makes most big decisions of the president subject to review by the elected executive board. This provision, repeated on page after page, is a refreshing departure from practice in the SEIU, and from current trends in the labor movement, which turn top officers into near-dictators whose powers are limited only in theory by a rubber stamp international convention every four or five years.

The NUHW constitution rates highly the role of job stewards and provides for their election at all levels. Here, too, is a rejection of what Stern has introduced in the SEIU, where he would degrade the status of job stewards by replacing them with appointed clerks who deal with "job problems" over the telephone and at computer terminals.

The new UNITE HERE constitution:

The new UNITE HERE constitution is a thoroughgoing revision of the first constitution adopted at the union's founding convention in 2004. The union was formed that year by a merger of UNITE, the needle trades union, with HERE, the hotel and restaurant workers union. By agreement, Bruce Raynor, former president of UNITE was elected president of the merged union; John Wilhelm, former president of HERE, became the president of its hospitality division.

Raynor's union was weak in membership but it had lots of money (including a valuable stake in the Amalgamated Bank) accumulated in those bygone gloried days when clothing was still a respected part of the American economy. Wilhelm's union, in contrast, had plenty of members in the expanding service trades, but it needed money. Right from the start, the marriage was an odd coupling of money and members. However, that anomaly could be overlooked as the new union joined Stern's Change to Win in that momentary era of illusive enthusiasm. But it didn't last. Like Rosselli and Stern who turned from allies into enemies; so did Raynor and Wilhelm. The embittering disputes in both cases have a lot in common. Some time around late 2007, the agreement between Raynor and Wilhelm fell apart. Raynor complained that Wilhelm was squandering time and tons of money in old-fashioned organizing campaigns that could not show massive results. Wilhelm replied that Raynor sought to centralize authoritarian powers in the hands of the president and that he proposed to organize quickly by offering employers sweetheart deals.

Raynor faced a vexing problem. Since he had invested mostly money in the joint UNITE HERE venture while Wilhelm came in mostly with members, Raynor was sure to be outvoted when the union's convention assembled in 2009. He decided not to wait for the inevitable defeat. He resigned as UNITE HERE president, pulled his followers out, and formed a new union: Workers United. His new union promptly affiliated with Stern's SEIU, where Raynor found a natural fit. Stern now bankrolls Raynor's Workers United.

With Raynor gone, UNITE HERE reworked its constitution at its convention in July 2009. Unlike the NUHW constitution which was obviously hastily pieced together, the revised UNITE HERE constitution seems to be a product of careful thought. Commenting on the constitution, John Wilhelm, now UNITE HERE president, writes, "We have tried to learn from the recent struggles that have afflicted our union and to put in place a constitution that does its best not to rely upon the good will of the union's elected officers." They succeeded, not in hitting upon a perfect model of an unblemished union democracy, but in offering a democratized alternative to the superbureaucratization favored by Stern in the SEIU (and already imposed by the Carpenters union on its affiliated locals.)

The old UNITE HERE constitution, like many other union constitutions, centralized power in the hands of an authoritarian president. The new constitution leaves the president with enough authority to do the job, but it reassigns certain basic powers to a broad international executive committee. The executive committee itself is now open to minority and independent views; it is composed, not only of the top officers and others elected at-large by convention delegates, but also of vice presidents elected by separate representative assemblies of locals.

In the SEIU, Andy Stern would have the whole union leadership, top to bottom, local and international, elective and appointive, acting as one monolithic bloc, speaking to the membership with one united voice in favor of the official line. The new UNITE HERE constitution rejects that concept of militarized leadership. "Executive Committee members, " it reads, "shall have the right to inform any affiliate of any decisions or discussions which occur at Executive Committee meetings." At international conventions every committee "shall present any majority report(s) and/or dissenting report(s) prior to the opening business on the second day...." The section "Bill of Rights," assures that "No officer, affiliate, or member may be discriminated or retaliated against, or in any way disadvantaged" for criticizing any union actions or policies.

Under the old constitution, a local could face trusteeship whenever it was justified "in the opinion of the Presidents" (before Raynor split off, the union had a dual presidency). On trusteeships, the new constitution begins, "Trusteeships may be imposed and the democratically elected affiliate officers removed only as a last resort." Its text makes that declaration much more than an empty homiletic; it specifies conditions under which a trusteeship may not be imposed and it protects locals from arbitrary acts of union officials. Upon demand of a local facing trusteeship, the trial hearing will be conducted before an outside impartial arbitrator selected from a panel supplied by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. A local has the right to retain an attorney to represent it at any trusteeship hearing.

Article 23, which protects local autonomy, begins, "UNITE HERE pledges to respect local autonomy and to refrain from interfering with the affiliate's representation of its members and organization of new members." And that pledge is spelled out in extensive detail including a pledge not to "reduce or alter the jurisdiction of an affiliate without [its consent.]"

The right to trial before an impartial outside arbitrator goes beyond locals facing trusteeship. The new constitution provides, "At the option of an accused elected officer of UNITE HERE or any affiliate charged with a violation of this Constitution, the hearing shall be conducted before an impartial arbitrator...." There is more packed in this simple provision than meets the eye. It is the first time in more than fifty years that any major union has voluntarily ceded any measure of disciplinary control over its own affiliates to any agency outside the union's own power structure.

In 1957, the UAW created its Public Review Board, a body of eminent public leaders, independent of the union officialdom, to act as an appeals body, a kind of supreme court, that offers recourse to members against decisions of the union's own highest tribunals, including president and international executive board. Despite suggestions from the ACLU, no other major union has been willing to follow suit. If the UAW in 1957 swung the door widely to impartial outside recourse, UNITE HERE has opened it at least a crack. The UAW PRB is a continuing body available to members without cost and (apart from collective bargaining) is authorized to act on appeals on the whole range of internal union issues, including elections and free speech.

The UNITE HERE arbitrator-remedy seems limited to elected officers and affiliates who face charges and who must pay half the costs of arbitration. Compared to the UAW, UNITE HERE's move may seem modest. But compared to the practice in all the other unions which permit no outside recourse, it is a giant step. It is an overdue recognition of the principle that in disciplinary matters unions must provide appeals recourse to an impartial body independent of the union establishment.

Up to now, the drive toward restructuring the unions has been led by Stern in the SEIU and McCarron in the Carpenters. Unions that have been conventionally bureaucratic or reasonably democratic have remained so, without evolving either way, except when forced to comply with the LMRDA. The main movement, up to now, has been that relentless drive toward an increasingly authoritarian labor movement in which the rights of members and independent minded leaders are drastically limited. But now, after battles provoked mostly by Stern and Raynor, there is a strong countermovement. That, apart from any specific verbiage, is the encouraging significance of the new NUHW and UNITE HERE constitutions.

Of course constitutions are only printed words on pieces of paper. It remains to be seen how they will be applied in the rough and tumble life on the job and in the union halls. But, as a first step, these are welcome constitutions.
=======================================================

Redistributing presidential powers:

A striking transformation in spirit effected by the new UNITE HERE constitution is revealed in the multiplicity of presidential powers now limited or shifted away from the President, in most instances to the broadly elected Executive Board or General Executive Board. A 124-page version of the new UNITE HERE constitution includes so many examples that we list only some here. The president loses unilateral decision powers over the following:

determining jurisdiction of locals,

approving local bylaws,

expenditures over $25,000,

issuing local charters,

trusteeing and supervising locals,

ruling on appeals,

appointing international convention committees,

setting convention agendas, calling special conventions,

appointing union committees,

decisions on auditing, bonding, investments,

distribution from strike funds.

=======================================================

When hailing Trumka, remember Yablonski!

2009-09-17T02:11:00.002-04:00

Rich Trumka, now AFL-CIO president, had a fine reputation when he was president of the United Mine Workers; and he has been a good militant voice for the AFL-CIO as secretary treasurer; and he will surely be a good workers' representative as AFL-CIO president. In any event, it is hard to think of a better choice.

But as Rich ascends, it is a proper time to remember where he came from and how he got there. If not for Jock Yablonski, Trumka would probably be forgotten, if ever even noticed.

In 1969, Joseph (Jock) Yablonski, announced that he was insurgent candidate for president of the United Mine Workers. Incumbent Tony Boyle, successor to John L. Lewis, continued Lewis's autocratic regime, with the added ingredients of incompetence and corruption. "Union Democracy," Yablonski declared, "is the single most important issue in the campaign for election of a new UMW president." By the year's end, Yablonski had been murdered, along with his wife and daughter. (A few years later, Boyle was convicted of ordering the murders and died in prison.)

After the murder, the Miners for Democracy was formed to continue Yablonski's reform battle. Led by Joseph Rauh, Yablonski's attorney, a team of volunteer attorneys was recruited to back the MFD. At the time, Richard Trumka, by then a young attorney and obviously on his way out of the mines, became one of that team. The MFD defeated Boyle and democratized the union. It was Yablonski's battle to the death and the MFD's courageous continuation of the cause that opened the way for Trumka to the UMW presidency, from there to AFL-CIO secretary, and up to the presidency.

This summer, the United Steelworkers endorsed Trumka in a two-page declaration in its magazine. They tell us that he became a miner at 19, went to law school, became a lawyer, and served as staff attorney for the United Mine Workers in 1974. They neglect to mention that he could become a UMW attorney only because Yablonski led the movement that ousted the UMW old regime led by the crooked and murderous Tony Boyle and that as a young lawyer Trumka served the insurgent Miners for Democracy.

In the course of new events and with the burden of new responsibilities, Rich may disremember. But this generation of labor activists must remember Jock Yablonski. Trumka can be where he is today only because Jock Yablonski, at the cost of his life, inspired an insurgent reform movement in the United Mine Workers. Trumka's rise and Yablonski's martyrdom reminds us of those union activists who fight for union democracy today because they understand its important to the future of the labor movement. The labor establishment ignores Yablonski's sacrifice for democracy in the UMW because they distrust insurgent democracy in their own unions.

SEIU raw power is replacing falling moral authority

2009-09-08T01:45:00.001-04:00

by Herman Benson

How things have changed for Andy Stern in five years!

In 2004, he was the hottest labor celebrity in town. He was about to lead a coalition of major unions out of the AFL-CIO into the rival Change to Win, reorganize and galvanize his own SEIU, organize low-paid immigrants and minorities, and revive a declining labor movement. Labor activists , some out of the civil rights movement, some with honorable resumes in battles for union democracy, some students looking for a worthy cause, found a place with Stern. Pro-labor intellectuals ---writers, academics, researchers --- hailed the Stern-inspired movement as the greatest thing since the CIO left the AFL. The mainstream media, including even the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, featured him as the rising star of labor leadership.

In five years, he solidified his power in the SEIU by merging old locals into new mammoth units with leaders who are appointed by him, often after pledging uncritical loyalty to the administration. The SEIU convention in June last year, overwhelmingly endorsed all he has done and proposed to do. The union has amassed a huge treasury for organizing and political action. He can afford to mobilize a paid staff and some supporters for mass demonstrations against rivals in the labor movement. His power is respected ....and feared.

But he has created a problem for himself: Entrenched at the height of organizational authority, he is losing the moral high ground he once occupied so prominently. Change to Win, the union coalition he led, is falling apart.

Back in May 2005, in the celebratory spirit of the day, Sal Rosselli contributed a long piece to Labor Notes, the bottom-up troublemakers' newsletter, welcoming Stern's call for a new way. “At our international convention in June 2004,” he wrote, “we authorized our officers to put forward a set of proposals top pproduct fundamental change in the AFL-CIO. If that change were not possible, we authorized our officers to withdraw from thje AFL-CIO to build something stronger….[T]he AFL-CIO needs a new leader…It is just ommon sense that a new-industry based strategy nd structure could only be led by someone who fought for ---and not against--- that change….”

Years before, Rosselli, as an insurgent, won office as president of SEIU Local 250. As part of the Stern team, he became president of United Healthcare Workers-West in California, one of the largest SEIU locals, president of the SEIU California Council, and a member of the SEIU executive committee. But by 2007, Rosselli learned that everything had changed. After he criticized one healthcare agreement negotiated by Stern as near-company union contract, Stern embarked on a relentless campaign to destroy him, ending in a trusteeship imposed over UHW-W and the removal of Rosselli and all the local’s officers.

Stern was able to use the power of the purse to retain Ray Marshall, a former respected Secretary of Labor and university professor, to conduct hearings and invest the trusteeship with the gloss of impartiality. But that power could not shield him from the public relations disaster that he inflicted upon himself.

When rumors of a pending trusteeship first surfaced, over a hundred writers and educators expressed dismay in a long letter to Stern. "Putting UHW under trusteeship," they wrote, "would send a very troubling message and be viewed by many as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU." Such a statement was a startling event. An assemblage of intellectuals in moral support of dissidents facing repression inside a union: nothing like it in memory. (But for the SEIU, it soon became almost routine!) Some of the signers, unaware of its implications, imagined that the letter would remain an unheralded private complaint; but, when it was published as an ad in the New York Times; and Stern expressed his displeasure, a few got the nervous jitters and hastened to backtrack. But only a few.

On November 9, 2008, when trusteeship had been transformed from rumor to imminent reality, a second group of 51 academics, writers, and labor educators, joined by the presidents of two Teacher locals ---all from California --- spoke out. "We in California have a great deal at stake... [An unjustified] take over of the 150,000-member UHW would be a disaster....We urge you to avoid such a tragedy by respecting the autonomy and constructive dissent of UHW." This time, none got nervous; they all held firm.

A week later, opposition to the pending trusteeship had spread beyond the narrow circle of intellectuals to representatives in California of community, ethnic, and religious organizations and local and state political leaders. On November 17, 2008, the San Francisco Business Times reported: "More than 240 lawmakers, community leaders, urge SEIU to hold off on UHW takeover." Signers of their letter included state senators, assembly reps, and country supervisors. "We ask," they wrote Stern, "that you accept [a] mediator's recommendation... rather than precipitate a crippling war inside SEIU." The San Francisco Board of Supervisors presented a "Certificate of Honor" to "Sal Rosselli and the 150,000 members of UHW-West for their continued fight for real democracy in the American Labor Movement and their commitment to building real power for healthcare workers."

Meanwhile, Stern's Change to Win coalition was coming apart, plunging him into a second front in his war inside the labor movement. (The first is against the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the new independent union founded by Rosselli's team.) Two of Stern's major allies in founding Change to Win back in 2005 had been Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE the clothing union, and John Wilhelm, president of HERE, the hotel-restaurant workers union. The two unions,. UNITE and HERE, had merged into the unified UNITE-HERE, with Raynor as its president. But when it seemed obvious that he would be defeated for reelection by the Wilhelm forces, Raynor split away, formed a rival union, Workers United, and turned it into an affiliate of Stern's SEIU. Welcoming Raynor, Stern loaned the new union a million dollars. Now, backed by Stern, Raynor is at war with Wilhelm's UNITE-HERE.

Who is right and who wrong, who are the good guys and who the bad in this battle between Raynor and Wilhelm? Whatever the answer to that question, it will not alter one obvious fact: Stern's PR stock has fallen so low, his public reputation has been so damaged that he is widely blamed for provoking the internecine war. In July this year, in a letter to SEIU Executive Board members, 228 scholars and educators from universities all over the country, and some in Canada, (even 3 in Britain, and one each in New Zealand, Japan, and Guatemala!) protested Stern's role. They wrote, "SEIU's concerted efforts to undermine UNITE-HERE belie the progressive ideals SEIU has upheld for decades.... We are concerned that these actions are undermining the principle of union democracy and dividing the progressive movement at a critical moment in history. We urge you to stop your interference in UNITE-HERE, refocus on organizing the millions of unorganized workers...."

If this array of public criticism from pro-labor intellectuals and public representatives is unprecedented, what follows is even more unusual. An unwritten gentlemen's agreement regulates relations among top labor leaders: "You can run your union as you see fit, even honestly, and I will never criticize you publicly. In return, you will never criticize me for running my union as I see fit." But that code was seriously breached in June when, in an obvious repudiation of Stern-Raynor, fourteen top labor leaders signed a statement of support for UNITE-HERE. The leaders of the presidents of all big Change to Win unions were among them.

Taken together, all these events pose a portentous question: What will shape the future role of the SEIU: the organizational power and resources at the disposal of Andy Stern or the power of social opinion expressed by intellectuals, political leaders, and laborites?

New stage in super bureaucratization of labor

2009-09-04T00:27:00.001-04:00

Four locals in California, with a combined membership of 40,000 janitorial service workers, were ordered by SEIU President Andy Stern to join together in a new district council called United Service Workers-West. Here is something drastically new in the SEIU. Unlike the various mega locals created earlier by Stern by dissolving several locals into one, these four locals each retain a separate existence, but only as desiccated shells deprived of substance.

Because the council is a "new" labor organization, Stern is allowed by federal law to appoint all its officers; and because the council is not a local but an "intermediate" organization, they hold office for the next four years. Not a man to evade appointive opportunities, Stern has chosen the council's three top officers and the 23 additional executive board members. In decreeing the council's formation on March 11, Stern prescribes its authority by informing his appointees, "I hereby impose the attached provisional Bylaws for USWW." Provisional? But it's impossible to change these bylaws without Stern's O.K. Only the executive board can amend the bylaws and then only by a 75% vote at two consecutive meetings. In any event, the imposed bylaws read, "No amendments shall be valid or become effective until approved by the International Union." Under these bylaws, the council swallows up the locals.

Locals are instantly rendered powerless by one simple device: they are stripped of authority over their own treasuries. One listed basic "function" assigned to the council is "the collection of the dues paid to affiliated locals." Elsewhere the bylaws make clear what that means: "In consideration of the services being provided by the USWW to the affiliated Local Unions, all affiliated Local Unions shall pay to USWW any dues which it collects from its members or USWW collects on behalf of an affiliated Local Union."

The council grabs all the money and then it---not the locals--- adopts "a budget for each affiliated local union, covering the resources devoted to servicing the members of the local union." With total control over the collection and distribution of money, the council inevitably assumes control over every significant phase of local activity. Almost everything requires money, including all phases of collective bargaining. At first glance, one may not notice that locals will actually lose control over collective bargaining. But you must read the bylaw double talk with care:

Among the basic council functions are these: to "bargain [and] ...enforce collective bargaining agreements on behalf of affiliated local unions." That aim seems qualified by the words, "nothing in these Bylaws are intended to supplant or suspend the collective bargaining rights of any Local Union," a qualification that is reassuring only until you read on: "A Local Union may voluntarily transfer its collective bargaining rights to USWW."

Putting it together: Any local which "voluntarily" refuses to cede control over collective bargaining to the council, can be financially starved of the resources necessary to conduct its own effective collective bargaining and so forced into submission. It can't happen here, you will say? Then you don't know where Stern is taking the SEIU.

The locals have no right to their own money. The council president is endowed with sweeping financial powers. He or she is authorized to hire and fire and direct the whole council paid staff and set their rate of pay and to retain attorneys, accountants, and other consultants. The president is insulated from membership control.

Because the council is an intermediary body, not a local, the president, despite those enormous powers, is not elected by the membership but by a delegated body, in this case by the council executive board. After their four-year appointive term is up, executive board members will be elected by the locals, but that status does not give them a paid job. The president's power of the purse extends even to those who have the constitutional power to elect him or her. An executive board member depends upon the president for a paid staff job.

In the old style SEIU, the now-familiar mega locals remain formally autonomous; they collect and retain dues; their members elect local officers; they are responsible for organizing, collective bargaining, processing trials and charges --- all the authority and responsibility traditionally vested in local unions remains. With the new California janitors council, the role of locals is transformed. To sum it up:

The council takes over dues and assessments. As required by federal law, after the appointive term has ended local members will be permitted to elect local officers, but not necessarily to pay them. Money for all salaries, including for elected local officers, depends upon decision of the council. Who pays the piper calls the tune. Without independent access to money, local members lose control over their own locals. The handling of grievances and the processing of charges and trials are removed a greater distance away from the membership. The council dominates the locals; the international president, through his appointive power, dominates the council.

In all this, the SEIU draws upon an organizational form that has been perfected by its Change to Win partner, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. But there is this crucial difference: What the Carpenters have created impinges only upon the construction trades. But Andy Stern, SEIU president, has pretensions of emerging as the great new leader of American labor. What he has fabricated in California, therefore, has broad significance as a portent of how he would shape the emerging new labor movement.

How sensitive are those labor leaders?

2009-08-04T23:39:00.002-04:00

By Herman Benson

An unwritten gentlemen's agreement seems to regulate relations among top labor leaders: "You can run your union as you see fit, even honestly, and I will never criticize you publicly. In return, you will never criticize me for running my union as I see fit." But that code of conduct seemed to be seriously breached when fourteen international union leaders and many local ones --- some AFL-CIO and some Stern's Change to Win --- publicly chastised Andy Stern for trespassing on the jurisdiction of UNITE/HERE.

In Labor Notes, Jane Slaughter takes a dim view of what motivated these top union leaders to blast Stern.

Stern has been accused by assorted critics of making sweetheart deals with some employers, of disrupting his own union and others by massive attacks on dissidents, of buttering up Chinese dictators, of standing together with an anti-union Wal-Mart, of suppressing exposes of nursing home abuse, of claiming a monopoly over healthcare organizing, of appointing armies of local officers, of demanding loyalty oaths, and who knows what other offenses, real or exaggerated.

But, Slaughter points out, it was not for such offenses against unionism and democracy that they berated Stern. “No,” she writes, “these union leaders’ outrage was prompted by Stern's flagrant violation of that hallowed labor principle: jurisdiction. Stern was not only attempting to take over hotel organizing drives begun by UNITE/HERE but also claiming the right to organize hotel workers in the future. That’s turf, and them’s fighting words.”

Of course, she does make a telling point. Top labor leaders, even those who trumpet calls for industrial democracy and justice in society, can never be counted on to battle for the democratic rights of members inside unions, their own or others. In every case where the union establishment has intervened in Federal courts cases involving the rights of members in their unions, it has invariably been on the wrong side, on the side of limitation and repression.

Still, I think that, in this case, Jane Slaughter has been a little too unsympathetic.

In is probably true that, from time to time, all of Stern’s top union critics have been guilty in at least part of that catalogue of derelictions listed against him. Yes, they do it, but unobtrusively, and they don't boast about it. What distinguishes Stern is his ability to slurp all this together and palm it off as a modern philosophy, as a program to save the workers of the world. And, in so doing, to induce the mainstream media to hail him as the great new hero-savior of the labor movement, trumping all the others. You can understand how it galls all the others. In part, they now seize upon his financing of an attack upon the jurisdiction of UNITE/HERE as a 'legal,' acceptable, conventional opportunity to vent a pent-up resentment, even fury. For some, I think (and hope), it could even serve as relief for a somewhat uneasy conscience. We can't demand that people always do the right thing for the right reasons in the right way at the right time. For that, you can wait forever.

At the SEIU: Harassing dissidents’ lawyers, China Style

2009-05-10T22:35:00.001-04:00

On his trips to China, Andy Stern may have learned how to hone his union managerial skills. The authoritarian rulers of China go beyond simply punishing critics; they go after the victims' lawyers to teach other lawyers the painful consequences of helping dissidents. Stern can pay well to hire an army of his own lawyers to harass lawyers who represent his opponents.

When the 150,000-member SEIU Local United Healthcare Workers-West, under its president, Sal Rosselli, was a normally self governing local and it dared to criticize Andy Stern's policies, it was compelled to retain lawyers to try to ward off Stern's moves to destroy its autonomy. Now that Stern has taken over the local, ousted all its officers, and seized its treasury, his appointed trustees are not content with mere total authoritarian control. They are moving against the lawyers who represented UHW in its days of independence.

Rosselli and the former officers of UHW have resigned from the SEIU and set up a new union, the National United Healthcare Workers; they are challenging the SEIU for representation of those 150,000 healthcare workers in California. The dispute could be resolved by collective bargaining elections sponsored by the NLRB for private employees and public employee relations boards for local government workers. No such elections will be fair and square democratic contests. The SEIU begins the campaign with an enormous treasury, swollen by the seized assets of UHW, and with a big staff. Rosselli's NUHW enters with an empty coffer and must painfully piece together campaign money and staff salaries. But at least elections will give workers a chance to decide.

Now comes SEIU's double legal assault: one set of lawyers is retained to confront Rosselli and a host of former UHW representatives on charges like "stealing" SEIU "property" e.g., mailing lists. Another set of lawyers is hired to confront the lawyers who represented the old autonomous UHW. The effect of these suits, and apparently the intention, is to make it extraordinarily difficult for the dissident NUHW to campaign for support among healthcare workers. They can be so tied up in defending themselves in court that they will have few of their meager resources left for election contests. In contrast, with guaranteed dues and agency shop fees from a million and a half workers, the SEIU remains loaded with cash.

Harassing legal action, like that against Rosselli and his union supporters, is nothing new and does not seem to require special comment. As part of the "normal" repression of union dissidents, it brings no credit to Stern for imaginative inventiveness. But the action against Rosselli's lawyers does seem to introduce a kind of China refinement.

In their guise as the new representatives of UHW, and their reputed replacement as the former legal clients of one of UHW's former law firms, Stern's trustee- attorneys are bombarding the firm with an extensive list of burdensome demands. Their suit in California state court, against the firm of Siegel and Lewitter and 100 unnamed "Does," demands they produce every scrap of paper and electronic blip ("correspondence, files, memoranda, billing records, and other documents and materials") that are in any way related to its services for the autonomous UHW and its former officers, now removed.

The suit of the Stern-appointed trustee goes far beyond a mere fishing expedition for data. Its effect, if successful, would make it difficult for the Rosselli team and its National Union of Healthcare Workers to mount an effective legal defense. By taking over UHW-W and its treasury, the trustee has already deprived Stern's critics of money, forcing them to seek voluntary donations from supporters. The suit would compound that disability by depriving them of experienced legal representation. The trustee-attorneys ask the court for "injunctive relief enjoining and restraining Defendants, and all of their principals, associates, agents, servants, employees and all persons acting in concert with them, and each of them, from providing any form of legal services or representation to the Former Officers with respect to any matters relating directly or indirectly to Defendants' former representation of UHW-W, and from disclosing to any subsequent counsel for Former Officers any of the confidential information of UHW-W which Defendants obtained in the course of their representation." They want more than data and disqualification. They want money: "damages," costs, legal fees.

The Siegel firm insists that it must resist these sweeping demands because it must respect the confidential limits of its attorney-client relationship. In rejecting any attorney-client assertion, the trustee-attorneys claim that they, as UHW's current legal representative, have the right to any material produced for it. But equating the status of a democratically elected leadership with an officialdom imposed arbitrarily is a misleading stretch. The Siegel firm, in representing UHW-W through its democratically elected officers, was obligated to protect the rights of the members by defending their democratically elected officers. The trustee-attorney represents the Stern administration which appointed it. A more apt comparison would be between the democratically elected leaders of a small nation and a replacement Quisling officialdom imposed by a tyrannical oppressive invader.

The trustee-attorney may have certain extensive technical legal rights over the trusteed UHW. In contrast, the Siegel firm asserts a legal responsibility to protect the interests of its clients. In the context of current events, that claim is buttressed by the moral standards of fair play, decency, and democracy.

Andy Stern began with the proclaimed goal of helping to liberate workers of the world from oppression. Along the way, he has taken a devious detour. He is busy liberating an army of high-paid lawyers to torment union dissidents and their attorneys.

Change to Win is losing it

2009-03-07T20:16:00.002-05:00

Andy Stern's dream house is collapsing; but he hopes to pick up the pieces. Such is the implication of reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

UNITE/HERE, one of the pillars of Change to Win, the coalition that Stern led out of the AFL-CIO, is being chopped to bits by blows of mutual recriminations between its two warring top leaders. The union had been formed as a marriage, now clearly one of inconvenience, between UNITE, the needle trades union which had loads of money but not enough members, and HERE, the hotel union which had lots of members but not enough money. Bruce Raynor, who invested the needle trades cash into the merger, was awarded the presidency of the new union. John Wilhelm, who invested those hotel workers and is president of the united union's hospitality division, apparently emerged with a majority on the international executive board.

Raynor accuses the Wilhelm forces of too exclusive a concern for the wages and benefits of union members and too little for organizing the unorganized. They, in turn, accuse Raynor of acting like a dictator, one who is willing to trade away union standards to induce employers to accept unionization. On the face of it, this dispute seems like a mirror image of the battle inside the Service Employees between Andy Stern and Sal Rosselli which is now tearing apart the SEIU in California.

Raynor wants to pull UNITE out of the tie with HERE. Fifteen of his supporters on the international executive board are in federal court trying to undo the merger and get their money back. He is chairman of Amalgamated Bank, owned by UNITE, which seems somehow mixed up in this tangle. According to the Wall Street Journal, some believe that Raynor wants to safeguard his control of the bank in case Wilhelm wins out. And so he proposes to amend bank rules to make it difficult to oust its directors in one fell swoop and to require a 75% vote of all outstanding shares to approve any "significant transaction" not initiated by the directors.

Wilhelm apparently insists that unity is still possible, a position he elaborates in an unusual letter distributed to UNITE/HERE members on February 8. What is extraordinary about his statement is its affirmation that the merger can be saved, but only by a thoroughgoing democratization of the union constitution. ”Our constitution,” he writes, “is not a governing document that can withstand the test of time.”

Wilhelm opposes "President Raynor’s insistence on greater centralization of power” and he wants “reasonable checks and balances.” The General Executive Board should “become more active.” He wants to end the practice of electing GEB members at large and make possible a greater distribution of power by substituting election by industry and region “in a way that …the voice of the minority is always heard.” Trusteeships should be established and local elected leaders removed “only where absolutely necessary.” Local per capita taxes should be reduced so that “affiliates can keep the resources they need to operate and remain financially independent.” Most important perhaps, “The constitution should protect rank and file members, affiliate officers, and IU officers from retaliation for expressing their opinions, voting, or running for office.”

Realizing that the UNITE-HERE merger has failed, Stern proposes that the fractured union (or perhaps the fragments) simply solve the problem by affiliating with his huge Service Employees International Union. For Wilhelm and HERE it could be an offer they can't refuse. But it is difficult to see how either of the warring factions could find peace in the SEIU. If the charges against Raynor have merit, his entry into the SEIU could pit Raynor, one accused authoritarian, against another: Andy Stern. If Wilhelm is serious about the need to democratize, he would find the regime in the SEIU at least as distasteful as what he wants to change. Some of the issues that have erupted in the battle between Raynor and Wilhelm have been raging inside the SEIU itself, with disastrous consequences. Stern has used his authoritarian powers as SEIU international president to trustee the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers and to destroy the influence of its leader, Sal Rosselli, Stern's most outspoken critic.

Even before the explosion of these new events, it was obvious that the Change to Win coalition, led out of the AFL-CIO in 2005 by Stern, was on the edge of extinction. Now, in unexpected fashion, Stern’s overture to UNITE/HERE calls into question the whole rationale for creating a new separate labor federation. Change to Win zealots justified their split from the AFL-CIO by two basic arguments: 1. By freeing themselves from limits presumably imposed on them by AFL-affiliation, they could embark upon a unified campaign to organize the unorganized, and 2. to fulfill that objective, it was imperative to get rid of the general type of union that tried to organize anyone anywhere and to direct each union to concentrate upon its “core” industry.

Now, less than five years later, the validity of both these principles has been exploded. Neither the AFL nor C to W can report any massive gains in membership. (Raynor charges that the two unions organized more workers when they were independent than after the merger.)

Coming from the SEIU, the stricture for other unions to limit themselves to their "core" was a classic example of "do what I say, not what I do." The SEIU is a typical conglomerate of three disparate main divisions: building service, healthcare, and public employees. If Stern succeeds in harvesting UNITE/HERE, he will add many more unrelated sectors to his Austria-Hungary type empire: the entertainment industry via HERE and another conglomerate in its own right, UINTE, with its needle trades, laundry and what not workers.

Even before the UNITE/HERE debacle and Stern's latest ploy, the demise of Change to Win was already in sight. Immediately after the split, locals in Change to Win internationals remained affiliated with AFL-CIO city and state federations. In July last year, Change to Win negotiated joint political action with the AFL-CIO and began tentative discussions on reuniting. In January, this year, twelve international unions, including the major C to W unions, called for an end to the split. It is obviously only a matter of time, a short time, before Change to Win goes down as an abortive footnote in labor history.

Hybrid Unionism: Dead End or Fertile Future?

2009-03-01T12:11:00.002-05:00

Excerpt from a recent article by Herman Benson published in Dissent Magazine

--

SOME YEARS ago, when it became obvious that the labor movement was in trouble, when membership figures were dropping, academics came up with novel ideas to provide some measure of protection for unorganized workers. Only one suggestion was rooted in unionism as we know it. That was the idea first advanced by Clyde Summers, popularized by Alan Hyde and others, and most recently revived at book length by Charles Morris in The Blue Eagle at Work.

They urged that, where workers had chosen no exclusive bargaining agent, unions demand that employers recognize them as the bargaining agent for their own members. They argued persuasively that the National Labor Relations Act makes such a demand legal and binding upon employers. This so-called “minority unionism” was viewed as the entering wedge toward full union recognition. Nine international unions have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to promulgate a new regulation that would require employers to bargain with minority unions where no union has won exclusive bargaining rights.

Others also supplied imaginative alternatives to halt the decline. Perhaps ethnic identity could somehow replace class solidarity. Or, why shouldn’t workers be permitted to choose other institutions—law firms, for example—to represent them? Another idea was that if unions can’t overcome employer hostility to outside unions, why not relax the restrictions on management-supported forms of company union representation? Still another: if, in the face of employer hostility, unions are unable to enroll masses of workers at their workplace, why not serve workers directly, not only with problems on their job but with their whole range of individual miseries—legal, compensation, unemployment insurance, housing, and so on. These proposals sought to bestow upon workers the blessings of collective bargaining or other services that they were too weak to win on their own. What they had in common was the notion that, because traditional unionism was obsolete it had to be replaced by some other form of representation or be transformed into a social service or settlement house type of operation. For more than two hundred years, the basic principle that distinguished unionism from all philanthropic means of lifting the downtrodden has been that workers must act for themselves in their own interest and not rely on forms of charity. That principle would erode under the new systems.

Then John Sweeney rose to the top of the AFL-CIO in 1995, promising a return to the days of honor and glory. Years passed, nothing much changed, labor’s decline continued. Promising another new beginning, Andy Stern led his own Service Employees International Union and a consortium of fellow-traveling unions out of the AFL-CIO into a rival federation, Change to Win. He sounded a trumpet call to organize the unorganized, especially the oppressed minorities, the low-paid unskilled, and the super-exploited immigrants. Then, he shook up the labor establishment with running ideas of the month: Organize new millions; abandon old-style confrontational unionism; look to hedge fund managers; cooperate with responsible employers to rebuild the American economy; don’t annoy them with individual grievances; denounce Wal-Mart as a greedy exploiter; stand with it and other big employers for health care for all Americans; merge locals into massive entities and draft their officers and staff into a disciplined cadre to increase union “density”; denounce employers who will not cooperate but treat gently those who do; seek common ground with China and its state-controlled labor organizations to assist workers of the world. Stern won credit for instigating a debate on fundamental issues, even though those issues have never been clearly defined. It was an ideological mishmash, but a challenging and provocative one, and it made him into a media celebrity as the labor leader of the future.

We no longer need academic theorists to create substitutes for unionism. Stern has preempted the field with his own idea of a new kind of unionism. He looks not toward the old-fashioned method of organizing and inspiring workers in a battle for union recognition, but to employers’ cooperation, even their active assistance, in fashioning the modern, and bigger, labor movement. The bigger the employer, the better.

Stern’s twenty-first-century model is not exactly a variety of company unionism, because a real union, not an employer, is the initiating force. But neither is it unionism as we have known it, because it is constructed jointly with employers. Stern is right in one crucial respect. It is a new approach. He is convinced that it is the key to labor’s bright future. Will it, like many hybrids, prove sterile?

read more...

A discussion of Ray Marshall’s decision to justify a trusteeship over SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers-West

2009-02-05T18:36:00.003-05:00

SEIU President Andy Stern used findings by Raymond Marshall to justify his takeover of UHW-W. "We're acting on Ray Marshall's recommendations," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Stern had hired Marshall, a professor and former secretary of labor, to conduct hearings and make a recommendation for the disposition of his trusteeship charges against Sal Rosselli and UHW. But he didn’t need Marshall to comply with federal law, because the LMRDA authorizes the imposition of a prompt trusteeship by an international, which can hold hearings and ratify its own decision later. However, in the tense atmosphere surrounding these events, and in the face of widespread public criticism, Stern obviously felt he required the aura of extended due process to justify his actions.

After six days of testimony and a 105-page report, Marshall hesitated only a vernier micrometer reading short of ordering the imposition of an instantaneous trusteeship. However, he did authorize a trusteeship if Rosselli's local filed to comply "fully" with six conditions within five days. Marshall's report was dated January 21. The SEIU international executive board, trigger ready, authorized the trusteeship on January 22. Rosselli offered to negotiate conditions of compliance, but Stern was not interested in diplomatic fine points; he plunged ahead.

In the end, Marshall gave Stern 99.9% of what he had asked for and more than 100% of what he could use to justify a trusteeship. In the text of his decision, Marshall upheld the validity of every criticism leveled by Stern against Rosselli. Oddly, he gratuitously justified in retrospect trusteeship action that Stern might have taken in the past but did not!

Marshall ruled "I recommend that the IEB NOT [his emphasis] establish a trusteeship on the basis of the specific issues raised in the Amended Notice but establish a trusteeship if the UHW refuses to abide by and cooperate with the January 2009 decision of the IEB to have California LTC [long term care] workers unite into a single local union." This kind of ruling is, or should be, an unbelievably impermissible decision in any truly impartial court. The complex issue of long term care workers was not included in the charges presented to Marshall by Stern in September 2008. The IEB decision on long term workers came on January 9, 2009, months after the trusteeship hearings had opened. It is as though a judge found a defendant cleared of the charges actually included in an indictment but sentenced him for an offense not listed for trial. Appalling as such a conclusion may be, it stands as a mere procedural peccadillo compared to the rest of Marshall's decision. Not only here, but in every critical respect, his findings lack credibility.

On Retaliation

A single one of Marshall's main "conclusions" is enough to reveal the full flawed flavor of his whole work. "The Hearing and the IEB's Jurisdiction Decisions [on cutting 65,000 members out of UHW: HB]," he writes, "were not Initiated to Retaliate against the UHW for its Aggressive Criticism of International Leaders' Policies and Strategies." [his caps]

What strikes one at first is that this statement is uncalled for. To authorize a trusteeship, Marshall was required to find only a single valid basis for trusteeship even if all the others were flawed. (Which is what he actually did. In the end, he based his operative decision on Rossellli's resistance to losing 65,000 members.) But Marshall went out of his way to legitimize all of Stern's motives. There are subtle PR implications to this finding on "retaliation." Back in May 2008, 47 top SEIU leaders, including members of the IEB, protested that they would never approve a "retaliatory" trusteeship. Whether he intended it or not, Marshall's statement takes them off the hook for voting unanimously for this trusteeship.

But all this, however depressing, is only secondary. The essential point is that Marshall's denial of any retaliatory intent flatly contradicts a record familiar to anyone who has followed recent events in the SEIU. That record reveals a relentless drive to destroy the UHW and Rosselli after his sharp public criticism of Stern's evolving ideology:

In January 2007, Rosselli circulated an internal union memo sharply criticizing an agreement negotiated by Stern with a big association of nursing home chains in California. The agreement, according to Rosselli, created SEIU units that "may come close to becoming … company unions." After Rosselli's UHW submitted petitions denouncing the agreement signed by 20,000 SEIUers, Stern backed off and decided not to renew the deals.

Rosselli had been president of the SEIU California State Council. In January 2008, exercising his overweening power as international president, Stern dissolved the council, ordered elections to a newly organized council, and made sure his handpicked selection got the job. (P.S. Stern's choice now stands accused of misappropriating union money.)

In February 2008, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU international executive committee so that he could feel free to criticize the official line. As expected, and as natural, Stern loyalists responded with a flurry of counterattacks in which they denounced Rosselli not only for what he said but for the very act of straying off the line. The SEIU was adopting a policy that forbade any elected officer, staff employee, or local to criticize official policy before the membership. The whole apparatus, top to bottom, was to appear as one monolithic block. Rosselli and the UHW obviously would not submit to that principle.

In March, Stern made his first trusteeship threats against Rosselli and the UHW.

The June SEIU convention authorized a California reorganization plan that would strip Rosselli's local of 65,000 members.

In August, Stern instituted formal proceedings against UHW-W as the first step toward imposing a trusteeship; in the interim, he appointed two "monitors" to oversee local affairs and control all expenditures. Hearings were adjourned until after the presidential elections.

Meanwhile, Stern's followers instituted two separate federal suits against Rosselli and members of the UHW executive board. The first, filed by the SEIU itself, was dismissed by the federal judge. The second, filed by two individual members of UHW-W, may still be pending. In both cases, the firm of Bredhoff and Kaiser was the complainants' attorney. The complaint in one suit was explicit in seeking "an injunction prohibiting defendants from using UHW-W funds for their defense....."

California SEIUers were asked to vote in an "advisory" referendum: Shall all long-term healthcare workers --- as in nursing homes --- be transferred into one local; or shall all healthcare workers ---including hospitals --- be combined into a single big local of all healthcare workers. For Rosselli's UHW, a Hobson's choice. In one case, UHW-W would lose 65,000 members; in the other, it would be liquidated as a local, and Stern would appoint the officers of the new local.
Two sets of formal internal union charges were suspended over Rosselli. Two UHW-W members charged the Rosselli camp of harassing them for supporting Stern's program. In a second set of internal union charges, two international executive vice presidents charged Rosselli and UHW-officers of offenses already leveled against them in the trusteeship hearings. In both cases, Stern exercised his ample powers to assume jurisdiction and appoint the committees to try the critics whom he detests.

A third threat never reached the level of formal charges. In a letter to Rosselli in July, SEIU General Counsel Judy Scott demanded that he reply to "some evidence" that his staff had turned over an SEIU membership list to the California Nurses Association in Iowa.

Marshall had to shrug off this whole record of attacks on Rosselli to deny any hint of retaliation.

Those 65,000 long term care workers

Of UHW's 150,000 members, some 65,000 worked in "long term care" facilities like nursing homes; the others in acute care facilities like hospitals. The SEIU national office argued that in California all long term care workers, now distributed in several locals including UHW, should be united into a separate local and toward that end, those 65,000 should be cut out of UHW. Rosselli and the UHW opposed this move, insisting that instead of separating long term workers from the others, all health care workers in California should be united into a single local with a democratically elected leadership.

Now, these are hotly contested issues, more than ordinarily complex. They are additionally complicated by devious tawdry implications: Stern insists upon appointing the officers of all new locals. His first obvious candidate to head up any long term local was Tyrone Freeman, whom he had appointed as president of the one existing long term local. But that fell through when Freeman had to be expelled on charges of misappropriating about a million dollars of union money.

There was no valid reason for Marshall to give much weight to any of this, certainly none to make it the key issue in his finding. He was presumably authorized to conduct hearings on specific charges related to a trusteeship demand, and the topic of those 65,000 was never the subject of charges; it was not even mentioned in Stern's original list of charges. It was thrown in only later as a kind of afterthought and even then not as the justification for disciplinary action. Stern called attention to the dispute over the 65,000 to portray the dispute with Rosselli as a fairly routine organizational dispute over how best to organize long term care workers. It was Stern’s effort to portray Rosselli's criticism as simply driven by a narrow desire to hold on to dues payers. In short, Stern's references to the dispute over 65,000 members was not a charge against Rosselli intended to justify a trusteeship; it was an effort to derogate Rosselli's motives.

Marshall not only swallowed Stern's bait hook, line and sinker -- "the basic problem," he wrote, "appears to be the local union's reluctance to accept the IEB's jurisdiction decision that would cause the UHW to lose its 65,000 LTC members." -- he went further, much further. He transformed an almost totally irrelevant complaint into a most serious charge and then used the charge he himself had created as a justification for trusteeship, the main justification.

The funds

One last word on an issue that dominated long hours of the proceedings but which finally had no bearing on the final decision. It has some significance, however, as an indication of Marshall's state of mind. When the danger of a repressive trusteeship loomed, UHW established two separate funds apart from its regular treasury: one was intended as a tax exempt fund to be charted as an IRS 501(c)(3) educational organization. The other was an escrow fund deposited with the local's law firm for future legal action. Stern argued that the real but concealed purpose of the funds was to set aside money to defend the local officers if a trusteeship was established. (When a local is trusteed, its officers can be removed or suspended and the international takes over control over all its resources, including money.) Ironically, Stern threatened a trusteeship because, he said, local officers sought to use local money to fight a trusteeship. Rosselli and the UHW denied the charge and insisted that it set up the funds as a more efficient way of conducting educational and political-type activities. (Full disclosure by HB: On my internet blog, I commented favorably that these funds hopefully could be used to defend the local against an improper trusteeship and to defend the rights of members under a trusteeship. The blog became a minor debated issue before Marshall.)

Actually the issue was mooted before the hearings ever opened because the local yielded, dissolved the funds, and simply restored the money to the local treasury. After hearing the arguments, and obviously recognizing that fact, Marshall concluded , "Although I do not recommend trusteeship for the reasons stated above …" but he had to end the thought with "I believe a trusteeship would have been appropriate to prevent further transfers and recover UHW money already transferred had the trusteeship been imposed at the time of the transfer."

But Marshall had presumably been called upon to assess the validity of charges that would justify this trusteeship, not what might have justified a hypothetical trusteeship that was never imposed. Here too he strained to go beyond the call of duty.

Statement to the SEIU Ethics Commission

2008-11-13T19:39:00.003-05:00

After three prominent leaders of the Service Employees International Union were charged with misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars from their local union treasuries, the SEIU set up an ethics commission to recommend measures that the union might take to guard against such misdeeds. The commission includes representatives of the union itself and eminent individuals independent of the union. Herman Benson, for AUD; and Ken Paff, for TDU were asked to submit suggestion to the commission. Benson submitted the following statement to the commission and was interviewed by a commission sub-panel on November 12.

To: Members of the SEIU ethics commission
From: Herman Benson

Since I am unable to attend the meeting in Washington and I know the limits of participating by phone, I herewith transmit my thoughts and suggestions. I would like to thank the commission for this opportunity to participate in its deliberations.

I am not completely clear on what this commission is charged with bringing back to the union. If it is asked simply to bring back a code of commandments that should guide the ethical and moral actions of union officers and members, that task would be easy and should not take long. Codes already proliferate throughout the labor movement; the SEIU has a modest code of its own. The existing codes could easily serve as the basis for elaborating and strengthening an even more impressively formulated code. However, the bare existence of even the best of these codes has had an inconclusive effect on actual life in unions. The neglected problem has been enforcement.

If, on the other hand, the commission aims, not only to suggest a new and better code, but to propose the creation of mechanisms and institutions that might enable the union to enforce adherence to high ethical standards, it takes on a heavy responsibility not easily fulfilled.

In episodic situations, unions have occasionally been able to deal with misappropriation of money and "ordinary" corruption (as far as I know, never with organized crime), but there has never been a successful, sustained, effort with lasting results from within the labor movement itself. In 1957, the AFL-CIO tried with its Ethical Practices Committee and Codes. Recently Ed Stier tried in the Teamsters union. Both were failures. Unfortunately, the labor movement has had to depend upon the U. S. Justice Department to police it against massive theft and organized crime infiltration. Why has the labor movement been unable to adequately police itself? I've thought long and hard about this vexing question.

As I see it now, the weakness of any internal union effort stems from two sources: 1.The power relationships within unions make it politically awkward and inconvenient for even well-meaning union leaders to act against suspect elements in the power structure. That reality permits corruption to fester and makes it difficult to eradicate. 2. In resisting corruption, even with the best will in the world, unions lack the weapons routinely available to law enforcement authorities: wire taps, extensive surveillance, FBI etc. files, subpoena powers, threat of contempt charges.

I mention all this, not to disparage or discourage action but only to make clear how big a job this commission, or any body inside the labor movement, faces. It seems to me, you must be ready to propose measures that go beyond what is conventional in the labor movement or may be downright unpopular. As Obama might say: the old way has failed: we might at least consider the new. In that spirit, I offer my own thinking which I would sum up as follows:

1. We need an authority, within the union which can free itself from internal union politics and can rise above the familiar maneuvering and conflicts for power, prestige, and perquisites. We need an appeals or enforcement institution that is completely independent of any union's own administrative structure, not beholden to any established officialdom, and under certain conditions, free to overturn decisions of the union president or international executive board. 2. Lacking the tools of government law enforcement authorities, we can depend upon the hundreds of thousands of good union activists, whose eyes and ears and dedication to the labor movement, can make them effective guardians of integrity. But for that, we need to create the kind of genuine democratic atmosphere within the union that encourages members to speak their mind without fear of denunciation or retaliation.

In that connection, I offer the following observations:

I: The implementing or enforcement body

Here, the commission can begin by considering the Public Review Board of the United Auto Workers. After the ACLU proposed the creation of such boards in the labor movement, the UAW set up its board upon the initiative of Walter Reuther in 1957; it remains an effective functioning body. The remarkable feature of this move is that it represents the voluntary relinquishing by a union leadership of a measure of its authority to a body composed of individuals outside of the union and independent of its power structure. As an authoritative appeals committee, it offers recourse to members against decisions of the union's highest officers, including the president and international executive board. It is limited only by its inability to review UAW official collective bargaining policy. Its decisions are readily available to UAW members and the general public. (See Articles 32 and 33 of UAW Constitution)

To remain effective, any such a review board must be composed of individuals of unquestioned integrity. If its members were chosen for their deference to the union leadership or dependence upon it, the board would lose all credibility. The UAW has passed this test by selecting people who are pro-labor, civil libertarian in outlook, and eminent their own careers. UAW-PRB members are nominated by the international president, subject to approval by the international executive board, and finally elected at the UAW convention. They serve a term of five years. Any vacancy in mid-term is filled from nominations by the board itself.

I would make at least one suggestion to strengthen the board's reputation for independence. The union president should make his selections from a whole roster of nominations submitted by organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, the UAW Public Review Board, the Association for Union Democracy, the Public Citizen Litigation Group. In that case, while the union retains the right to choose the members of the board, it does so from among panel members chosen by pro-labor civil libertarians independent of the ruling union administration.

After 50 years, the UAW Public Review Board remains unique in the labor movement. (The small independent Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers did emulate the UAW, but I don't know if its Public Review Board survived after the union affiliated with the Carpenters.) The labor movement has remained indifferent at best; some unions have been hostile. The UAW attributed the failure of negotiations for its merger with the IAM and Steelworkers to its insistence upon retaining the PRB. If this commission is to recommend a genuine Public Review Board, roughly modeled upon the UAW's, it must be ready to stand against the prevailing prejudices.

II: The content of any code:

To be taken seriously and be effective, any code must make clear that it is just as concerned to protect membership democratic rights as it is to protect the union against corrupt practices and conflicts of interest. Existing codes spell out, in detail and at length, rules for preserving financial integrity. But where they even refer to union democracy, it is only in passing, briefly, perfunctorily. That imbalance reveals what a union considers important …and what it does not.

The court-enforced consent decree that monitors the Teamsters union calls not only for eradicating corruption, but for encouraging democracy in the union. The Independent Review Board which is responsible for enforcing the consent decree, armed with the power of the court and government law enforcement, has done an excellent job in freeing the union from mob control. But it remains indifferent to appeals from members who complain against violation of their rights. Somehow, democracy falls by the wayside. In the interests of integrity, that kind of neglect should end.

We should be concerned with bolstering union democracy, not only because it is a value in itself or because it tends toward a better and more effective labor movement, but because in the context of this discussion it can be a powerful weapon for defending integrity. Local members and local leaders ---all union activists--- can detect what's happening in their unions sooner and far more effectively than any outside formal investigators. But the atmosphere in the union and the receptivity of the top leadership must encourage them to speak out, knowing that their questions and misgivings will be received, and they need not fear intimidation and retaliation.

It would be disingenuous of me not to admit that I feel that this would require a massive change of mood inside the SEIU. The demand that all elected and appointed representatives, top to bottom, speak with "one voice," the heavy-handed denunciation of Sal Rosselli for the very act of criticizing official policy, and the threat to trusteeship his local all run counter to what is required. The need is to change the mood. For this commission to ignore that reality would be to undermine its effectiveness.

III: The scope of any enforcement body's responsibility and authority

Based on what I have learned over the years, I'd like to lay out what I think are the choices.

What should we expect of any enforcement body, public review board or any other? The alternatives, as I see it, are between 1. to act essentially as a review body, authorized to protect due process and fair play in the union by offering appeals recourse against decisions by the union's own officers and committees, or 2. in addition to or instead of the above, to exercise police powers that would require it to initiate investigations, prefer charges, and perhaps to conduct trials and impose penalties on its own authority.

In public government, Federal courts are appeals bodies. The Department of Justice is the policing agency. Inside the labor movement, the UAW Public Review Board hears appeals. In the Teamsters union, the Independent Review Board is a policing body.

As I remember, when the UAW Public Review Board was in formation, --- this was a moment when the McClellan Committee hearings had exposed widespread corruption in the labor movement --- Walter Reuther suggested that the board might take on responsibility for policing the union against corruption. But the prospective board members demurred because they felt it went far beyond their intentions.

The cost of an appeals board is easily within the resources of a union like the SEIU. Retainers for the members, a full time executive director, and a modest supporting staff would do the trick. But to add policing functions would require much more.

The costs of the Teamsters IRB, whose policing responsibilities include investigating, pressing charges, conducting trials, and sentencing, are borne by the union. Because the IRB is appointed by a Federal judge, it has access to government law enforcement and information gathering facilities which would not be available to any SEIU created body.

If the SEIU wanted to set up a special board both to police the union for corruption like the Teamsters IRB and to act as an appeals body to protect members rights, I think it would need an extensive and expensive investigatory and clerical staff. If the commission and the union decided that such a board was necessary, and the union is ready to bear the costs, I would be ready make suggestions for its functioning. However, I am not ready to recommend the creation of an enforcement board with such broad responsibilities. I favor a board more like the UAW PRB.

Obviously, this commission was created because the union felt it proper to respond to the revelations of misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of dollars by officers of some West Coast union locals. But no responsible person I know of charges that the SEIU is systemically riddled with corruption. The SEIU is not the Teamsters union. I am convinced that if union democracy is protected and encouraged such problems could be adequately handled within the union's own constitutional procedures for charges, trials, and penalties, with this addition: a genuinely impartial public review board with ultimate appeals authority. (In California, there must have been some union members who blew the whistle. The point is to encourage and protect member like them.)

IV: Addendum on democracy

Without lengthy supportive explanation, I would like simply to list some of the provisions that should be included in any code of democratic procedures. I realize that many (most?) are quite controversial. However, they will indicate what I feel is necessary to lift any formulations above the level of holiday homiletics:

1. As a minimum, the rights provided in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act with additions and modifications in what follows.

2. Abolish all meeting attendance rules as a qualification for running for office when they automatically disqualify 90% of members. Since the reality is that only about 5% of a local's members attend meetings, these rules serve no real purpose except to help entrench a tiny minority in office.

3. End the requirement of 24 months continuous good standing as a qualification for candidacy in local elections. The rule serves to disqualify good, active, long term union members who inadvertently fall a few days in arrears or are disqualified by manipulations of the local financial records. Substitute a requirement for, say, one or two years membership with the right to get in good standing at the time of nominations.

4. Encourage the election of job stewards

5. Establish "battle" pages in union publications and on union websites where opposing and dissenting view can be expressed. Follow the example of the United Federation of Teachers, which provides whole pages to rival slates in local elections.

6. Allow members to establish their own independent web sites without imposing niggling or repressive restrictions.

7. Give local unions due process and their day in court by permitting the use of locals' own resources to challenge what they feel are the improper imposition of trusteeships.

8. Provide for membership ratification of contracts after full information is afforded to voters with a reasonable period for discussion.

9. Comply with LMRDA Section 105 which requires unions to inform members of their right under the LMRDA.

10. Require exclusively public employee locals to comply with the relevant provisions of the LMRDA.

11. Provide for the voiding of union elections where the violations of fair procedures are so egregious that they make a mockery of the democratic process.

In search of legal defense against illegal trusteeships

2008-11-12T23:57:00.000-05:00

In March 2008, the UHW-W executive board deposited $500,000 into a trust account with its attorney to provide for legal defense of the local's autonomy and of the democratic rights of its members and officers against the imposition of an illegal trusteeship. In scheduling the trusteeship hearings, Stern charged, "This is an inappropriate use of union monies." The charge that local funds may not be used to fight a trusteeship, formulated and reformulated with repetitive emphasis, constitutes Stern's main indictment of Rosselli's local. Catch 22! The UHW faces trusteeship because it established a special fund to defend the local and its elected leadership against an illegal trusteeship!

The puzzling difficulty faced by UHW-W, and which establishing a legal defense fund partially surmounts, lies in federal law which provides that any trusteeship imposed by an international union is presumed to be valid for the first 18 months. Once a trusteeship is established, the international takes over the local treasury so that none of its members or elected officers have access to their own local's funds to defend their rights. Starved of money, they find it almost impossible to mount an effective legal case. Meanwhile, the international officials can dip into the union's ample resources to defend their every action. Unrestrained for 18 months, armed with all the international and local levers of money and power, free to employ fear, favor, propaganda, and persuasion, the international moves to create its own political machine in the local and eliminate its annoying critics. Stern's trusteeship and internal charges are obviously intended to bring down Rosselli and simultaneously to deprive him of any means of effective legal defense.

Is it permissible for a local union to set aside money, safe from seizure by the international, so that it can be guaranteed funds to mount a legal defense against trusteeship? That question has arisen before, not in the SEIU but in the Teamsters union. It has never been adequately resolved.

In 1996, when Ron Carey was still IBT president, some 60 Teamster units had already been trusteed, some by the Independent Review Board and some by Carey. Three big anti-Carey locals, fearing trusteeships, each put money into a kind of escrow fund, totaling $400,000 for all three, held in trust by their attorneys. Like Rosselli's fund in 2008, their fund in 1996 was intended to guarantee that they could pay for legal defense against the trusteeship they feared. Like Stern in 2008, Carey in 1996 charged that the fund violated the union constitution and went to court against it. The controversy was never settled, because the three locals backed off and restored the money to the union treasury. But while the battle was still alive, here is what we wrote in Union Democracy Review [No. 106]:

"...what is involved in this dispute is not the right of the international to impose trusteeships but the right of a subordinate body to an adequate defense against the imposition of a trusteeship that may be improper. By protecting legal defense funds from instant seizure, the local body, at least temporarily, gets its day in court. A valid trusteeship might be delayed, but only to allow for a period of genuine due process.

"What is involved here is a matter of important principle that transcends the immediate situation in the Teamsters union. Carey, we are convinced ... uses the weapon of trusteeship on behalf of integrity and democracy. Even he might err in the future. And anyone is capable sometimes of abusing power, even in a worthy cause. But that's not even the greatest danger. Suppose he is defeated and replaced by an old time dictator. If Carey were to try to defend his local by setting up a legal defense fund for protection against repression by, say, a new gang, surely we would all rise to his defense.

"... the issue goes beyond the Teamsters union to affect the broader labor movement. In most cases that come to our attention... trusteeships are imposed to stifle democracy.... Even with a defense fund initially at its disposal, a local is guaranteed only its first day in court. ... The defense fund makes at least a minimal due process available in trusteeship cases. True, the idea is advanced by a suspect old guard. But if we had thought of it first, it would already have become a minor weapon for union democracy."

Now, twelve years later, while SEIU democracy is endangered, the issue returns.

California labor intellectuals call on Andy Stern to respect constructive dissent in SEIU

2008-11-11T21:02:00.003-05:00

AUD recently received this letter by email:

An Open Letter of Concern to Andy Stern
About United Healthcare Workers-West
From California Educators, Academics, Writers and Worker Advocates

November 9, October 2008

Mr. Andy Stern
Service Employees International Union
1800Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Dear Andy Stern:

On May Day, 2008, more than 100 scholars, writers and activists, many of them longstanding supporters of SEIU, wrote to you and urged reconsideration of any plan to place United Healthcare Workers-West in trusteeship. That public letter said: "Putting UHW under trusteeship would send a very troubling message and be viewed, by many, as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU."

The letter endorsers were told, at the time, that no such plan existed and that UHW statements about this matter were simply not true. Such reassurances were received in a personal message from SEIU EVPs Eliseo Medina and Gerry Hudson and in a letter signed by 47 other SEIU leaders. As recently as July, the threat of an international union take-over of UHW was dismissed as a "myth" by SEIU IEB member Stephen Lerner (in an exchange of views posted on MRZine).

Now, we've learned that you indeed ordered UHW trusteeship hearings. These began in San Mateo on September 26 and 27 and are scheduled to resume and conclude next week in San Jose. Moreover, you have gone ahead despite an enormous outpouring of opposition from UHW members and others, including the protest in Manhattan Beach by 5,000 SEIU members opposed to the arbitrary removal of 60,000 UHW-represented workers to Local 6434 in Los Angeles. More than 8000 members protested at the San Mateo hearings. At the same time, the media has reported very serious allegations of corruption involving Local 6434 President Tyrone Freeman, which have led to his removal by your office and an on-going investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor that could lead to criminal charges against him. It would appear that those home care and nursing home workers faced with the possibility of forced transfer from UHW to Freeman's local have had good reason to resist.

We in California have, of course, a great deal at stake in the outcome of these disputes. The trusteeship fears of UHW seem to be very well-founded. While a clean-up of 6434 may require outside intervention, we believe that a simultaneous, unjustified take- over of 150,000 member UHW would be a disaster for the California labor movement (and SEIU nationally). It would further disrupt current contract negotiations with major health care
employers, while also impeding much-needed political action to defend state worker jobs in health, education and other public services. As the May Day letter endorsers did last spring, we urge you to "avoid such a tragedy"--by respecting the autonomy and constructive dissent of UHW.

Sincerely,*

Frank Bardacke, Writer, Labor Educator and Founder, Third World Teaching Resource Center
Martin Bennett, Professor of History, Santa Rosa Junior College, Executive Board, North Bay Labor Council
Jeff Blankfort, Radio Host, KZYX, Mendocino Public Radio
Gillian C. Boal, Rare Book Conservator, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Iain A. Boal, Professor of Social History, UC Santa Cruz
Gray Brechin, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Geography, UC Berkeley; Project Scholar of the California Living New Deal Project.
Bob Brenner, Director, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Summer Brenner, Environmental Justice Activist, Berkeley
Charles Briggs, Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
James Brook, poet, San Francisco
Jose Calderon, Professor, Sociology and Chicano Studies, Pitzer College
Jamie Court, President, Consumer Watchdog
Mike Davis, Writer and Professor, Creative Writing, UC Riverside
A. J. Duffy, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Judy Dugan, Research Director, Consumer Watchdog
Barry Eidlin, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Richard Flacks, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
Jack Gerson, Executive Board and Bargaining Team, Oakland Education Association
David Goldberg, Treasurer, United Teachers of Los Angeles
Charlene Harrington, Professor of Sociology and Nursing, UC San Francisco
Dan Hodges Chair, Health Care for All-California
Ramsey Kanaan, PM Press, Oakland
John Kramer, Professor of Political Science, California State University Sonoma
Karl Kramer, Treasurer, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement - San Francisco, Campaign Co-director, San Francisco Living Wage Coalition
Jack Kurzweil, Former President (San Jose State University Chapter),
California Faculty Association, SEIU 1983
Sasha Lilley, Program Director, KPFA
Dr. Arthur Lipow, Center for Global Peace & Democracy, Alameda
Jeff Lustig, Professor, Political Science Dept. CSU Sacramento.
Joseph Matthews, Attorney
Nathanael Matthiesen, Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Tom Mertes, Administrator, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History, UCLA
Franco Moretti, Professor of Literature, Stanford University
Claudia Moura, Professor, Social Science, Santa Rosa Junior College
Betty Olson-Jones, President, Oakland Education Association
Raj Patel, Writer, Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Richard Perry, J.D., Ph.D. Professor of Justice Studies
San Jose' State University
Vivian Price, Coordinator, Labor Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Melvin Pritchard, Professor of History, West Valley College
Tom Reifer, Sociology, University of San Diego; Associate Fellow, Transnational Institute
Teri Reynolds, MD, PhD, Past delegate, Alameda County Medical Center Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU
Bill Shields, Chair, Community and Labor Studies, City College of San Francisco
Faith Simon, Mendocino Institute
Norman Solomon, Institute for Public Accuracy, Author, War Made Easy
Vanessa Tait, author, Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below,
Member, UPTE-CWA Local 9119, UC Berkeley
Kay Trimberger, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, California State University Sonoma
Richard A. Walker, Chair, California Studies Center, UC Berkeley
Katharine Wallerstein, Executive Director, The Global Commons Foundation
David Walls, Professor of Sociology, California State University, Sonoma
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley
Cal Winslow, Fellow, Environmental Politics, UC Berkeley, Director Mendocino Institute
Eddie Yuen, Author, editor and radio producer

*affiliations listed for identification purposes only

To A... great and A...glorious

2008-10-15T08:32:00.000-04:00

My oath on accepting appointive office

To A... great and A...glorious
Accept my pledge most meritorious
I will obey your every word and note
If not, you can cut my throat

(with thanks to an unknown libertarian poet)

Who really controls the SEIU trusteeship hearings?

2008-10-02T19:19:00.000-04:00

The SEIU retained Ray Marshall, former secretary of labor, to preside over the hearings on President Stern’s proposal to place the UHW-W under trusteeship. Marshall is assigned to the job so that the proceedings will presumably be impartial. But who really calls the shots? We ask this question because the OLMS office of the U.S. Labor Department wrote a request to Marshall (note: to Marshall not to the SEIU) in which it wrote:” As you are aware, we requested that an OLMS investigator be present to observe the hearings. It is our understanding that after consultation with the SEIU International Union, you will not honor our request."

If Marshall is really running the hearings, why did he have to consult with the SEIU before denying the request? Odd.

But that is not the end of the story. The SEIU seems to have changed its mind (perhaps after the media got on to the story.) Two days later, the DOL was informed, “SEIU would be willing to accommodate a request by DOL to attend the upcoming hearing….” But the letter came not from Marshall but from Judy Scott, SEIU general counsel. Marshall had dropped out of the loop. That’s why the question is appropriate: who is really in charge?

SEIU needs more democracy not more codes

2008-09-10T19:40:00.002-04:00

Paul Garver is disappointed because I did not respond more positively to reports that Andy Stern's ethics commission might request my comments for proposals to strengthen the SEIU ethics code. He writes, "Why don't we accept Andy Stern's offer ...in the spirit of giving this process a genuine test?"

But what is there to test? An ethical practices code can be helpful in resolving ambiguities and fine points. Can a business agent accept a $25 holiday gift from an employer? $50? $1000? Can a union rep. hold stock in a major corporation represented by the union? In a small family owned business? (The SEIU already has a code of ethics.) But that's not what triggered this moral crisis in the SEIU. We are confronted here essentially by the outright misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of dollars of union money to enrich union leaders and their friends and family. Does a bank need an ethical practices code to inform tellers that it's wrong to steal money from the till? Is it necessary now to remind SEIU officers that they must not steal, and that we really, really mean it?

From that standpoint, all this talk about appointing a new commission would be a simple waste of time, but then, time exists to be wasted. But this is more than a time-waster. It is an evasion. The real problem is that these officials were originally appointed, not elected, to their powerful positions by Andy Stern himself; they were endowed with authority over mega locals and a staff which they, in turn could appoint. And in their locals, as in the SEIU, an atmosphere of intimidation has been created which makes members, appointed staff, and even elected local officers afraid to speak out. In that atmosphere, where democracy recedes. corruption festers. The problem in the SEIU is not the lack of an ethical practices code, it is the suppression of the democratic spirit. At least, that's how I look at it.

But there's even more is at stake. The problem is the undermining of democracy. And while Andy Stern shifts attention to an ethical practices code, he himself is making the problem of democracy even worse! He is now trying to destroy Sal Rosselli, president of United Healthcare Workers-West, who criticizes his policies. In fact, Rosselli has been the only critic with enough influence and resources to constitute any serious opposition to Stern. Unlike Stern's own appointees, Rosselli has never been charged with trying to enrich himself or friends. The attack on Rosselli derives from his political opposition to Stern.

And so, because the talk of a new ethics code is a waste of time, and is an evasion of the real problem of democracy, and because it can serve as a cover for a new attack on democracy, and because I fear being used in any effort to divert attention from these sordid facts, I could only react with skepticism.

How could Andy Stern's appointees manage to rip off the SEIU?

2008-09-06T18:43:00.001-04:00

Someone explained to Steve Greenhouse, N.Y. Times labor reporter, that the SEIU was plunged into a corruption scandal because "Mr. Stern [international president] ... has been preoccupied with politics, unionizing more workers, and combining locals into larger, more powerful groups –actions that critics say have led to less accountability for local leaders."

You get the picture? While Stern is rushing from California to Connecticut to China in a crusade to save the workers of the world, and merging local to local to mobilize them against global capitalism, and organizing those millions of workers, and preparing the political assault against reaction in Washington, ---while his back was turned and his attention riveted on all those momentous tasks --- some unethical aides could take advantage of his preoccupation by stealing money. ( We note, in passing, that despite those onerous social burdens, Stern could squeeze out the time to prepare charges against Sal Rosselli.)

Can honesty in the SEIU depend upon Stern keeping his own eyes, and, ears, and hands on everything and everyone? No, they are asking too much of any single human being, even Stern. This is a union of !,800,000 members, tens of thousands of representatives, elected officers, appointed staff, and hundreds of locals. No one person can police all that. True, Stern did appoint to high positions those who are now accused of enriching friends and relatives. But even the best of leaders can misjudge some people.

On the other hand, Stern did promote dozens of good decent, talented, honest, idealistic people. In fact, back in May, on the eve of the SEIU national convention, when Stern first seemed to be threatening a trusteeship over Rosselli’s local, 101 pro-union writers, scholars, and educators wrote to Stern, “Putting UHW under trusteeship would…be viewed by many as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within the SEIU.” Forty-seven top SEIU leaders, including Dennis Rivera and George Gresham, who had succeeded Rivera as head of Local 1199 in New York, replied, “On the specific issue you raise, we agree that trusteeships should never be used to limit democratic debate in any union. In the case of the SEIU your letter addressed a straw man since no such retaliatory trusteeship is under consideration nor would we ever approve one. In fact, the only talk of trusteeship has come from UHW-W itself.”

Their revulsion against retaliatory trusteeship seems to have been enough to give pause to Stern, but only enough to delay him for four months, not to stop him. Ironically, three of those 47 now stand accused of ripping off the union. But enough of the others are decent unionists of integrity who should be counted on to stand up against crooks; and there are hundreds of others in local leadership at all levels who must be revolted by the epidemic of scandals. Surely with all those open eyes and ears, dozens of good unionists must have known or suspected. Why did they have to wait for exposures by the press? Why did no one in the leadership at any level speak out boldly and demand action? There's the nub of the problem.

Those have it all wrong who advised Greenhouse that the difficulty is that Stern was so preoccupied that he couldn't do enough. The problem is not what Stern couldn't do. The real problem is what he did do. He undermined the spirit of democracy in the SEIU.

He appointed the heads of huge locals and gave them time to create their own political machines. They, in turn, established a structure that made it virtually impossible for any rivals to organize against them and endowed themselves with authoritarian powers. Stern and his ideological mentors created an atmosphere of organizational and moral intimidation throughout the union. They insisted upon a humiliating loyalty oath from all appointees. They demanded that all SEIU representatives at all levels, local and international, elected or appointed, paid or unpaid, speak always with "one voice"; and that voice could only be, not their own, but the voice of Andy Stern and his coterie. In that heavy atmosphere, intimidation was king, no one in any position of organizational responsibility felt free to speak out. Without the oxygen of democracy, in that closed container, corruption festered. And when one did speak out, Sal Rosselli, against an aspect of official policy, Stern mobilized his full as president to try to crush the critic.

It's not that Stern couldn't pay enough attention but that he paid too much attention to bureaucratic centralization and none to democratic rights. Once the spirit of democracy was quelled, Stern's authoritarianism spawned corruption.

AUD Proposes Democracy as a Weapon Against Corruption

2008-09-03T18:54:00.003-04:00

PRESS RELEASE -- Association for Union Democracy, Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 3, 2008
Media Contacts: Herman Benson, Kurt Richwerger (718) 564-1114 (AUD) info@uniondemocracy.org
-------
AUD Proposes Democracy as a Weapon Against Corruption

In today's New York Times, the Service Employees International Union announced plans for an internal ethics commission to address recent corruption charges facing several top union leaders. The union indicated that it would consult the Association for Union Democracy as part of its efforts.

The Association for Union Democracy is very willing to bring our forty years of experience to bear in assisting the SEIU, but what the SEIU faces is a moral crisis involving both democracy and corruption.

We believe it is essential to ensure protection for democracy and dissent within unions. Our experience shows that democracy is the linchpin for preventing corruption.

An internal panel of the kind proposed by SEIU President Andrew Stern would simply mull over the niceties of still another code and would be more than a waste of time; it would be an evasion. What the SEIU needs now is to establish a board composed of respected individuals, independent and completely outside the union power structure - a kind of supreme court endowed with the power, in defense of member rights, to overrule decisions of the international president and the international executive board in those circumstances in which members' democratic rights could be endangered.

The need is not to devise a code of ethics, the need is the genuine practice of democracy. The basic code of ethics was delivered on Mount Sinai in the commandment "Thou shall not steal." Everything else is a refinement. If the SEIU feels it needs an amplification of its own code to remind its officials of that commandment, it need only copy one of the many excellent codes already available. The problem in the SEIU is not that it lacks an ethical code, but that it has evolved a bureaucratic system of organization and, despite any code, has created an atmosphere of authoritarianism that obviously spawns corruption.

Andy Stern is slipping off the pedestal

2008-08-31T09:37:00.002-04:00

By imposing a trusteeship and a monitorship over two mega West Coast locals, Andy Stern, SEIU international president, subjects twenty percent of the entire international membership to his disciplinary domination. They make up almost half the union's membership in health care, the SEIU's most important area of concentration. Two locals, but how different their stories! In one, Stern initiates action against a rival and critic. In the other, he is forced to act against one of his own key supporters who stands accused of defrauding his local of around a million dollars. Disruption on this scale might normally reveal an international administration in disarray. Ironically, however, just three months before, Stern emerged from the union's convention with his program overwhelmingly endorsed and his presidential powers expanded.

In one case, Stern has imposed monitors on the way to full trusteeship over the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West. Its local president, Sal Rosselli has been a forthright critic of Stern’s policies. The charges against Rosselli are based upon actions he is accused of taking in his battle with Stern. Neither he nor his colleagues are accused of trying to enrich themselves or anyone else. Stern’s move against Rosselli show that he is ready to exercise his constitutional powers as president to undermine, perhaps destroy, a political rival.

The other case is quite different. Stern has imposed a trusteeship over the 190,000-member United Long-Term Care Workers Local 6434. Its president Tyrone Freeman, accused of paying out around a million dollars of the local's money to enrich his friends and relatives, has stepped down temporarily. He is also accused of assuring his automatic “election” without opposition simply by making nominating requirements so difficult that no rival could qualify.

Freeman is more than a supporter of Stern; he is virtually a creation of Stern, who appointed him to head this huge local. How close to Stern? Just before the scandal broke, the Stern administration was about to transfer 65,000 members out of Rosselli’s local and turn them over to Freeman’s! And so, the protégé implanted in power by Stern, cultivated by Stern, and a close ally of Stern is forced to step aside, charged with arrant fraud.

The action against Rosselli’s UHC-W is particularly disquieting because for so many months Stern and his colleagues had adamantly denied that it would take place.

Back in May, on the eve of the SEIU national convention, when Stern first seemed to be threatening a trusteeship over Rosselli’s local, 101 pro-union writers, scholars, and educators wrote to Stern, “Putting UHW under trusteeship would…be viewed by many as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within the SEIU.” Stern replied that he found their talk of trusteeship “puzzling.” In May, in a Federal suit against Rosselli and nine other UAW-W officers, the SEIU denied any intention of trusteeing the local. Its complaint informed the court, "In particular, in May 2007 the defendants began to fear, contrary to fact, that SEIU was planning to appoint a trustee to run the affairs of the local union and remove them from office...."

Forty-seven top SEIU leaders, including Dennis Rivera and George Gresham, who had succeeded Rivera as head of Local 1199 in New York, wrote that the letter of the 101 writers was full of misinformation and misunderstanding. “On the specific issue you raise, we agree that trusteeships should never be used to limit democratic debate in any union. In the case of the SEIU your letter addressed a straw man since no such retaliatory trusteeship is under consideration nor would we ever approve one. In fact, the only talk of trusteeship has come from UHW-W itself. ”

A straw man? Their revulsion against retaliatory trusteeship seems to have been enough to give pause to Stern, enough to delay him for four months but not to stop him. Stern was free to move because their disapproval could be ignored. He can ride over Rosselli and he can override the misgivings of 47 top SEIU leaders. Rosselli is in danger because he would not remain subservient to Stern. Were those 47 leaders consulted before Rosselli was attacked? Did they approve the looming trusteeship?

On August 25, Rosselli got the message from Stern, "Notice of Hearing on Whether a Trustee Should be Appointed at SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West." Pending the hearing, Stern dispatched two monitors to watch over the local's affairs.

How the scene has changed in the four years since an earlier SEIU convention! Then, it was Stern, labor’s white knight, the progressive champion of the underdog, the fresh new face of organized labor, open to new ideas, a new voice. Then, inside the SEIU, a unanimous vision. Now? Second thoughts are inevitable.

SEIU needs a public review board

2008-08-06T03:25:00.005-04:00

...without it, fair play is impossible.

A few members of Sal Rosselli’s own local, United Healthcare Workers-West, have brought charges against him and his administration, accusing them of assorted acts of retaliation against supporters of Andy Stern, international president of the Service Employees International Union. The complainants fear that they can never get a fair trial in their own local because the local is controlled by Rosselli, and he is embroiled in an intense internal union battle with Stern. They ask Stern to use his power as international president to bypass the local trial process, assume original jurisdiction, and proceed with a trial under international auspices. Stern has agreed. And so the trial of Rosselli will proceed under the aegis of Stern, his bitter enemy.

But if Rosselli’s critics can’t get a fair trial under Rosselli, how can Rosselli be guaranteed a fair trial under Stern?

Someone has written that neither Stern nor Rosselli is an angel. True, angels are so few. The difference here, however, is that one non-angel has the overwhelming union constitutional power to damage the other. But not vice versa.

It was already clear before the recent SEIU convention. It obvious now: The SEIU needs a public review board.

The SEIU does not have to invent the wheel. The United Auto Workers has had a public review board for fifty years. The board is a kind of Supreme Court within the union to guarantee due process. It has the authority to overturn disciplinary decisions of the union’s top international executive board and president. Most important of all, it is composed of independent persons, pro-labor, civil libertarians, eminent in their own right in their own professions. And because they are independent and outside the union power structure, not beholden to the union establishment, the board and its members serve as an important deterrent to arbitrary authoritarianism.

Which is precisely what the SEIU needs to protect union democracy at this point in its history where two sides are bitterly pitted against each other. We have no way of knowing how the newest charges against Rosselli will end. We do know that the need to defend due process will continue. The SEIU needs an impartial public review board, not simply to assure genuine due process for Rosselli, but to protect internal union democracy for all.

Employer rights and worker deaths in construction

2008-07-19T00:58:00.008-04:00

By Herman Benson

Towering cranes are shooting up all over New York City where building construction is booming and some construction workers are dying. A few fall off scaffolds, I-beams, and window ledges; one is buried and suffocated in an illegally dug collapsing trench.

After two huge cranes fell in mid-town Manhattan --- one within days of the other --- killing workers and bystanders and crushing nearby apartments, city officials and contractor VIPs say something must be done about it. But what?

We need more and more inspectors, some say; and they must inspect more often and more honestly. After hurried investigations, a few unlucky inspectors take the rap; they lose their jobs for having, on occasion, reported falsely or taken bribes, although few of the offenses had any direct causal connection with the accidents.

More inspection by honest inspectors? It's bound to do some good, but not much, because there's a limit to what any inspectors can accomplish, even the best, by appearing, with or without warning, on the site where all that complicated equipment, with thousands of parts, is assembled. They can't go over every one of those straps, ropes, and cables; those wheels, pulleys, and gears; those nuts and bolts that hold everything together. Were the right-size rods inserted, hammered into place, and properly fixed to hold the connected units together? Were all the scaffolds securely fixed to the walls? Was someone satisfied with dangerous cost-cutting shortcuts?

Those few dozens inspectors, even if honest can see only so much. But there are others, not dozens but thousands, who can do more: the construction workers actually at the work sites on the job, those who put everything together and actually use all that equipment. Their lives are at risk when safety precautions are ignored. When there's death in an accident, occasionally a bystander is victimized; always it's at least one construction worker, often more. But no one in a position of authority encourages them to watch over the work and speak up when they know working conditions are dangerous. (When we suspect a danger from terrorists, all citizens are urged to report what they see.) No one calls on those workers who have most at stake --- their lives --- to blow the whistle on the lethal dangers in construction.

Employers want only employees who will work swiftly and keep their mouths shut. Without protection, non-union workers --- especially the undocumented --- will continue to be helpless until they are organized. But unionized workers should feel free to speak out; their unions should protect their right to work in safety. But they have a problem.

Construction workers, even unionized construction workers, have no real job security. Jobs are transient, not permanent; when one project is finished, they look for another, often with a different contractor. The problem is that virtually all union contracts give employers right to reject any applicant for work, even those dispatched from the union hiring hall. This contractual right to reject is unqualified; the employer need give no explanation; the rejected worker has no recourse to any grievance procedure.

As a consequence, unionists who insist that contractors comply with the terms of their union agreement, or who file grievances soon find that they are blacklisted wherever they apply for work. If you win a grievance against one employer, you may find it impossible to get work from any employer. Under these conditions, construction workers who protest unsafe conditions, risk everything. Many are forced to become "travelers," roaming the country for work where their reputation as good union members is still unknown.

The most loyal union members can be victimized by the employers' arbitrary right to reject. In the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, local officers and union activists have been trying for years to get rid of that onerous provision in their contracts. At the IBEW convention in 2001, over the opposition of their international officers, the delegates directed the IBEW leaders to end the unilateral right to reject and replace it with a provision that required "good cause" for any rejection, Nothing happened. In 2006, the convention delegates repeated their demand for the change. Again, nothing happened. And so, in the IBEW as in most of construction, a union whistleblower has no contractual protection. Until that changes, nothing dramatic is likely to change in making construction work safer.

[AUD has collected some action proposals from IBEW members regarding the "right to reject" -- MN]

Fight in Ohio between SEIU and California Nurses revives old issue: When employers welcome unions at the NLRB

2008-04-22T20:18:00.004-04:00

By Herman Benson

An angry battle in Ohio between the Service Employees [SEIU] and the California Nurses Association [CNA] calls attention to a proposed new regulation by the National Labor Relations Board that would make it easy for consenting employers to accept, or even welcome, unionization without disturbing their workers with a hostile, confrontational campaign.

Up to now, either a union or an employer could petition the NLRB for a collective bargaining election. If a union, utilizing its rights under the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA], wants to force recognition from a company, it must work hard to win over the work force. It must submit a petition to the NLRB signed by at least 30% of the work force and then win a majority of the votes in a collective bargaining election, usually hotly contested by an anti-union employer.

Under certain conditions, an employer can ask for a collective bargaining election: It may contend that an existing union no longer truly represents its workers, or it may want to resolve the demands of two or more competing unions that claim to represent its employees. In that case, the NLRB can move promptly to schedule an election: no petitions from workers are required. It is the employer, not the union or the workers, who wants this election.

Under the proposed regulation, the NLRB would provide a new swift and easy route to collective bargaining. Where the union and the employer are both willing to cement relations, they can jointly submit a consent petition to the NLRB. No need for the union to collect signatures on petitions; it need not submit evidence that it actually represents any workers. In the course of the election, no need for a campaign to convince the mass of workers, or even to keep them informed, no controversy, no class warfare, only cooperation.

For the union it’s a great opportunity. It need not spend its limited resources of time and money to campaign or even to collect signatures. In this uncontested election without fanfare, few are likely to be aroused or to vote. With just a few dependable supporters to vote yes, the union can coast in as the exclusive bargaining agent for the whole work force. The majority can come to work the day after the election to discover that, painlessly, the blessings of union representation have been bestowed upon them. No drawn-out battle, no hard feelings provoked, no enthusiasms inspired. It is simple, not a confrontation but an arranged marriage.

Up to now, unions have been campaigning for a system which would grant exclusive bargaining rights to unions without facing an election once a majority of the bargaining unit signs cards authorizing the union to represent them. But the union still has to work hard to get at least that 30% on petitions; and right wing anti-labor groups, in full-page ads, charge that unions, afraid to face a democratic vote of the membership, prefer to “coerce” workers into signing cards. The new NLRB system makes better public relations; it follows the formal rules of voluntary democratic decision, free of possible intimidation. In these parlous times, when unions fight to hold their own, when the need to organize the unorganized is so urgent, the new NLRB system seems like a union leader’s dream. Could anything be wrong?

Yet, when the SEIU sought precisely such an election in Ohio, it was forced to pull back after facing resistance from the National Nurses Organizing Committee of the CNA. (The CNA is an AFL-CIO affiliate; the SEIU is an affiliate of the rival Change to Win coalition.)

The election was requested by the Catholic Healthcare Partners to cover over 7,000 workers at nine hospitals in the state. The employer had agreed that, after the expected election result, it would recognize the SEIU as the representative of all its employees --- registered nurses as well as all other hospital employees. The SEIU, which had supported the employer’s request, was the one union on the ballot. Since the request for the election was submitted by the employer, neither it nor the SEIU was required to present any evidence that any workers actually sought union representation. Although the proposed NLRB regulation has not yet been adopted, this election would, in effect, have been the kind of consent election which the new regulation contemplates. However, it was not to be.

Everything was all set, but a few days before the scheduled election, organizers from the National Nurses Organizing Committee of the CNA turned up. In literature addressed to nurses the NNOC urged them to vote no. Management, they argued, “gets a sweetheart union that will not focus on issues important to Registered Nurses. CHP [the employer] gets increased profits and inferior RN contracts. The SEIU’s back room deals result in contracts that are among the worst in the nation…. Less than 2% of SEIU’s members are Registered Nurses. SEIU is not a professional nurses union.” Thrown off balance, the SEIU pulled out. On March 11, the day before the voting was scheduled to begin, the election was canceled.

SEIU President Andy Stern denounced the CNA action as “nothing more than a flimsy cover for out-and-out union busting that we normally see from employers, not organizations that claim to care abut workers.” The SEIU argued that the consent election was the outcome of three years of negotiations with management. “At any time during those three years,” wrote one SEIU nurse, “the CNA could have presented their union, compared themselves to SEIU and asked us to make a choice. But they didn’t.” The CNA replied that if the SEIU had real rank-and-file support, it could not have been scared off by a few leaflets; the SEIU’s withdrawal, it argued, proved that a cozy deal with management was in the making without employees’ support.

Regardless of who was right or wrong in Ohio, this dispute pitted one legitimate union against another, demonstrating that the kind of consent election foreshadowed in the new NLRB proposed regulation may not be as simple as it seems at first glance. On one hand, the NLRB would offer a painless way for a genuine union to gain entry and win over an uninterested workforce to unionism; as Walter Reuther might have put it, to unionize the unorganized. But, on the other hand, there can be dangerous complexities. There is more here than meets the eye.

The problem arises because the labor movement has had a long sad experience with various maneuvers that allow employers to set up counterfeit compliant ‘unions’ as a protective barrier against genuine unions. In the early years of the New Deal, management sponsored powerless employee representation systems: company unions that were subservient to employers. The aim: to ward off the rising new unionism of the mid-thirties. Even now, unscrupulous employers, to keep out good honest unions, sign collusive collective bargaining contracts with crooked characters who offer sweetheart deals. The new NLRB regulation could give the protective cover of respectability and legality to such collusive arrangements.

What the old company union arrangements have in common with the proposed NLRB-sanctioned system is this: a suspect ‘ union’ can slip in easily, no need for worker involvement. Of course, there are bound to be employers somewhere who, not overly preoccupied with profits, are in business for the benefit of humanity and insist on fair play and unionism. Someone once somewhere did discover such aberrant employers. But normal red-blooded American employers expect something advantageous in return for voluntarily welcoming the arrival of a union. When an unscrupulous employer signs up with racketeers, it gets a guarantee that it can pay substandard wages and can be sure of protection against the arrival of a genuine union.

In Ohio, however, management was dealing with the SEIU which everyone knows is not a company union, is not a racket ‘union’, but is a bona fide, mainstream labor organization that has already taken the lead in organizing low-paid workers and lifting their standards: unskilled, minorities, immigrants.

Nevertheless, honest and well intentioned as it may be, even the SEIU must offer something to employers to soften their hearts to frictionless union penetration, and it does. It offers gentle terms, nothing too demanding, a friendly atmosphere; Andy Stern, SEIU president, would not annoy them too much with individual grievances. In justifying these lenient compromise transactions, the SEIU argues that, in the search for organizational “density” in its “market,” the union must get its foot in the door. Presumably once it achieves that coveted “density,” it will go for broke in its “market.” Maybe.

The trouble is that the SEIU is not always breaking ground in an untilled field. Other unions are already organized in some of those "markets," unions that are already battling to defend high union standards. They argue that, just as bad money drives out good, soft unionism drives out hard. They charge that in its efforts to grab its own market share, Stern’s SEIU sometimes undercuts their standards. What appears like “density” to Stern looks like dilution to the others.

The differences that pitted the CNA against the SEIU in Ohio have erupted inside the SEIU itself, creating a bitter split between the Stern administration and one of the union’s largest locals, United Healthcare Workers-West, the 150,000- member SIU local of healthcare workers on the west coast. In 2003, under Stern’s leadership, the SEIU signed what were called “template” agreements with an association representing 284 nursing homes in California. The agreement presumably gave the SEIU new entry to about 40 of those homes. But at a price considered outrageously prohibitive by Sal Rosselli, president of UHW-W. According to Rosselli, the units created under those template agreements “may come close to becoming …company unions.” Rosselli’s local was disturbed by the impact of the agreement on the whole nursing home industry in California, with over 1100 nursing homes. According to UHW-W, one of the nursing home operators under contract with the local, presumably at high standards “told us that if we want to achieve high standards in the industry … we need to [get] rid of the ‘template’ contracts” which allow competitors to maintain lower standards.

When the California Nurses showed up in Ohio, Stern asked the AFL-CIO executive council to repudiate the CNA, its affiliate, and tell it to back off. The council refused. But it also refused to explicitly endorse the CNA intervention. The council faced a rough choice; it was impossible for it to make a satisfactory decision. The new NLRB regulation will probably pose the same unwelcome choice for unionists; they are bound to meet it with that same ambivalence.

On ‘democratic’ centralism: Stern’s illusion and democracy’s nightmare

2008-04-09T17:04:00.003-04:00

By Herman Benson

Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and labor’s latest celebrity, seems to be resurrecting a neglected ideology: the concept of a militarized ‘democratic’ centralism. For him and his followers, the hope of imposing it upon a newly invigorated labor movement may be a utopian illusion. For union democracy, it is a nightmare. Hints, but only hints, of his underlying philosophy were implicit in his schemes for reorganizing his own SEIU and the whole labor movement. But its trend has become manifest as he is apparently moving to crush critics on the west coast, impose a repressive trusteeship over the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West, and cut down Sal Rosselli, its president.

In February this year, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU International Executive Committee so that he could feel free to criticize what he charged was the “undemocratic practices we have experienced first hand.” The SEIU convention was coming up at the end of May. “In good conscience,” he wrote, “I can longer allow simple majorities of the Executive Committee to outweigh my responsibility to our members to act out of principle on these critically important matters. I say this with no ill will, but with a deep sense of conviction.”[Rosselli to Stern 2/9/08]

They differ over bargaining strategy, over the role of the international and locals, over the right of the membership to veto the merger and dissolution of local unions, over whether to go easy on employers to get a foot in the door for unionism. The issues in dispute are not trivial, and the charges and countercharges are correspondingly harsh. Rosselli accuses the Stern people of “company unionism” and “top-down organizing” to beef up membership statistics by any means whatsoever. They denounce him for sabotaging the SEIU drive to organize, for falsifying the record, for hypocritically benefiting from policies he now derogates.

This is no idle talk at a cocktail party; it is a serious difference over policy. He attacks vigorously; they reply in kind. So far, routine. That’s what democracy is for, to allow an outlet even for the bitterest of debates. But the problem is that Rosselli’s critics go beyond denouncing him for criticizing. They would make his very right to criticize illicit. And, because they are armed with organizational power, they would resolve the dispute not simply by democratic decision but by suppression. The irony is that they wrap autocratic intentions in the flag of a democratic “majority”. Rosselli, they insist, must go along with the “majority.” But a majority in power can always take care of itself. The essence of democracy is to preserve an orderly means of opposing a majority.

In replying to its self-posed question, “What is real union democracy?” The SEIU’s anti-Rosselli web site, “Fact Checker,” pandering to the bias against any genuine spirit of democracy asks, “Is democracy abiding by majority rule just when you like the outcome but ignoring it when you don’t?” But democracy, as we practice it in America, cherishes precisely the right of a minority to oppose the majority. ‘Fact Checker” continues in line with what has become official SEIU ideology, “ Is it democracy when 11 out of 12 workers in an industry are not even at the table?” What they mean by this muddle is what they have suggested before more clearly: members must abstain from exercising their union democracy until most workers, now nonunion, are organized. By that standard, union democracy must wait patiently for a long time, perhaps forever.

They use the boilerplate language available to any overbearing union official annoyed anytime by any critical dissident. Mary Kay Henry, international executive SEIU vice president, writes in the course of a long attack on Rosselli [Calitics.com website 3/25/08], “he is giving employers ammunition to use against workers….”

Three members of the SEIU international executive committee found Rosselli’s decision to speak out impermissible. “Just as we expect members of our local unions to unite behind a common strategy after there has been a full debate,” they wrote, “and a majority has reached a democratic decision, we as leaders must do the same.” There it is. Once a “democratic decision” is reached everyone, members and leaders, must swallow their opinions, keep quiet, and toe the line. We discuss, we decide, we unite, you shut up, we remain a fighting force. If you open your mouth against the line we discipline you. (How some might love to apply this principle to the Iraq War! The irony in this case is that, as they wrote, the SEIU was on the eve of an international convention to open in three months. If now is not the time for that democratic discussion, when?) [Regan et al to Rosselli 2/11/08]

That same tone now permeates life in the SEIU. In 2006, as the SEIU was about to run a membership referendum on creating those huge California megalocals, Stern turned the union into one advocacy monolith to guarantee a favorable outcome. He ordered, “All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion…. No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter.” (The referendum carried, but according to one report, only 16% of the membership voted.)

In the same spirit, applicants for appointment to the executive board of the new 45,000-member Local 521 had to sign an oath of loyalty to the union administration, including these assurances: “I will not … engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at unions meetings, in the press, or other literature, or venues…. Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others…I will not …take … legal action against the union for actions they take in their legal role as leaders as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee.” Come weal, come woe; high or low, no one can remain in any official union position and ever ever act against any misdeeds by other officials.

Here then is how the labor movement would operate if the system being implanted by Stern could take root and flourish:

A policy is adopted, say at the international convention, the union’s highest constitutional authority --- for the sake of argument we make the generous assumption that it has been a ‘democratic’ decision. Then for the next five years until the next convention (four years for the SEIU) every union institution and representative, must fall in line. No criticism permitted: every hired staff employee, every elected officer in every local and in the international, every steward appointed or elected, every editor and PR spokesperson, every executive board member of every local must propagate the vaunted ‘democratic’ decision. None can oppose it or publicly express misgivings on pain of swift dismissal. Stern envisions a monolithic disciplined army of thousands, all spouting the politically correct official line. After five years, during which everyone sang the same notes in harmony, comes the next convention; and at last, presumably, democracy’s brief moment has arrived.

Proceedings at the convention, as always, are carefully manipulated by the administration. Under the Stern regimen, those in power will already have been safely protected against criticism for the previous five years. If, at the convention, venturesome critics are unusually resilient, if they are not demoralized by five years of deadly uniformity, if they are lucky enough to get the floor and keep it before the question is called, they might get five minutes in the sun, maybe even seven or ten. Then it is all over. The delegates, people who knew how to stay on top during those five silent years, adopt the new official policy. The period for ‘democratic’ debate is over. Time to unite and fight and bite your tongue. Five new silent years loom.

But is this bureaucrat’s dream likely to come alive? Perhaps in part, but never in full panoply. By now, websites and the Internet afford too many ways for members and officers alike to evade the proscriptions on democracy. Federal law offers some protection for civil liberties for members in their unions. Stern will never have full scope for the fulfillment of his dream; nevertheless, as we see in California, federal law and the union constitution still provide ample means for chilling dissent.

Stern’s threat to trustee west coast SEIU local poses danger to democracy in labor movement

2008-04-02T21:44:00.003-04:00

By Herman Benson

Andy Stern, international president of the Service Employees International Union threatens a trusteeship over the United Healthcare Workers-West and the removal of its president, Sal Rosselli. The reach of the imminent trusteeship is awesome: With 140,000 members, this local enrolls about one-tenth the total membership of the whole SEIU. It represents registered nurses and non-professional healthcare workers in scores of institutions. Rosselli, its president, is an eminent figure in the labor movement and in the politics of California. He had been SEIU state president and a member of the union’s international executive committee. Inside the SEIU he has been a vigorous critic of Stern’s policies, actually the only outspoken critic with a strong power base in the union. Wipe out Rosselli, and Stern, with an unchecked monopoly of power, can continue to move anywhere in any direction without restraint.

But it is not the scope of this trusteeship that would make it unique. Over the years, hundreds of union subsidiary bodies have been trusteed by their international unions. Most have been relatively small locals taken over by their internationals, sometimes for legitimate reasons, and sometimes to suppress a local leadership out of favor with an arrogant international officialdom. Occasionally, a major subsidiary came under trusteeship, like the 120,000-member AFSCME’s DC 37 in New York; but in that case, district and local officers had been indicted for stealing local money and falsifying a contract referendum.

What would make a current trusteeship move by Stern different from all the rest is this: for the first time since the adoption of the LMRDA in 1959, a massive trusteeship has been threatened against so major a section of a union for politically repressive objectives. This pioneering achievement can be credited as another Stern innovation. The basic reality has been buried, in recent days, by a mudslide of charges and countercharges in letters, emails, official documents, and news reports.

In January 2007, Rosselli’s local criticized a deal between Stern and California nursing homes as a case of “company unionism.” Stern was impelled, or compelled, to abandon the arrangement.

In January 2008, Rosselli refused to run for reelection as SEIU California state president, accusing Stern of rigging the rules to assure the victory of his pre-selected choices.

In February, he resigned from the SEIU International Executive Committee, freeing himself to speak openly in the union in advance of its international convention scheduled to begin at the end of May. In his letter, he wrote of the “undemocratic practices we in UHW have experienced first hand.” Since his local was entitled to over a hundred delegates, Rosselli would have been strongly represented at the convention; but a trusteeship would bar them.

On March 24, Stern confronted Rosselli with a shopping list of charges “regarding Membership Concerns and related Constitutional Obligations.” Implied was the threat of an imminent trusteeship; Rosselli was ordered to provide all related documents by March 28 and a detailed written reply to the charges no later than April 4. Not much time; Stern seems anxious to act against the local before the convention opens. As in most preliminary justifications for union trusteeships, the request for documents and statements appear to be simply a showcase exercise to comply with the law’s requirements for due process and to display a proper respect for PR opinion. The selected victim is usually convicted in advance. In this instance, the seven charges against Rosselli foreshadow a predictable outcome.

Stern’s SEIU is currently in competition with the California Nurses Association, an AFL-CIO affiliate. In Puerto Rico, the SEIU is trying to supplant a militant independent teachers union which is under attack by public authorities. Two of the charges against Rosselli accuse him of disloyalty to the SEIU by ill-defined “contacts” with the AFL-CIO, the CNA, and the Puerto Rico teachers. (Actually, if anything has cramped Rosselli’s ability to prepare for this attack by Stern, it has been his insistence on demonstrating his loyalty to the SEIU by avoiding any appeal for support outside the union.)

Two of the charges, not clear to a nonmember of the SEIU, relate to a dispute over collective bargaining procedures; mixed in with these, is a vague hint at a conspiracy with the CNA and/or the AFL-CIO.

After Rosselli challenged Stern in January 2007, it seemed likely that the Stern forces would use their formal union powers to restrict the jurisdiction of his local and transfer away half of his membership. In an effort to ward off this move, Rosselli’s local polled its members to permit it to express their loyalty to their UHW-W. One charge expresses a disapproval of the referendum as “a phony ballot scheme,” In another charge, Rosselli is accused of chilling the free speech rights of his members. Since no record is cited of earlier appeals by UHW members to the international, this accusation apparently falls out of the blue. (Here the pot calls the kettle black. At AUD we know that Stern faces precisely the same accusation from a wide range of SEIU members.)

This varied assortment of charges seems like a goulash, hurriedly stirred together to make a case in advance of the looming convention.

The first of the seven charges presents defendant Rosselli with an intricate Catch 22 dilemma: The local in effect is threatened with trusteeship for taking steps to defend itself against the imposition of a trusteeship. When the local realized that, in retaliation for its criticisms, Stern was almost certain to try to trustee the local, it decided to take an advance defensive measure. (Its misgivings obviously have proven to be well founded.) And so, the local executive board voted to put money into a separate tax-exempt fund protected from seizure by Stern, with the express aim of defending membership rights.

When a trusteeship is imposed, all local assets are impounded by the international; the local loses control of its money; their leaders are cut off the payroll; and, from then on, the local members and their elected officers, stripped of cash, are deprived of effective means of defense. Without money, the local is incapable of mounting a legal challenge to the trusteeship. But that is not all!

Under federal law, a union trusteeship is presumed valid for 18 months; it has proven to be difficult, nearly impossible, to oust a trusteeship during that 18 months. In that time, the international has total control over the local administration and all its assets. It can use that time, by fear, favor, or purchase, to create its own Quisling puppet regime and to demoralize, suppress, or even expel, its critics.

However, even under a trusteeship, members retain certain democratic rights protected by the LMRDA; but in the main, these rights can be enforced only by private suit. Without money these rights become a fiction because the trustee’s victims can’t afford the costs of a federal lawsuit. The independent fund established by UHW-W, free from Stern’s control, would give members resources to resist the imposition of the trusteeship and, if it is imposed, would help defend their rights while it remains in effect. Consistent with his drive to eliminate opposition, Stern would deprive his critics of their right to self-defense. The first of the charges against Rosselli attacks the local’s right to establish this fund in defense of democratic rights.

In the flurry of controversial exchanges that have cluttered up the internet as this battle escalates in the SEIU, there have been charges and counter-charges over “top-down” organizing, collective bargaining strategy, who stands for what and where, who has the best organizing record, “density” in the market place, centralization v. democracy, mergers and local autonomy. All these are necessary and legitimate subjects for debate and discussion in our evolving labor movement. But, for the moment, these discussions cloud over what is acutely involved in the SEIU.

This conflict is not now just a power struggle between Stern and Rosselli. It transcends any legitimate debate over policy. At stake is not who is right or wrong on critical issues, but whether it is even permissible or possible to have a genuinely free discussion. The suppression of democratic rights inside many of our unions is nothing new (Subscribe to Union Democracy Review for details), but the Stern camp is elevating a common practice into an ideological extreme. Our website will discuss that subject soon.

(For more SEIU-related information, see AUD's list of links to SEIU member websites, and the blogroll on the right of this page. See also SEIU's Fact Checker website.)

Hoffa soft on Obama and vice versa

2008-03-13T23:02:00.004-04:00

By Herman Benson

There must be more to it.

If in quest of change the Democratic primaries had not lifted affairs into the loftier realm of statesmanship, we would have to conclude that this was simply another example of the tired old horse trading politics that so debases life in America. “Obama has indicated willingness to end federal oversight of the Teamsters.” So reported Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 24. In contrast, Bill Clinton indicated that under Hillary, the monitorship would continue. What followed was “The unexpected endorsement of Barack Obama by Teamsters President James Hoffa.” A spokesperson for the Obama office, confirming the accuracy of Novak’s report, told one reporter that the Teamsters Independent Review Board has run its course, that organized crime influence is down, and that the Teamsters are being held to a higher standard than other unions.

The IRB, empowered by court order to act against corruption in the Teamster union, has been an effective force against organized crime. It is true that, on corruption matters, the Independent Review Board has held the Teamsters to a high standard --- that difficult task has been its finest achievement, one that no other agency, government or private, law enforcement or civil, has been able to do before. But not exactly to a standard higher than expected of other unions. The Teamsters are required only to meet anti-corruption standards we should expect --- at least demand --- of other unions. If some other unions fall short, does that give the Teamsters a free pass? Senator Obama proposes to lift the moral standards of the nation’s politics. Could he begin by lowering standards for the Teamsters union?

Is organized crime influence down so far that it is time to jettison the Independent Review Board? That raises an interesting question. Valid or not, how did the Obama team reach that conclusion? It is a fair question, because there is no reason to believe that, in their busy days, they themselves ever had occasion even to think about it. They have been so preoccupied with other pressing matters. Surely they have not had time to consult the IRB itself or its investigating arm which is still busy eradicating ties between Teamster officials and organized crime. Surely they never took time to question the Department of Justice or the presiding federal judge who are giving the IRB full support and have rejected every demand that they suspend their efforts. Surely they never consulted Ed Stier, the man whom President Hoffa himself retained to come up with proposals that could demonstrate that the union would effectively combat corruption if the IRB would only go away.

Ed Stier did his part. After many months of effort, he did design a program which --- if honestly carried out --- could have served as a possible substitute for the IRB. Stier even tried to implement the proposed plan by actually acting to expose crooks in the IBT. Once Hoffa, obviously surprised, realized that Stier took the job seriously and would not serve as a mere PR prop, he lost interest. In breaking with Hoffa, Stier charged that Hoffa was actually sabotaging the anti-corruption campaign. With Stier gone, Hoffa is obviously looking for a new prop for the old PR campaign against the IRB. Along comes the Obama team in the search for votes; whoever it was that decided to go easy on Hoffa must have confined research to the Hoffa PR team.

What is involved here transcends the IRB’s responsibility to act against corruption in the Teamsters union. The Independent Review Board is a pivotal part of a federal monitorship that has given working Teamsters the right to elect their international officers in a fair election. After generations of mob control, intimidation, and murders in the union, the federal monitorship stands as a defense of the right of members to elect international officers by direct membership vote in an honest count, to the right of candidates to equal access to the union magazine during elections. Undermine that system and you undermine the right of Teamsters to control their own union.

Super-bureaucratization in SEIU: for and against

2008-02-14T18:21:00.004-05:00

By Herman Benson

In resigning from the executive committee of the SEIU, Sal Rosselli, president of the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers of California has made serious charges of lack of democracy in the SEIU.

As a member of the international executive committee he was bound to keep those criticisms within the limits of that tiny group. He resigns from the committee in order to be free to speak out beyond those few paid officials to the broad membership. His resignation is therefore a sign of how serious he feels those charges are. His misgivings are echoed in communications we have received from SEIU members in locals around the country.

In a long reply to Rosselli, three member of the executive committee evade those criticisms. They take refuge in recounting “four historic changes that have taken place in our union since 1996.” It is a recapitulation of how they hope to organize and reorganize the SEIU to serve the American working class. In effect, their presumed achievements and their promises to forge ahead are presented as a justification for a super bureaucratization of the American labor movement. But organizing is no obstacle to democratizing. Quite the contrary.

In the last great drive to organize, the CIO faced a far more powerful, more centralized, and more resistant employer adversary than the SEIU will ever encounter. Nevertheless, the CIO proceeded to reorganize a new labor movement on industrial lines; and neither that reorganization nor those antilabor conglomerates prevented the CIO from infusing the new labor movement with a reinvigorated spirit of union democracy. The apologists for the SEIU would reverse that experience. They utilize the promise to organize as a pretext for undercutting democracy in the labor movement.

After twelve years: Where is that labor-intellectual alliance?

2008-01-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

The following piece first appeared in the current issue of New Politics. Comments are invited.

By Herman Benson

Cheerleading is not enough. It’s time for those scholars, artists, and writers to take another look at what’s happening in our labor movement.

When John Sweeney defeated Lane Kirkland and Tom Donahue to take over as president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, he proposed to lead the federation out of its doldrums. What resounded with promise was his call for “a reborn movement of American workers, ready to fight for social and economic justice … a new progressive voice in American life …changing the direction of American politics …a vibrant social movement, a democratic movement that speaks for all American workers.”

Sweeney’s program inspired an unusual outpouring of sympathy for the labor movement. Forty-three liberal and radical professionals, mostly from the universities, joined in a public manifesto proclaiming support for the new labor movement. “As intellectuals, educators, and professionals,” they wrote, “we want to play our part in helping realize [Sweeney’s] promise.” The 43 were followed by hundreds of others who led pro-union “teach-ins” in universities around the country attended by thousands who came to signify a newly found allegiance to organized labor: students, scholars, historians, civil libertarians, writers, free lance intellectuals, civil rights leaders, along with union staff professionals, labor leaders, and a multitude of reporters. Representatives of most worthy social causes were there. (Only grassroots union dues-payers seemed missing.) In the spirit of the times, new labor-oriented magazines proliferated in the universities.

Those who organized the rallies united to create a new organization to cement their unity with organized labor: Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice (SAWSJ, affectionately, Sausage). It was a moment of great expectations.

Three years later, in “Falling in Love Again? Intellectuals and the labor movement in post-war America,” Nelson Lichtenstein, history professor at the University of Virginia, an author of the 1995 declaration of 43, and a founder of SAWSJ, wrote of “this alliance between a leftward tilting labor movement and a social democratic intelligentsia,” an alliance that was being consummated after decades of estrangement. He recognized that differences were inevitable. “A certain distance will … always exist between America’s critical intellectuals and the trade union movement.” Nevertheless, he reflected, it was a “healthy tension from which we can … ‘bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old…’.”

After a few years, the euphoria dulled somewhat; and then along came Andy Stern around 2004.

Stern, who had replaced Sweeney as president of the big Service Employees International Union, set out to do unto Sweeney what Sweeney had done unto Kirkland and Donahue. Under Sweeney’s stewardship, Stern declared, the AFL-CIO had failed to fulfill its promises; labor continued to decline in numbers and political power. He and his SEIU would lead the way where Sweeney stumbled. When Stern failed to convince a majority of top union leaders that he had an effective plan to rebuild and reorient the labor movement, he led a formidable group of unions out of the AFL-CIO, and along with the Carpenters which had left earlier, he founded a rival federation, the Change to Win Coalition.

But this time, unlike 1995, there was no resounding echo from intellectuals to the renewed call for another crusade. What happened to SAWSJ? It seems to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared, but without fanfare. Apparently, life had become too complicated for mere enthusiasm.

For a group that staked a claim to leadership in reinventing labor and restoring America, Change to Win was an odd multi-coupling, Earlier, three of its major affiliates had been on the Department of Justice’s list of unions most heavily infiltrated by organized crime: the Teamsters, Laborers, and Hotel workers. The Teamsters union is still under active federal monitorship. The former suspect presidents of both the Laborers and Hotel workers, under pressure of law enforcement authorities, had been forced out and replaced by leaders with a reputation for integrity; but neither union experienced any internal reform upsurge. UNITE, another C to W affiliate, defunct as a clothing union, took refuge in a merger with the Hotel Employees. The Carpenters union, even before linking up with Stern, had already reinvented itself as a model of bureaucratic super-centralization.

While Sweeney’s insurgent rise in the AFL-CIO was greeted with unalloyed enthusiasm by intellectuals who welcomed the opportunity to serve a reinvigorated labor movement, Stern’s emergence as a new kind of leader meets with a muted reception because his promise for Big Change carries a mixed message: On the one hand, his drive to organize immigrants and minorities, the super-exploited of America, inspires a sympathetic response from social-justice liberal and radical intellectuals. On the other hand, his vision of the future labor movement (if you can properly characterize his erratic oscillations as “vision”) evokes puzzlement. It projects a highly bureaucratized top-down labor movement in which the influence of the rank and file is limited. Insulated from democratic control, its leadership is free to move unpredictably. While Stern’s Change to Win delegation in China stands together with the dictatorial government’s sponsored labor organization in a slap at Wal-Mart, Stern stands together with Wal-Mart in the United States, in a joint declaration for a never defined government-sponsored universal health care system.

For unions in the Change to Win coalition, a concentration on organizing low-paid service workers comes naturally. The big industrial and manufacturing unions, which remain in the AFL-CIO, face a crisis of survival. They represent a layer of the working class that had once been reasonably well-paid and secure but now faces cutbacks in wages and jobs, global pressure from low-paid labor, plant closures, and a sharp drop in union membership. But the C to Win unions are concentrated in the expanding service sectors free from foreign competition. The Laborers – a C to W affiliate --- organizes the unskilled section of the construction industry where minorities and immigrants, legal and illegal, can find work. The Carpenters union is reaching out to organize immigrants, documented and undocumented. (See Wall Street Journal12/15/05)

The call to organize the unorganized has always been a motherhood affirmation, often proclaimed, seldom achieved. Back in 1961, in “The Decline of the Labor Movement, and what can be done about it,” Solomon Barkin, issuing an early warning signal, wrote of the need for a “transformation …as radical as that of the Thirties, when the dominance of the old crafts, with their ‘aristocrats of labor’ viewpoint, was swept away in a flood of industrial unionism.” “Ethnic, color, and religious discrimination within unions must yield before the insistence on equal opportunity for all. Unions must intensify their pressure for economic, social, and political uplift for minorities, with special vigor for our current largest minority, the Negroes.”

“There is no area,” he concluded, “where the shift in power and initiative is more urgent than in the field of organization…. Vested rights of national unions must not be allowed to stand in the way of the transcendent interests of the movement as a whole.” Barkin was the prototype intellectual, serving as research director of the Textile Workers Union. His 75-page work was published by the Fund for the Republic’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. No one seemed to pay attention. For forty years, the downward drift continued.

But now? At last there was a difference. Stern’s SEIU and others in the new coalition actually set out to put words into action. They insisted that the labor movement had to address the needs of those sections of the workforce neglected and most exploited: racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, healthcare workers.

In its concentration upon the most neglected sectors of the working class, in words and deeds, Stern’s appeal resonated among intellectuals, especially those who had criticized the labor movement precisely because they felt it had neglected the most oppressed. Many of those who had come out of the radical student movement of the sixties or were inspired by its tradition, had once looked down with disdain upon the organized working class as a privileged minority whose comfortable status depended upon sharing in the exploitation of the oppressed masses. And now, a labor movement under Stern’s guidance was directing itself precisely toward those oppressed! It was only natural that Stern would begin with the moral support of intellectuals who had responded to the early appeal from Sweeney. He could enroll in his campaign civil rights campaigners and students who had been active in a roster of worthy social causes.

But it turned out that there are more things in the Stern-SEIU philosophy than enrolling the oppressed.

Stern emphasizes that the labor movement must increase its numbers massively if it is to be taken seriously as a political force. He is determined to get those numbers willy-nilly, not bound by any rigid preconceived rules on how that mass is to be recruited, retained, and deployed. It seems like a variant of an old watchword: peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must; almost anything goes.

If employers resist, Stern’s SEIU will mobilize mass demonstrations, call strikes, and rally support from the community groups like ACORN to pressure them to accept unionization. In the course of those battles, the union usually does more than improve its enrollment statistics; it raises the wages of those immigrants, women, and minorities who serve as underpaid janitors, sweepers, cleaners, and semi-skilled maintenance workers. It is this aspect of life in the SEIU-inspired Change to Win assemblage that has impressed older radicals and has provided young idealists with the opportunity to do something socially useful. But nothing is perfect --- there is the other side.

For employers who are willing to cooperate, Stern displays a soft side. If they accept unionization peaceably, he will hold out the hand of cooperation and provide a pliable brand of unionism. As he told reporter Kris Maher of the Wall Street Journal, “We want to find a 21^st century new model that is less focused on individual grievances, more focused on industry needs.” That spirit of making unionism acceptable to employers was incorporated into agreements he signed with a West Coast nursing home employers association which agreed to accept the unionization of 42 of its affiliates if the SEIU agreed to stay away from 185 of its nonunion affiliates.

Stern looks to work with amenable employers to restore union power. On a broader arena, he hopes to join with big business somehow to restore America’s economic position in the world. And not with your ordinary CEO. “Mr. Stern told me,” writes Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal (5/30/07), “that he much prefers working with the buyout kings than with their public company counterparts. ‘Í’ve been incredibly impressed,’ he said, ‘Compared with most of my meetings with company CEOs these men… have much more understanding of what we are trying to accomplish’.” It makes sense. Freewheeling managers of masses of workers and freewheeling managers of masses of capital can understand one another.

This is a man hard to pin down. He is, by turns, militant and acquiescent. He is for “social change” but in close cooperation with buyout capitalists. He renounces labor’s dependence upon Democrats --- which warms the blood of many progressives --- but he projects not a rebellious surge toward independence but a willingness to work with Republicans. The element of ideological consistency that holds these contradictory ideas together is some notion of restoring labor’s power, but in concert with cooperating employers. The cement that solidifies his base and enables him to fly off in all directions is good old-fashioned centralized bureaucracy. .

Consider Stern’s dismissal of the importance of “individual grievances.” In a reasonably democratic union, dues paying union members will naturally demand proper attention to their grievances, a concern which may not seem vital to impatient leaders who, remote from the job site, are preoccupied with what they are convinced are bigger things. If job stewards are elected by the rank and file (in an honest count), if local officers are truly dependent on the members because they face the real possibility of organized opposition, they will be sensitive to membership demands and less likely to jump to attention at orders from above. That helps explain why the Stern forces disparage the advocacy of union democracy and rely heavily on appointing officers of huge new locals.

Stern wrote, “Workers want….strength and a voice, not some purist, intellectual historical, mythical, democracy.” As Steve Lerner, a Stern braintruster, put it, “Considering union democracy as only a question of how a union is governed is too narrow…. If only 10% of workers in an industry are unionized, it is impossible to have real union democracy because 90% are excluded.” However, if members must wait for democracy in their unions until democracy permeates industry, they may have to wait forever.

To pursue a flexible maneuverist course, to be free to jump from here to there, Stern would create or recreate the labor movement in the kind of bureaucratic mold that allows the leaders on top to free themselves from interference by the rank and file below and deploy the new union power as they see fit, presumably in the best interests of those oppressed and voiceless masses below awaiting liberation into the future industrial democracy. In that view, industrial democracy appears not as an achievement of democratic unionism but as a far off pie-in-the-sky substitute for it.

To achieve great goals, Stern seems convinced, unions must be bureaucratized. Locals are merged into new huge sprawling units with geographically extensive jurisdiction; and, as permitted by federal law, the officers of these new locals are appointed, not elected. The structure becomes so broad and so complicated that it is difficult for any local-wide caucus, independent of the officialdom, to take shape. The room for rising outside of the power structure is narrowed. It becomes increasingly difficult to achieve any paid position without approval of the top officialdom.

Monopoly control over all paid staff is carried to ultimate perfection in the Carpenters union, an affiliate of Change to Win. In that union, no one, appointed or elected, can hold any paid position in the locals or councils without the endorsement of the top Executive Secretary Treasurer of the council. Locals are not permitted to pay their own elected officers. The SEIU has not reached that peak of organizational perfection, but it moves inexorably in that direction.

In June 2006, the SEIU announced that its International Executive Board had decided to merge all 600,000 members in California into a few new mega locals. The decision was to be submitted to a statewide membership referendum. We have heard of show-trials. This was a projected show-referendum. Anyone in a position of authority was required to support the IEB decision; none of them could oppose it. As the directive put it:

“All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion…. No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter.” We assume that any rank and filers, without office, could use their limited individual resources to campaign against the plan on their free time and try to reach those 600,000 scattered over the whole state.

Local 521, with over 45,000 members is one of those new locals with an appointed, not elected, leadership. (Five two one = five locals into one.) Applicants for appointment to the new executive board must signify their acceptance to an eight-point “Code of Conduct” which in addition to various harmless declarations includes the following: “2. I will not …engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at union meetings, in the press, or other literature or venues. I will be mindful that e-mails could become public, and will not disparage other leaders, staff, or members in any such way that could become public either intentionally or not… 3. …Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others. I am not giving up my right to speak and make my position clear, but as a member of the board or committee, I will support the decision once it has been made. 4. I will not …take … legal action against the union or its leaders and other committee members for actions they take in their legal role as leaders, as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee.”

Where critics are effective in making their case, unload the opponents. In Massachusetts, where the SEIU completed its familiar surgical process of carving up and rejoining the parts of nine locals into one new 13,000-member Local 888, complete with an appointed officialdom, University of Massachusetts employees organized a caucus to campaign for the kind of democratic setup they had enjoyed in their old locals. After a thousand members petitioned the international for the right to elect officers and stewards, the SEIU solved its problem by getting rid of 2,300 of those university employees. They were subtly encouraged to leave the SEIU and join the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

As small locals were merged into large locals and large locals into jumbos, complaints mounted from rank and file activists and local officers of a “top down” management style by condescending leaders, often appointed from above. But these objections could be discounted as gripes from the usual suspects: from inveterate malcontents or from old-fashioned dreamers who are comfortable only in intimate units and who feel out of place in the newly centralized power machines.

But others began to ask questions. Under the auspices of the Committees of Correspondence a group of two dozen labor activists, a few in the upper ranks of their union hierarchies, met in New York in February 2007 for a full-day discussion on how labor could advance an effective program on health care, immigrants’ rights, and the war in Iraq. This is a group that enthusiastically shares Stern’s emphasis on the need to organize minorities, women and immigrants. Nevertheless even though the subject was not on the agenda some participants, according to an official report on proceedings, expressed misgivings over “some leaders” embracing “partnerships with employers– possibly another term for class collaboration.” One union official feared that “some unions which have a militant history are losing their democratic and militant character.” Another “addressed ‘commandism’ on the left and within labor.”

Jerry Brown was president of the SEIU’s big New England Health Care Local 1199 and prominent in progressive causes. He is not keen about opening disputes in the labor movement to public scrutiny. In a review of a book by Andy Stern, Brown writes, “My only caveat about leaving the AFL-CIO was that the dispute was carried out in the pages of the New York Times, on 60 Minutes, etc.” Now retired however, he seems somewhat free, if reluctantly, to mention some of what’s been bothering him. After paying due respect to author Stern, his talents, and his contributions to the movement, Brown speaks his own mind on the key issues where he thinks Stern “goes off track.”

On partnership with employers: “What is not explained is that the most successful efforts are the payoffs for years of struggle, strikes, and other conflicts with employers, conflicts that engaged many members and built strong membership organizations. In contrast, the SEIU recently has entered into cooperative relationships” that deny “employees many of the basic workplace protections and rights that most traditional union contracts provide.”

“Unfortunately, some of these ‘alliances’ are highlighted by Andy as examples of a new way of thinking about our role and mission.”

On democracy and the rank and file: After paying tribute to Stern for leading “rallies, sit downs, marches, and even strikes,” Brown goes on, “Unfortunately, our approaches in other industries does not involve the members at all until…. we deliver the employer some benefit…. We have to ask ourselves if these methods can produce a real democratic workers organization or if it is more likely that they will produce a ‘membership’ that is as alienated from the union leadership as it is from the employers…. the very antithesis of true rank and file unionism.”

On “consolidation of unions into ever larger units”: “Larger is often better…. But how do we do this and still have workers make the crucial decisions in their own workplaces…. How do we make sure there is real democracy in choosing and electing union officials? Andy continues to stress the importance of consolidation…. He does not address the necessity of preserving effective democratic processes….”

Summarizing the issues: “Without a question …discussion and debate should take place at every level of SEIU.” [Extrapolating the advice for the intellectuals, discussion should flow at every level in and around the labor movement.]

But how many troops do these critics have? So far, all these complaints might be ignored by Stern or others impressed by raw power. Rank and filers speak with a small voice; radicals are reduced to strong opinions; Brown has moral force but no continuing clout. But what cannot be shrugged off is an insistent dissent from within the SEIU itself, from the United Healthcare Workers-West, a 140,000-member local in California.

According to the UHW-W, the SEIU agreement with an association of 284 nursing homes in California was not simply unacceptable; it amounted to “company unionism.” By implication, the criticism transcended the immediate issues of the California agreement; and the charge came not from perennial malcontents but from the responsible leaders of a major SEIU affiliate.

In a detailed analysis of the agreement, UHW charged that negotiations had “evolved into a substitute staff-driven process” and “a fundamental lack of membership involvement, running contrary to our constitution and bylaws as well as our standard practice.” According to UHW the agreements banned the right to strike and provided only limited provisions for arbitrating disputes; employers retained the unilateral right to change the economic terms of the agreement; no provisions for paid vacations, holiday, or sick leave; no seniority; strict limits on the number of stewards, undermining “work site member empowerment and activism in the union.” In summary, according to the UHW, the units created under the agreements “may come close to becoming … company unions.”

Twenty thousand members signed petitions backing the UHW. The protests were so overwhelming that the SEIU was impelled to backtrack and reject renewal of the agreement. When so many unionists, directly affected, repudiate a key element in Stern’s way, can our labor intellectuals fail to notice?

Back in 1995, when that gathering of radical and liberal academics and their thousands of sympathizers rallied for labor “teach-ins” around the country, life seemed simple. No need for intellectuals to over-intellectualize. They responded to Sweeney’s call for change; they offered moral support to the new labor movement; they volunteered services; they helped restore labor’s image as a force for social justice.

But now there are more things than were dreamed of in 1995. Now come Andy Stern, the Teamsters, and Change to Win. They may succeed in building a stronger labor movement. Maybe. That is for the uncertain future. What is certain for the present is that they are already constructing the model of a new labor movement: more bureaucratic, more highly centralized, and more remote from the grassroots than ever before.

At other times, such a trend might have provoked concern from freedom-loving, social justice intellectuals. So far, no. If the future of the SEIU and of our labor movement merits “discussion at every level” so does the future of the intellectual-labor alliance.

A special dilemma confronts those who were drawn to Stern and the Change to Win by their experiences in the New Left or out of its tradition. They sought social change through participatory democracy. They turn now to the labor movement, especially to Stern and the SEIU, to find a powerful force for social change. But where, they might ask, is the participatory democracy?

Where do intellectuals fit in? In 1999, with the help of SAWSJ and its affiliated professors, the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute published “Faculty @ Work,” a 74-page letter-size, how-to manual for professionals in the universities who want to help restore workers’ rights to organize. The guide offered a wide-ranging program of activism: classroom inspiration for students, opportunities for internships and jobs in unions, unionization of faculty, blue and white collar staff, and adjunct teachers in universities. Above all, educators could use their prestige to rally community support for union organizing campaigns, and put pressure on anti-union employers.

Linda Chavez Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice president, called upon “faculty and staff” to join “in making the world a little more humane, fair, tolerant, and equitable.” Sweeney wrote that “SAWSJ, students, and faculty are pumping new life into our movement.”

In the euphoria of those days, little debate was in order; everything would surely work out; labor was newly on the march; it was enough to rally support. But that was ten years ago. Since then, with a split in the labor movement, what was once posed so simply has become complex. Are those SAWSJ enthusiasts to be public relations cheerleaders? Are they to offer their talents as professional technicians? What is their role as independent-minded, critical thinkers?

Discussion on the fit between labor and intellectuals has persisted ever since there has been a labor movement.

Back in 1923, along with pamphlets by Scott Nearing, Stuart Chase, Norman Thomas, and Harry Laidler --- intellectuals all --- the League for Industrial Democracy published a 33-page work by George Soule entitled “The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.” As a guide to how intellectuals might serve unions, it is remarkably similar in spirit to the AFL-CIO manual 76 later. In his brief introduction, Laidler reminded readers that “many years ago… Peter Kropotkin wrote his famous appeal to young ‘intellectuals’ to cast in their lot with the labor movement.” I remember Kropotkin’s “Appeal to the Young,” --- which is still buried somewhere in my library--- because, at 16, I found it so inspiring. “The never-ceasing struggle for truth, justice, and equality,” wrote Kropotkin, “ will give you powers you never dreamt lay dormant in yourselves.”

But author Soule was not to be diverted into any extended discourse on misty ideals. He was preoccupied with how intellectuals might find practical entry into the labor movement and how they would handle themselves once there. He cautioned, “…the intellectual who has a romantic picture of the labor movement should remember that the rank and file of those who compose it approach it from a different ground and with a somewhat different purpose.” Once the intellectual sheds his illusions, “In the fields of trained technical assistance labor ought to expect much of the intellectual.... the intellectual can better aid the union by doing his own job well for the union than by trying to do the union’s job for it.”

Soule goes on to tell intellectuals, much like the AFL-CIO 76 years later, where they can find opportunities for professional service to unions: teach classes, provide legal, editorial, and accountancy expertise, publicity. Thirteen pages from commentators offer addresses for job opportunities and where to turn if intellectuals want to form their own unions. But in this preoccupation with technical and professional services, something was missing.

Labor needs intellectuals; intellectuals need labor. That their interdependence is once again accepted as established truth is one lasting benefit of Sweeney’s rise in 1995. But no need for a union job mart for intellectuals. In the search for a practical niche for intellectuals in and around unions, the danger is that both sides will lose sight of the basic force that binds them together.

Gus Tyler is an intellectual who was embedded in the labor movement as assistant president to David Dubinsky in the ILGWU. Back in 1973 in the American Federationist he wrote (even while cautioning against exaggerating the power of intellectuals) “… the anti-establishment intellectuals who can be found on the campus, or in the media, or in social work…. are educated, fairly affluent, articulate, and genuinely influential, they are a meaningful force in shaping public opinion in this country….” It is that ability to help shape public opinion that makes intellectuals so valuable an ally; they provide a public stamp of moral approval for unionism and thereby reinforce its political and social power in the nation.

Liberal and anti-establishment intellectuals share with labor the goal of social change; they want a more just, more democratic, more equalitarian society. The labor movement offers the social power that can transform ideals from dreams into reality. That combination, the power of unions and the aspirations of intellectuals is the basis of their alliance.

In January 1997, the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations invited academics who were in New Orleans for the annual conference of the Industrial Relations Research Association to a discussion on how to participate in “restoring and renewing historic ties between the labor and academic worlds.” In issuing the invitation, Sumner Rosen wrote of “ the hunger among students and teachers for a force on the side of economic and social justice with which they could connect.”

The intellectuals’ chief value to the labor movement derives not from their talents as professional technicians or skilled PR writers --- unions have been hiring all that kind of help they need--- but from their reputation for sharing peoples concerns, for impartiality, for independent-mindedness, wearing no one’s collar. (By jealously defending their “tenure” rights, academics preserve that reputation.) With their endorsement, the labor movement frees itself from the image of a narrow self-interest group and comes forward as a broad people’s movement. That contribution is the intellectuals’ key service to the labor movement; no other group can provide it as effectively.

Unions cannot buy that kind of service because once bought, it depreciates. People who suspect the motives of a hired mouthpiece can respect an independent voice. Intellectuals remain a valuable ally only by remaining independent and critical. Once they become kneejerk apologists, their value deteriorates. A successful alliance requires mutual respect: allies working in unison, but freely and independently.

There’s the rub. Can union leaders, always super sensitive to anything that might challenge their authority, even remotely, tolerate intellectuals who feel free to speak their mind. On the other side, will intellectuals, (aware of that depressing quality of labor leadership) refrain from speaking out frankly for fear of losing access to established union power? These questions are posed now precisely because this is a time of rapid change in the labor movement when discussion should be free and frank. There is the opportunity: expansion of union economic and political power. There is the danger: intensified bureaucracy and the suppression of union democracy. These are serious questions.

Intellectuals spring to the defense of one of their own against attack from employers. Kate Bronfenbrenner, an academic at Cornell, is one of the most prolific and insightful commentators on our emerging labor movement. Around 1998, she testified at public hearings on a bitter strike at Beverly Enterprises and sharply criticized the nursing home company. Outraged by what it charged was irresponsible meddling by an academic, the company delivered a stinging protest and filed suit against her. Because she was not a tenure-track faculty member at Cornell she was vulnerable; the fear was that the university might buckle under company pressure and invent a pretext to drop her from the rolls. Hundreds of professors, around the country, signed petitions on her behalf. Cornell got the message: it ended by coming to her defense; her job was saved.

But how different the course of events when the need was for protest against pressure from influential labor leaders.

In 1988, after another series of building trades scandals, the Cornell ILR Press published the interim report of the governor’s Organized Crime Task Force on corruption and racketeering in the New York City construction industry. It was a remarkable product. It placed the blame for corruption impartially on crooked employers and union officials; if anything, more on employers: “Corrupt contractors are equally, if not more culpable than corrupt union officials.” It noted that union members themselves were victimized and recorded the efforts of reform leaders to oust racketeers. It pointed to union democracy as an antidote to corruption: “One possible strategy involves fostering union democracy by assuring workers control over their unions and assisting them in imposing accountability on their union officers. Democratic structures and procedures …can make more likely the election of officials who work on behalf of their members rather than their own self interest.”

Two years later, the task force’s final report was ready, but this time Cornell refused to publish it. High officials of the New York State Federation of Labor had denounced the publication of the earlier interim report. Cornell yielded to the pressure. No outcry of protest from academics, not even a public whisper. The final report had to be published by the NYU Press. (Its author, James Jacobs, is an NYU law professor.)

(In some respects, the final report was more remarkable than the first. It concludes with a tribute to union reformers: “…’dissident’ workers in many construction unions are willing to raise their voices against incumbent racketeers…. We conclude by dedicating our Final Report to these courageous men and women whose faith in American values, institutions, and laws has been an inspiration to us during our labors on this project.” P. S. Governor Cuomo postponed publication of the report for many months until an election was over. Then it was released without fanfare, filed, and forgotten.)

No academic protest against Cornell’s cave in? But, one might demur, that was five years before those 43 intellectuals cemented their alliance with labor. Consider then the case of Robert Zieger, who, in 2001 submitted a paper to Labor Heritage, entitled “‘Black and White, Unite and Fight’? Race and Labor in American History.”

Labor Heritage is a glossy official AFL-CIO magazine that exudes a scholarly aura and makes space available to academics, especially to those who recount great labor struggles of the past canonized by time. Robert Zieger, a labor history professor at the University of Florida, is the author of “The CIO: 1935-1955,” (a 500-page major work acclaimed as a “classic” by David Brody) and of “American Workers, American Unions, 1920-1985.” His credentials as acceptable writer for Labor Heritage received an inadvertent boost from Dan LaBotz who, reviewing Zieger’s CIO book in the Marxist Against the Current, (9-10/95) criticized him as a labor establishment spokesman. “This …history is fundamentally an apology for the labor bureaucracy,” wrote LaBotz.

He had presented his piece, Zieger explains, “to promote dialogue between academics such as myself and men and women active in the labor movement.” It was accepted by Labor Heritage ---at first. But to his surprise, some months later, Michael Merrill, director of the George Meany Center, informed him that, in an editorial change of heart, it was rejected. What bothered Merrill was not some individual inadequacy of Zieger’s work but a heretical deviation from what was acceptable to the AFL-CIO. Merrill conceded that it “does clearly and concisely present the currently prevailing conventional wisdom within the academic community about the labor movement's record on race.” But he noted that the paper “does not fit with the new editorial direction” and that it “does not …give sufficient credit to the diversity of [the labor movement’s] record, especially in the AFL era.” It was a blunt warning to “the academic community” to toe a politically correct line if they want access. The implication is depressing: if labor’s keepers of the seal cannot permit criticism of its past record, how much more intolerable will they find any frank criticism of its current practice.

Zieger suggested that fellow academics “take my sobering experience into account.” They didn’t. There was no petition outcry against this union-imposed censorship.

What is the role of intellectuals in the new alliance? As hired hands or volunteer professional technicians, their value is minimal. In all their books and articles that abound from university presses, we don’t read much about their practical work out in the field. They don’t go out to organize. They don’t spend time in the union office. They don’t handle grievances. They don’t canvass for votes. Some of their students, while still young and vigorous, may volunteer for the grueling work; but those professors, those academics, are celebrated for their writings and lectures on labor history, on the significance of new trends, estimates of progress, on the broad future of the labor movement as a force for social justice. They can best fulfill a role as labor’s advocate when they also serve as labor’s conscience.

Both sides of this alliance have a problem. Labor leaders want to bask in the glow of support by eminent intellectuals. But, jealous of their power in their unions, they are sensitive to anything that might question it. They set limits; they want unalloyed endorsement, not frank criticism.

Those professionals and academics who have answered the union call --- in the hundreds or thousands --- are convinced that the labor movement, at last, is going their way. They are eager for access to that power. Unions pay tuition fees for union members to attend their classes. They direct their students to unions as paid interns. Unions back their publications. Eminent labor leaders endorse their conferences. Unions finance research projects. To safeguard those connections, which seem so vital to the cause of social justice, they need only to submit to a measure of censorship, preferably self-censorship, which is something that Robert Zieger discovered to his dismay.

But there are flaws in the adjustments so essential to this happy coexistence. If labor leaders insist that intellectuals toe the official line, they risk destroying their credibility as impartial advocates in the public arena. If intellectuals submit to those limitations, they risk losing their soul.

All these overhanging questions arise because Andy Stern, a would-be savior of the working class, is constructing a new labor movement based on ambiguous and contradictory principles: organize the oppressed but insulate union power from the influence of the rank and file.

The rising sector of the labor movement can be aggressive and then compliant; it focuses attention on neglected minorities and then treats them with contempt; it declares independence of the Democrats and seeks arrangements with the Republicans; it hails democracy in industry but derogates democracy in unions.

Objections can be anticipated: “We must be realists, not dreamers. There can be no perfect democracy. Unions must be centralized for battle against a powerfully organized foe. If workers can sometimes be manipulated into unions from above, why not? Sometimes it is necessary to maneuver or compromise or cooperate with employers. If in this dog-eat-dog world all this is necessary to build a stronger labor movement, so be it. Etc., etc.”

It is not merely a question of scrutinizing the validity of the details of Stern’s program or practice. Obviously I have my opinion; others will have theirs. Each move taken by itself may be the cleverest scheme in the world. There have always been persuasive arguments for freewheeling realism, compromise, and opportunism. However, after all is said, intellectuals must ask, “Is this what we had in mind? In this what those Scholars, Artists, and Writers expected when they responded to Sweeney’s call for “a reborn movement of American workers, ready to fight for social and economic justice…a new progressive voice in American life …changing the direction of American politics …a vibrant social movement … a democratic movement that speaks for all American workers.” In short, what kind of labor movement are we building?

Intellectuals are ready to serve the labor movement. But can the labor movement adjust to an alliance with outspoken, independent-minded critics. SAWSJ, where are you when we need you?

Toussaint in TWU Local 100: How to lose friends and alienate people

2007-11-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Local 100, has perfected the art of how to lose friends. He was elected in 2000 to lead this union of New York subway and bus drivers at the head of New Directions, an insurgent slate, a caucus that had campaigned consistently for more democracy and militancy in the union. Once elected, he did adopt a more militant stance in the face of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the mean and overbearing employer of most of his members. But democracy? That was something else.

From the outset, he began with a reputation as a new, fresh type of labor leader. After leading a short subway strike, he endeared himself momentarily, to some of the more advanced elements in and around the labor movement. He was cheered by a packed crowd of academics at the City University of NY, honored by labor historians, invited to make the keynote address at the statewide convention of the Public Employees Federation.

Chief among those who were favorably impressed was The Chief, New York's civil service weekly, a pro-labor tabloid that provides the main source of dependable information about public employee unions in the city and state. Its early news stories and editorial comments were important in furbishing Toussaint's enviable public reputation.

But abruptly, Toussaint and The Chief have fallen out. Despite its early services, he now treats the paper like a hostile element. His problem is that The Chief, even while acknowledging his virtues, has remained independent and impartial. That's what Toussaint cannot tolerate. That's why he turns friends into enemies in his own union. He demands uncritical, unquestioning subservience.

Promptly after Toussaint was first elected in 2000, the New Directions caucus that propelled him into office fell apart. Although New Directions had campaigned for years on a platform of unleashing the democratic spirit in Local 100, Toussaint, the new president, insisted on exercising the unilateral right to fill every paid staff position by presidential appointment, free of control by the executive board. The founders of New Directions, like Noel Acevedo, newly elected secretary treasurer on the New Directions slate, went into opposition. Even while continuing to credit Toussaint for fine work in administering Local 100 affairs, The Chief reported the views of his critics in its news stories and gave them space in its Letters to the Editor columns. (You've probably never seen anything like these L to E contributions. Writers have extended, even tedious, space for self-expression on anything remotely relevant and are free to denounce The Chief and its editor, Richard Steier.)

So it went. In 2006, when Toussaint ran for reelection to a third term, he faced four opponents. (One opposition ticket was supported by John Samuelsen, a former close Toussaint supporter whom he had excommunicated over some minor disagreement.) Toussaint regained the presidency but without a majority, with only a 45% plurality. The Chief duly gave full coverage to all sides, including Toussaint's rivals, with more, many more, letters to the editor. With all that, Toussaint was still doing fine in the paper's pages.

All went well until the brief Local 100 strike on New York subways and buses at the end of 2005. In editorial comment, The Chief mildly criticized Toussaint's handling of the strike; but relations became really strained in the strike aftermath.

Penalized for violating the state's law against public employee strikes, Local 100 was fined over a million dollars and lost the right to receive dues by automatic payroll checkoff. So the union now campaigned to convince members to pay dues by voluntarily authorizing regular deductions from bank deposits or credit cards. It was rough going. After the first round of appeals, 50% of the members had complied. The Chief found this a poor performance by Toussaint; in our Union Democracy Review, we commented that it was an encouraging beginning. (The glass was half full!)

Now, Toussaint was obviously becoming edgy. John Samuelsen, formerly so loyal a Toussaint henchman, distributed a letter to the Local membership urging them to support the union by paying their dues. But because he had written some derogatory words about Toussaint --- essentially, pay your dues despite Toussaint --- he was summarily removed as job steward. Now, in a pointed editorial comment, The Chief reproved Toussaint for arbitrary, authoritarian behavior: “Mr. Toussaint...has gone too far in stripping Mr. Samuelsen of a shop steward position to which he was elected last month....” A few weeks later, The Chief editorialized “Mr. Toussaint...has stopped talking to us because we haven’t censored his critics.”

Meanwhile, Local 100 continued its campaign for voluntary dues payments. When a Chief reporter called the union to ask how the drive was going, he was told to get lost, a sign of how deeply the union's relations with the paper had deteriorated. Editor Steier explained:

"They told …reporter Ari Paul that there is no reason to supply such data to a newspaper whose coverage of the union they [distrusted] … What seems to have particularly annoyed Mr. Toussaint and his acolytes is a series of letters by in-house critics regarding his leadership and the prominence sometimes given to some of those critics in our news stories…."

A week later, more was to come: In the 2006 election, a Toussaint opponent had been elected vice president of the Private Bus Lines division. But just a few months into the three-year term, he accepted a management job and resigned his union post. Another battle inside Local 100. Members of the division, which had supported Toussaint's critics, called for an election to fill the vacant spot, arguing that the local bylaws required an election, but Toussaint, disagreeing, insisted that the executive board, now under his control, could fill the position by appointment, a position upheld by the TWU international president.

After reporting the straight facts, as usual and at length, The Chief commented in an editorial: "We have no way of knowing which side is right…. But it is untenable for the Local 100 leader to on the one hand demand that members rally to his side for the greater good of the union, and on the other insist that one segment of the rank and file be denied the right to democratically choose their representative on the executive board…."

The Chief started out solidly in Toussaint's camp. You would imagine that any public figure would carefully cultivate that kind of asset. Instead, Toussaint managed to alienate it. That talent for turning friends into critics helps explain how he has succeeded in alienating so many in his own local. Still, after all this, The Chief editor still keeps a small warm spot open for the big man. In July, Steier quoted a former Toussaint admirer "who spoke conditioned on anonymity out of concern about Mr. Toussaint's tendency to react harshly to what he perceived as criticism…said … that for all his flaws he is a cut above most union leaders. 'Roger is a diamond,’ this man said, 'Maybe in the rough, but a diamond.'"

For that kind of comment, you need the protection of anonymity! Maybe Local 100 diamonds must always be called perfect, never rough.

New House cuts back on union democracy

2007-09-21T13:02:00.000-04:00

A discussion piece by AUD Director Judith Schneider

Now that Democrats are in control, civil libertarians and workers' rights advocates might expect Congress to strengthen union democracy, that is, the rights of members inside unions. It seems they are doomed to disappointment. Republicans and Democrats may alternate in control; the need to defend union democracy remains. The House recently voted to reduce the budget of only one division of the U.S. Department of Labor, its Office of Labor-Management Standards [OLMS,] by $2.1 million. Most Democrats voted for the reduction, and not because they are in an economy budget-cutting mood. Actually, they voted for an increase in the overall DOL budget by almost a billion dollars to $46.7 billion. Why single out the OLMS?

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, the federal law that protects union democracy and requires disclosure of union finances, assigned enforcement responsibilities to the U.S. Department of Labor. The DOL created the Office of Labor-Management Standards as its LMRDA enforcement division. Union democracy advocates have long argued that OLMS doesn't do enough to fulfill its responsibilities. Now, with less money, it will surely do even less, an outcome that was undoubtedly the intention of its budget-cutters.

OLMS conducts investigations of union elections and supervises reruns. It collects the financial disclosure forms unions are required to file, makes them available for rank-and-file review and audits a small sample (they say only about 4½ %.) It has investigatory authority for civil and criminal violations, refers criminal cases to the Justice Department, and obtains restitution of stolen union member dues. The OLMS is government's enforcement clout supporting the LMRDA. Currently with some 350 employees - it once had over 450 - it now looks like even this truncated operation has been targeted for reduction. A budget cut of $2.1 million- from $47.8 million to $45.7- will be imposed if the House of Representatives has its way. That may not sound like much in the grand scheme of things --- not enough to arouse misgivings. But the administration had proposed that an increase of more than $9 million was needed to enable the OLMS to do its job. It is obvious that if the OLMS budget cut goes through, its operations will have to be reduced

If the demands of economy were not at stake, how explain the OLMS cuts? The AFL-CIO establishment has always been hostile to LMRDA enforcement. Now, that hostility has been reinforced by new DOL requirements of more detailed public financial disclosures by unions. The House majority seems willing to sacrifice the interests of union democracy in order to yield to the concerns of the AFL-CIO top officialdom.

An amendment to restore the funds was rejected on a mostly party-line vote, with almost all Democrats voting against it. The Senate will have an opportunity to restore the funds in September.

A la Nixon: Jimmy Hoffa et al. go to China

2007-09-11T10:22:00.000-04:00

When The New York Times interviewed Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. in Shanghai, it reported that, along with other American union leaders, he had come to meet with Chinese union leaders and dine with Communist Party officials. Not that they intended to collaborate with the state-controlled unions but, said Hoffa, "I think a dialogue with them is very constructive. You can't ignore a union that claims to have 100 million workers." The whole 10-day visit was a project of Andy Stern's Change to Win Coalition. The SEIU was there, and Greg Tarpinian, formerly a Hoffa PR rep and now CtoW executive director, was spokesman. It is not likely that Hoffa and C to W hoped to learn from the "dialogue" how they, too, could organize 100 million workers. The Chinese unions, as creatures of the government, enjoy a prefabricated, involuntary membership, a system that is not likely to be duplicated in the United States.

It is curious. What were they doing in China, intermingling with figures and forces so powerful in our global economy? One possible explanation is their hope that somehow some of that power will rub off on them. Or at least lend them the aura of power.

The whole thing seems like another product of the fertile, protean, and somewhat eccentric mind of Andy Stern, president of the SEIU and guiding genius of the Change to Win Coalition. He is preoccupied with creating a new powerful force in America. With a growing base among America's most downtrodden, the unskilled, the immigrants, the minorities, who constitute the growing sector of service workers, he hopes --- by not annoying the captains of industry with individual grievances --- to add them in a not quite defined plan to save the American economy. And to join with Wal-Mart to bring medical insurance --- not quite defined --- to all.

Alan Murray reported in The Wall Street Journal (5/30) that Stern is now cultivating relations with private buyout CEOs. "Mr. Stern told me in an interview," writes Murray, "that he much prefers working with the buyout kings than with their public-company counterparts. 'I've been incredibly impressed,' he said, sharing his impressions of the men, 'Compared with most of my meetings with company CEOs, these men are much more businesslike and have much more understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.'" Just what is Stern trying to accomplish?

And now, somehow to add to the putative mixture, a possible connection with the fastest growing power on earth, the Chinese, what a formidable combination of POWER!

Power for what precisely? That's an open question.

A tale of two Brians -- How do they operate in IBEW Local 3?

2007-06-16T13:50:00.000-04:00

When Brian McLaughlin was indicted on charges of stealing millions of dollars from assorted sources, including from the union, he was forced out as president of the NYC Central Labor Council and needed a job while his trial was pending. And so he decided to return to work as an electrician. No problem. He signed the book at the Local 3 hiring hall, waited his proper turn, he said, and was promptly put to work. Everything was in order. He had the right to work. Apart from the presumption of innocence, even if he should be found guilty, he would be entitled to earn a living at his trade after serving his time.

But his experience is quite different from the ordeal of another member of Local 3, Brian Colella. After 14 years as an electrician at the New York Fire Department he was discharged in 2003 (Fired by the Fire Department.) His “offense” had nothing to do with stealing money from anyone anywhere. He was on the department’s hit list, because he was an outspoken leader and advocate of the rights of himself and his fellows, especially their right to payment for hours worked overtime. It took him four years and heavy legal fees to win reinstatement before an arbitrator ruled that he had been framed on spurious charges and ordered him back to work.

Like the other Brian, he had been out of work and needed a job but when he tried to hire out of the union hall, he was not even allowed to register. Union Democracy Review reported the facts at the time, but no one seemed interested except the Chief, that good old civil service tabloid.

The question is, then, how do they operate that Local 3 hiring hall? An explanation is missing. Why does the Brian big shot, even after charges of stealing union money, get fair and first class treatment, while the Brian rank and filer, after being victimized for standing up for workers’ rights, is told to get lost?

An injury to one? Not my problem!

2007-02-25T05:59:00.000-05:00

by Herman Benson

Are unionists’ grievances against their employers an obstacle to organizing? That odd question is brought to mind by Andy Stern, SEIU president, in an interview with Kris Maher of the Wall Street Journal (subscription only).

In a friendly account, Maher writes, “Mr. Stern says he wants to remake the labor movement by shedding its old adversarial image and creating more labor-management partnerships.” We have to make some allowance for Stern’s apparent desire to do a soothing snow job on the WSJ’s entrepreneurial readers. Actually, under Stern’s stewardship, the SEIU is embarked on an aggressive ---and effective--- organizing campaign among low-paid service workers, complete with strikes, threats of strikes, and mass demonstrations. The union may be ready to make nice to cooperating employers, but it is obviously willing to be as “adversarial”as necessary to get workers into the union under a good contract. The union has succeeded in rallying community support, especially among religious leaders, for its Justice for Janitors campaign of strike and demonstrations in Texas, Florida, and Connecticut. Under pressure from the SEIU, the New York City Council voted to require developers who get tax breaks to pay prevailing wages for janitors.

But what happens after the SEIU brings those janitors into the labor movement? Stern’s talk with writer Maher helps us understand the philosophy that already shapes the evolving organizational structure of the SEIU and that underlies Stern’s image of the kind of labor movement that he hopes to create. In essence, it suggests that to succeed, the labor movement must bureaucratize. If the banner of union idealists was once: “An injury to one is an injury to all,” the new watchword could aptly be: “An injury to one? Not my problem!” Are the needs of the individual to be sacrificed in the interests of what the leaders decide are higher goals, like employer cooperation and industry management?

As he has said many times in many other places, Stern told the WSJ that he wants friendly relations with employers. This time, he added, “People don’t go to work to have a fight. They go to work to provide a service, to build a community to take care of their family. I don’t hear most people say I can’t wait to go to work to have a fight with that boss.”

Of course, all that is perfectly true. But it is not the only truth.

The union is doing a fine job of raising the wages ---and substantially--- of low-paid service workers it protects under contract, and so raises their standards and permits them to live in greater self-respect and dignity in their communities. But the union has another role, or should have. Workers are not looking for confrontation with the boss, but they do ---and justifiably--- look toward their union to defend their dignity, and self-respect, and security on the job, during those long hours, that big part of the day when they are at work. Those who have suffered abuse from overbearing supervisors, from discrimination, contempt, unfair treatment, harassment ---even high-paid workers with lofty salaries--- know how that kind of experience can knot you in the guts and make those long hours, that unending part of the day, intolerable. In the euphoria that arises out of original wage increases from, say, $7 to $15, that second role of unionism may be waived aside, but not indefinitely. All this is relevant because it connects with Stern’s de-emphasis of “individual grievances” --- he is preoccupied with bigger things --- and it affects any conception of internal union organization.

“We want to find a 21^st century new model,” he told Maher, “… that is less focused on individual grievances, more focused on industry needs.” This is a conception that already has drastic effects on how the unions are organized, on union elections, on the relations between members below and leaders high above. Stewards are closest to working members. If stewards are elected directly by their constituents, they will necessarily be sensitive to their needs on the job. If they neglect their individual grievances, they risk defeat in elections ---honest elections, that is. Union leaders, way up there who are too busy to be annoyed by individual grievances prefer to appoint stewards and so insulate them from aggrieved members. The appointed job stewards, knowing that those above who appointed them are busy with higher things, learn not to distract their superiors with annoying grievances. Appointive stewards develop techniques for putting members off: evade questions, dissemble, get lost. They cease to represent the members in the union; they control the members for the union. They collect political action money; they urge members out to vote. They can neglect “individual grievances.”

Such is the fate of appointed stewards. But not even elected local officers are immune. Under federal law, local union officers and executive board members are elected directly by secret ballot vote of the membership. But does election by the membership mean control by the membership? Not necessarily. Not under the system that is developing under our emerging new labor movement. The answer depends on who controls their union salaries. Under the newly emerging system, union officers and board members are being reduced to the same dependent status of the appointive stewards.

In many unions today, elected union officers are entitled to salaries by virtue of their election, a sum often fixed in the union constitution. The security of that salary gives those local officers a certain independence. They are free to criticize the union’s top officers and still get paid, a freedom that enables them, on occasion, to express member dissatisfaction with the ruling administration. In our new times, all that is changing. Under the system that is developing and proliferating, no one, not even lower elected representatives, can hold a paid staff job without the approval of the top chief executive officer, usually the president, or secretary treasurer. When the entire professional personnel of the union, elective and appointive, are at the mercy of the CEO for their salaries, he or she is transformed into an uncontrollable autocrat. Imagine the state of democracy in the country if no one could hold a paid government job without permission of the President!

What are unionists to do while their leaders are preoccupied with remaking the world of industry and other massive projects? If their union neglects their individual grievances, will they need some kind of “union” within their union to force it to fulfill its responsibilities to its own members? In this structure of highly centralized bureaucracy, the need to defend union democracy is bound to be as urgent as ever.

Confronting Corruption in Labor Unions -- conference audio online

2006-12-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

From the AUD website:

"On October 14th, 2006 AUD held a one-day conference to assess fifty years of efforts by unionists and government agencies to drive out the mob and rid unions of corruption. The conference was held at the City University of New York and co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Research, and Building Bridges. Thanks to Ken Nash of Building Bridges, over the next month or two, we will post the complete audio.

"This conference presented a sometimes upbeat but often grim portrayal of the struggle against corruption. Eleven speakers shared their experiences and ideas with an audience of about 90 people, some coming from as far away as Ohio, Illinois, and even Alaska.

"We welcome feedback and encourage you to discuss the ideas and perspectives presented here in union forums, lists and blogs, both official and rank-and-file. Please let us know about discussions or threads on your site and we will post a link on this page."

Latest Audio: Judith Schneider, introducing the conference and speakers; Herman Benson on corruption and democracy; James Jacobs on the history of government trusteeships.

Benson challenges NYC Central Labor Council

2006-11-16T09:42:00.000-05:00

In an interview broadcast on Building Bridges: your Community-Labor Report, Herman Benson discusses the charges against New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin, and issues a challenge to the Council's leaders: if you are serious about fighting union corruption, why not conduct hearings into two prominent cases of union corruption?

You can hear the interview, (plus an interesting piece on the Coalition of Imokalee Workers), here.

Thanks to Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg.

--Matt Noyes

Where are those missing AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Codes?

2006-10-22T10:23:00.000-04:00

Brian McLaughlin, still President of the NYC AFL-CIO Central Labor Council but now on unpaid leave of absence, has been arrested on federal charges of stealing a few million dollars from the council itself, from his IBEW Local 3, and from assorted political committees. These are familiar sources of illicit take. But from the Queens Little League! That’s going too far. It reminds one of Dave Beck, former Teamster international president, who defrauded his friend’s widow out of her insurance money. When news of the pending charges first broke, McLaughlin voluntarily took a six-month leave of absence from his job at the council, a paid leave of absence. But upon his arrest, the council was shocked, shocked, so shocked that it suspended his paid leave.

Ed Ott, the council’s acting executive director who is in line to replace McLaughlin, has learned something from the shocking facts. The Times reports “he planned to reach out to immigrant workers” and “to help veterans.” It’s hard to believe that the labor movement somehow requires the theft of millions of dollars by one of its top leaders to spur it along the path of progressive social action.

Denis Hughes, who is president of the state federation of labor and chairs the NYC council’s executive committee, proposes measures that are at least relevant to the subject. For one thing he told the Times, he proposes “ethics seminars for state and city leaders.” It is depressing to learn that labor leaders must be taught that it’s not nice to steal union money and certainly not from Little Leagues.

He also says, “We want to have some ethical practices and procedures that make some sense.” Where has he been? The AFL-CIO is already overloaded with Ethical Practices Codes. The first comprehensive AFL-CIO code was adopted back in 1957 and then went through several editions. Enforcement machinery was included in the AFL-CIO constitution. But directly to the point, in 1995 a supplementary code was adopted that applied specifically to city and state labor councils and their officers, like McLaughlin. That code should not have gone unnoticed, because it was debated at the AFL-CIO convention in 1995 which directed the executive council to strengthen implementation of the unimplemented codes already on the books. If Mr. Hughes can’t find a copy he can get it from Jon Hiatt, chief AFL-CIO counsel, which is where we got it.

How can it be that McLaughlin might have been stealing ecumenically from anything anywhere that was not welded down? Can it possibly be that no one anywhere knew, or even suspected? The greatest likelihood is everyone feared to speak out or even mention the subject for fear of retaliation.

Ed Ott told the New York Times, “I’ve always been willing to talk about corruption in the labor movement.” Which may be true. But we are not aware of any public occasion on which he actually yielded to that personal impulse. We don’t suggest that he knew anything about McLaughlin’s derelictions. But if he had spoken out vigorously against corruption, even as an abstract generality, while McLaughlin was still active in power as council president, does Ott imagine he would still be holding his lofty council post? He would have been passed over long ago as the kind of irresponsible, undependable person that no one in power could trust.

Take McLaughlin’s power base, IBEW Local 3, from which he seems to be accused of stealing money. Do you imagine that anyone would dare to suggest that their lofty leader might have been guilty of misdeeds? Most construction unions maintain hiring halls which are clearly union hiring halls and are subject to regulation by the National Labor Relations Board which gives at least certain minimal protection to workers against arbitrary treatment by their union officials. IBEW Local 3, however, is uniquely different; its hall masquerades as a joint industry hall and therefore is immune to NLRB control. Local 3 electricians have no recourse against favoritism or discrimination in the hall. At the mercy of the McLaughlin establishment, are they likely to complain against him or any officials?

And so all this talk about the need for codes, and training seminars, and progressive programs for oppressed workers is just a way to pass the time until the whole embarrassing thing is forgotten until the next one.

Bureaucratizers and super bureaucratizers

2006-08-08T01:27:00.000-04:00

Machinists

The Machinists union (AFL-CIO) seems on the road to becoming a copycat super-bureaucratizer, taking as its model the Carpenters union (Change to Win), which is showing all the others how to get around federal law and deprive members of their right to elect union officers.

Members tell the Association for Union Democracy that when IAM District Lodge 747 in California was first established around 2001 by the merger of two other districts, its bylaws provided for the election of the top officer of Directing Business Manager (DBM) by membership vote. In IAM districts, DBMs were traditionally elected by the membership. Apparently that is about to change. Because District Lodge 747 was now technically a “new” district, members were not permitted to vote; the DBM was appointed by the IAM international office. Members never got the chance to vote, because before the term of the appointed DBM expired, the international trusteed the district.

When the international lifted the trusteeship after 18 months, members discovered that they were presented by new bylaws, summarily imposed by the international. The right of members to elect had been eliminated. From now on, only delegates will select the DBM. A portent of things to come in the IAM. A moral victory for the Change to Win bureaucratizers.

Service Employees

Meanwhile, Andy Stern, the practical and ideological mentor of Change to Win, reaches out to grasp the hands of the CEOs of America’s corporate leaders. In a piece written for the Wall Street Journal on July 17, he writes:

“Today I sent a letter to every CEO in the Fortune 500 asking them to make health care the national priority….Our union members ---your employees--- will work with you. The old idea that business and labor can’t work together for the common good is as outdated as lifetime jobs. The Service Employees International Union is the largest health-care union in the country…. We know health care. You know business. Together, let’s build a new 21st-century economy.”

As he notes, “The employer-based system of health care is over.” It may be an effective tactic, with great PR advantages, to try to induce the rulers of corporate America to abandon any exclusive responsibility for health care ---bound to be attractive to them--- and to join in formulating a new plan to socialize the costs of “a universal system that provides affordable coverage.”

But there are complications.

Some day in that utopian future, in happier times, labor and management may collaborate harmoniously in building an economy that justly serves all. The trouble is that we still live in a harsher world where a central problem for the labor movement is to end the dominance of federal government by those who favor the interests of the corporate rich, represented and symbolized by the Fortune 500. The need is to shape national policy on taxes so that the costs of social needs, like health care, are borne in just proportion by those who can best afford the burden. For that, we need a labor movement that can inspire its own members, rally the majority of people, and change the balance of power in the nation. The big question is: Can a bureaucratically centralized labor movement projected by Change to Win and now being copied by the IAM effectively serve that need? What do you think?

The ABD’s of unionism: Apathy, Bureaucracy, and Democracy

2006-07-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

It is becoming fashionable, even among some activists and labor-oriented intellectuals, to derogate internal union democracy as an impediment to the great cause of reorienting and rebuilding the labor movement.

“…[T]he crusade for union democracy,” writes one eminent advocate of a labor-intellectual alliance, “seems interminable and interminably futile.” Andy Stern writes, “Workers want their lives to be changed. They want strength and a voice, not some purist, intellectual, historical, mythical democracy.” And so the Change to Win Coalition, which he leads, proposes to reorganize the labor movement on a new basis, without concern for the rights of workers inside their unions. Stephen Lerner renders the thought deeper: “Considering union democracy as only a question of how a union is governed is too narrow….If only 10% of workers in an industry are unionized, it is impossible to have real union democracy because 90% are excluded.”

If there was no real interest in union democracy, why would you need so many niggling rules to suppress it? Why those meeting attendance rules which effectively exclude over 90% of union members from running for office? Why those tricky long, continuous good standing requirements which disqualify longtime union activists? Why impose burdensome and near-impossible petition gathering quotas on aspiring candidates? Why try to restrict independent access to the internet and websites? Why limit the right of observers to watch the ballot count? Why resist informing members of their democratic rights under federal law? Why eliminate the direct election of union officers? Why, if no one cares or listens, bother to use control over union hiring halls to starve out independent-minded workers who speak their minds. Why, in summary, if there is so little interest in union democracy, are so many union leaders afraid of it?

One radical, a relentless critic of the modern labor movement, dismisses the whole idea of “union democracy” as a delusion and ridicules reformers who would raise it as a demand in their unions. “[A]pathy,” he writes, "reigns too widely and a connected stratum of members simply delivers their votes in exchange for jobs and job security.” In support of that notion, he quotes C. Wright Mills, “Democracy within the unions, as within the nation as a whole, is usually a democracy of machine politics imposed upon a mass of apathetic members.”

Those who minimize the importance of democracy because members are apathetic have matters upside down. Democracy is especially important precisely where there is apathy.

In any social institution involving millions of people, and the labor movement is one such institution, the vast majority is preoccupied with the tough tasks of daily life: finding a way to earn a living, a good place to, live, getting and keeping a marriage, raising and educating children and keeping them off drugs, starting the car on a cold winter day, the rent and mortgage, those aching teeth and sprained ankles.

Overwhelmed by what deep-thinkers might consider these trivial pursuits, they‘re forced to neglect other important but less pressing matters, like union affairs. That is, they tend to become “apathetic.” Where there is a robust democracy, an activist, vociferous, gadfly minority can be available to shake up that majority and force them to face up to the critical issues of the moment. That is, democracy is an indispensable means to overcome apathy.

Those union officials, even those who are contemptuous of others who speak of “union democracy” are fully aware of all this. When they see fit to move an “apathetic” membership, they will utilize the standard tools of democracy. They orate at length to induce members to come out and vote on election day, to raise their dues, to vote to strike or not, to adopt a contract. They fill the pages of their captive union newspapers with exhortation on the selected subjects of the day. Come out on Labor Day, with me at the head of the parade! They are not exactly inveterate enemies of the idea of democracy. They simply feel more secure when they, themselves, enjoy a monopoly of those democratic rights. They get nervous when it is available independently to other union members not under their control.

In our labor movement, there are thousands of active, loyal unionists, and potentially many thousands more, independent-minded, conscious of their rights as Americans, insistent on dignified treatment in their union and on the job. Union democracy is one means of releasing that spirit as an energizing force to help overcome “apathy” in the labor movement.

Assessing a half century of union reform

2006-06-29T09:31:00.000-04:00

A discussion piece by Herman Benson (from the May/June 2006 issue of Union Democracy Review)

After decades of union reform effort, aimed at combating corruption, ousting organized crime, and strengthening internal union democracy, where are we?

In his book, "Mobsters, Unions, and Feds," James B. Jacobs, NYU law professor, assesses the results of the monitorships imposed by federal law enforcement authorities over unions dominated by corrupt officials, unions which were heavily infiltrated by organized crime. The government's campaign against racketeers in unions opened in 1982 with a successful federal suit under the RICO statute against Teamsters Local 560, then controlled by Tony Provenzano for the Genovese crime family. Over the years, more than 20 similar actions followed. Each led to some measure of federal control aimed at ousting the mob. A current Justice Department complaint against the International Longshoremen's Association makes clear that the campaign continues.

More than 20 years before the government move against Local 560, prompted by the adoption in 1959 of the LMRDA, which provided support in federal law for rights of members in their unions, insurgent movements, led by rank and filers and a few leaders, sprang to life in the labor movement demanding democratic reforms, an end to corruption, fair job referrals from union hiring halls. A substantial part of that record is preserved in two periodicals: Union Democracy in Action and Union Democracy Review and summarized in my own book, "Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers." As UDR readers know, movements for reform within the labor movement continue to this day, newly encouraged by easy access to the internet.

We now look back at nearly a half century of intensive reform activity, by government and by unionists. It all began before most of our current readers were born. Has it been a success and to what extent? What's next?

Government drive against mob in unions

Despite mixed results, federal authorities can point to a few notable achievements. Organized crime was pried loose from control over the international offices of the Laborers, the Hotel Employees, and the Teamsters. In Teamsters Local 560, mob domination was replaced by a new leadership recruited from the rank and file. But most cases ended inclusively; suspect forces still hold power or remain as an overhanging threat. In one case at least, Pennsylvania Roofers Local 30, federal control ended in disaster; a corrupt old gang remained in power and was allowed to threaten opponents and drive them out of the union and out of the industry. A few years later, in 2005 (after Jacobs had completed his book) the international imposed a trusteeship and removed all officers; they had brought the union, its pension fund, and its welfare fund to the point of bankruptcy; they were allowing contractors to hire nonunion workers. There have been battle victories but no Big Success in the war. Organized crime and corruption remain as major evils, poisoning our labor movement.

Summing up his estimate of the outcome of 20 federal monitorships over the previous 20 years, Jacobs writes:

"…. it has fallen seriously short of its full potential. The majority of trusteeships have not produced regime change. Many have not produced a single fair, much less competitive election. The majority have probably not completely purged organized crime's influence from the union….Only three of the hard-fought RICO trusteeships can be judged to have been completely successful, for many of the others, it is still too early to say. Some…must be considered complete failures. The Cosa Nostra crime families are much weaker … but they continue to be a presence in most of the cities where they have existed…."

Reform insurgency

After 50 years of insurgency, running through the labor movement, making an impact on most major American unions, with their rights newly protected by federal law, reform movements forced the union establishment to make concessions to the principles and even to the practice of union democracy. The victory of the Miners for Democracy overturned a murderous regime in the Miners union, gave the union a new democratic constitution, ended generations trusteeships over the union districts, and eased the way of Rich Trumka as secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

In the Teamsters union, the setback of organized crime in 1991, the victory of Ron Carey, and the rising influence of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union marked the high point in the movement for reform. Carey's victory changed the balance of power in the AFL-CIO and made possible the election of John Sweeney as AFL-CIO president. His ascendancy, despite the later setback for Teamster reform, opened a new stage in the history of the American labor movement. Reform battles legitimized union democracy, which is generally honored as a principle even where it is violated in practice.

However, despite the upsurge of union insurgency and despite the immense expenditure of federal money and manpower which did weaken the mob, there have been only a few instances where suspect union administrations have been overturned and then replaced by organized democratic reform movements. There have been a few exceptions: like the Miners; Musicians; Marine Engineers; Masters, Mates, and Pilots. More complicated, in the Teamsters. But they remain exceptions. Borrowing modern war-related terminology; There have been few major "regime changes."

And so corruption and mob infiltration remain, weakening the labor movement as it tries to rally public support for its organizing campaigns, and, most decisive, to win political support to change the balance of power in America. The problem is not merely "pockets of corruption" but a major disease, chronic and obtrusive. For proof, one need only read Jacobs and study the report of Edwin Stier on his aborted campaign to create a self-reform program for the Teamsters union.

Even if it were proper and convenient to shrug it all off as an embarrassment, in the hope that no one will notice, labor's adversaries will not permit it. Corruption undermines the labor movement; a campaign against it is part of the battle to strengthen the labor movement.

Why after all this time and trouble by government and by union reformers, and despite their achievements, is the record so inconclusive?

The limits of government action

The power of the government to effect change, despite its enormous power, is limited; that truism surely applies to its campaign against rackets in unions, mainly because it relies for execution essentially upon lawyers, prosecutors, former FBI agents, and assorted other law enforcement personnel.

Bolstered by all the resources of government and the power of the RICO act, federal attorneys can compose complaints and indictments against racket-influenced unions so persuasive that judges agree to impose federal monitorships or trusteeships over locals and internationals, Once government prosecutors have established a measure of control, to enforce their authority and back up any program of reform, they are armed with FBI surveillance powers, and the power of subpoena, the threat of fines and jail sentences. and the threat of contempt of court citations. These are powerful enforcement weapons, not available to union reformers or even to union leaders who would like to act against the mob.

The potential for government action against racketeers is so sweeping that union officials charged with corruption are ready to 'voluntarily' accept limited measures of government control in order to avoid trial and ward off even more drastic measures imposed by a federal judge. So it was that the Laborers, the Hotel Employees, and the Teamsters avoided total government trusteeship and submitted to some reforms. Even in the ILA, which so far has avoided court control over the international, the rank and file Workers Coalition has been able to function in a union where insurgency once meant death.

Those 20 years of federal action against labor racketeers have been good for the labor movement and made life more tolerable for independent-minded unionists.

But these were the big cases, open to close public scrutiny. However, as Jacobs concludes, the results of all those years and all that effort have been mixed. More bluntly, disappointing.

The prosecutors, lawyers, and appointed monitors have the power; they may be experienced in dealing with crooks, but they lack the knowledge and ability needed to reform a union. Some get nowhere because they have no idea that they must aim to replace a corrupted union with a good democratic effective union. Others have the will but don't know the way; without union experience, they don't know the good guys from the bad; they fail to encourage members to become union activists; they can't develop a new leadership to replace the old.

Usually they look for a fast cheap fix. But where rackets have been in control for decades, no union can be rescued in just a few months. Racketeers solidify their own base of support by intimidating and demoralizing all others. It takes time, resources, and union skills to pry them loose. The two most effective RICO suits were long and hard: It took 13 years before the Local 560 trusteeship could be lifted. After 18 years and with the existence of a dedicated reform opposition, a federal judge and his appointees are still needed to watch over the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The limits of rank and file reform

For insurgents, a war against the mob is no do-it-yourself operation. They need help.

Citizens anywhere, armed or unarmed, rely on the power of government to combat organized crime; it is no different when racketeers wear a union label. All the obstacles that face insurgents in opposing any administration regime are multiplied overwhelmingly in mobbed up unions. Incumbents normally enjoy the advantage of greater resources: a permanently organized political machine, full time officers and staffers, access to the membership and union publications, control over the election and disciplinary apparatus, and more. Rigorously centralized bureaucratic unions provide no space where critics can develop the skills necessary for an alternative leadership.

Where racketeers are entrenched, all the normal advantages of incumbency are backed up by threats of violence and actual physical assaults, occasionally even murder. With the tolerance, even the direct assistance, of consenting employers, the mob blacklists stubborn opponents, starves them out by denying them work, and drives them out of the industry. For all these reasons, union reformers, however courageous, dedicated, and self-sacrificing, need the help of law enforcement authorities to oust the mob from their unions.

Greatest successes where two forces combine

If reformers need government support, government needs active help from union reformers; the greatest successes ---perhaps the only really major successes--- have been achieved when the authority of government and the power of reform insurgency have combined in mutual support in the war against thugs and mobsters. In the United Mine Workers, after a federal court armed insurgents with the tools of democracy and fair elections, the Miners for Democracy movement was able to get rid of a murderous officialdom and write a new democratic union constitution.

In the Teamsters union, court-appointed monitors warded off racketeers and presided over the first direct membership election of top officers in the union's history. With their rights protected by federal authorities, insurgents took control of the union's national office and elected Ron Carey as president. Even after Carey's defeat, still under the umbrella protection of federal monitors, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union has transformed itself from a small band of dedicated reformers into a formidable movement in opposition to the old guard. On a smaller scale in Teamsters Local 560, federal trustee Ed Stier wrested control of the union from the Genovese crime family; he succeeded because he understood the need to encourage a new leadership to come forward from the ranks and recruited a Teamster member, a former staffer, to help him run the union while under trusteeship.

Affirmative action to recruit reformers

Getting rid of racketeers and replacing them with a genuine union leadership is a tough job, really tough. Active or retired, those prosecutors, attorneys, and assemblage of federal agents simply cannot do it by themselves. The problem is that responsible federal reps who hope to get the job done are all lawyers themselves and are comfortable only with other lawyers. They need the help of union reformers at all levels. But where to find them? They need a new kind of affirmative action program to recruit union activists. Announce the need! Advertise! They are there: associates of the Association for Union Democracy; supporters of Labor Notes; and hundreds of others with union experience.

For federal authorities, it is a matter of recognizing a need and making a decision. Many union reformers, however, will be skeptical. "You can't trust the government," they will say, which is probably true but that simple truth is not a dependable guide to action. Nobody fully trusts the government. For Republicans, government and Democrats are the problem. Democrats don't trust Republicans. The FBI doesn't trust the CIA and vice versa. Half of Congress and a big part of the population do not trust the President. The State Department often doesn't trust the Pentagon. Nobody trusts the IRS. And so it goes. Government under a democratic system gets to be complex; in this intricate labyrinth of distrust, we decide how best to do what's right. It will be said, "Government intervention will undercut unions." For the unalloyed right wing, that may be quite true. But it is not true of the Office of Labor Management Standards which enforces the LMRDA. It is not true of the government action against racketeers in unions under the RICO suit.

Federal action against racketeers in unions opens the way for change. Even while remaining skeptical of government, union reformers should be alert to seize the opportunity.

Note: In submitting this subject for discussion, these comments are not intended to discuss once again the broader questions of workers' rights in their unions. Union democracy remains embattled even in unions with good, honest, but benignly bureaucratic leaders. That's another matter. It is relevant here essentially because it can be an effective instrument for combating corruption.

See also "The RICO Trusteeships after Twenty Years: A Progress Report," by James B. Jacobs, Eileen M. Cunningham, and Kimberly Friday

Don Taylor and Herman Benson on union democracy and Change to Win

2006-06-12T13:39:00.000-04:00

Don Taylor is Education Coordinator for SEIU Local 1984 in Concord, NH, and teaches in the Political Science department at the University of New Hampshire. He has been an AUD supporter since 1997. AUD recently published a piece Taylor wrote for the March 2006 issue of Yankee Radical, the newsletter of the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with a reply by Herman Benson.

From Taylor's piece:
"...Think back to the great struggles in the automotive industry in the 1930s. How different would the outcome have been if the General Motors workers in Cleveland, at Detroit's Fisher Plant No. 2, and at Fisher No. 1 in Flint had been split between different unions? The outcome could not have been the same, and the history of the labor movement would be markedly different. Yet, for some reason, many in the labor movement accept today's atomized status quo. Some even applaud it-like the folks at Union Democracy Review, who seem to think workers' ability to change between unions like trading in an old car for a new one is more important than building power."

From Benson's reply:
"...Don Taylor allows his admirable hopes to overwhelm any sense of reality. His disenchantment with Sweeney and the AFL-CIO seems rooted in his feelings about the cold war, rigid anti-communism, business unionism, and other evils of a "nakedly aggressive monopoly capitalism." But it is an illusion to dream that a new labor coalition of the Teamsters under Hoffa, the Carpenters, the Laborers, and the Food Workers will deliver something closer to his heart's desire. He imagines it; they haven't even made the promise. In these times, when there is so little to cheer about, some radicals grasp at straws. The danger is that, in a desperate search for reassuring signs, they are being taken in by a new ideology of super-centralized bureaucratic labor unionism."

Read the pieces here.

From Review of Poor Workers' Unions, by Vanessa Tait

2006-06-12T12:44:00.000-04:00

"...Take one square mile of working people's homes, poor or not, at the core of any metropolitan center. Here you can find more injustice, more exploitation, and more misery than can be overcome by any private organizations in a lifetime of devotion. Into this thicket of inequity come small bands of dedicated idealists inspired by visions of a more just society. They undertake the responsibility of fighting for the rights of those at the bottom, those who are ignored by other organizations which are unable or unwilling to undertake the burden, or even ignorant of the needs of those below.

"These pioneers enter boldly where others will not tread; they lead a virtual guerrilla war against injustice, battling here, battling there, wherever opportunities open. They sometimes win; they often lose; even the victories often prove ephemeral. But even in defeat they can win a moral victory as society slowly is sensitized to the need. They help keep the nation's democracy alive..."

Read more

Benson Wins “Lifetime Troublemaker” Award

2006-06-12T12:00:00.000-04:00

Herman Benson, AUD co-founder, received a “Lifetime Troublemaker” award at the Labor Notes conference “Building Solidarity From Below” in Dearborn, MI, May 5-7. According to Labor Notes, “These awards are intended to recognize grassroots activists whose efforts may not have made headlines, but have contributed to the struggle for union democracy and workplace justice.”

Benson’s acceptance speech (listen here):

“I never saw myself exactly as a troublemaker but rather as one among many trying to get rid of the world's troubles. As they say, however, it takes one to catch one. If your assemblage of the world's top expert troublemakers agrees that I fit properly among them, I must accept the parahonor with thanks. A word about my old friend Erwin Baur who helped steer me toward one of the best decisions of my life: becoming a machinist and toolmaker. When he was president of a Steel local in the late thirties, right after the defeat in Little Steel, when times were real bad, he convinced his members to yield to a wage cut rather than risk a hopeless strike. I was there. It taught me that a good troublemaker must sometimes see trouble ahead and lead people away from it. Thanks for the tribute to three representatives of a fast-dwindling generation. Now it's up to you.”

(Editor’s note: AUD friends Erwin Baur and Harry Kelber also received “Lifetime Troublemaker” awards.)

For Democracy! But not on our block!

2006-05-11T20:32:00.000-04:00

Labor union leaders are leading the charge for 400 proposals to improve democratic procedures in organizations. Sadly, however, these proposed reforms are not for workers in their unions but only for stockholders in their corporations. Labor leaders are militantly in support of the right of stockholders to greater control over the executive officers of corporations. Dan Fisher tells the story in Forbes magazine.

In the vanguard of the battle for stockholders democratic rights is the Carpenters union. According to Fisher, it submits around 80 to 100 stockholder reform proposals every year. He writes, “The union’s director of corporate affairs, Ed Durkin, said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News that corporate directors need to be more accountable to shareholders. ‘If they know they have to get elected, that it not a foregone conclusion, then boards become better-functioning entities,’ Durkin said.”

Seems obvious? But the Carpenters union, which presses so ardently for the right of stockholders to keep corporate directors accountable, has reorganized itself to insulate its regional directors, the top leaders, from membership control. Their selection is indeed a “foregone conclusion.” These top union directors are not accountable to the membership because they are not elected by the membership.

Perhaps the solution is for the union to privatize, issue shares to members as stockholders, and seek a listing on the New York Stock Exchange…. No, we have to withdraw that suggestion. . The danger is that they might declare corporate bankruptcy while someone walks away with the money. Carpenters for a Democratic Union have a better idea: one member, one vote in the election of union officer-directors.

A lesson from Transit Workers’ Local 100: The Limits of Bureaucratic Centralization

2006-04-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

When Roger Toussaint was an insurgent in TWU Local 100, the 38,000–member union of New York City subway and bus workers, he campaigned to curb the authoritarian powers of the local president and to expand the countervailing power of the division chairs and representatives elected by the rank and file. But after winning election as president on the insurgent New Directions slate, he changed his mind. As he explained to the Chief, the civil service weekly, he decided that the most effective way to run a union was to centralize authority in the hands of a CEO, with full control over the paid staff and all phases of day-to-day operations. And so he proceeded successfully to wield powers that he once would have denied to others. Noel Acedevo, who was elected recording secretary along with Toussaint on the New Directions slate, says that when he expressed misgivings over the shift, he was with treated with contempt like an unwelcome clerk, confined to his office room, his incoming and outgoing mail carefully scrutinized, and denied meaningful participation in local affairs.

Ainsley Stewart and Toussaint were once fellow insurgents in New Directions, the opposition caucus that won the election for Toussaint just before the group fell apart. Stewart was later elected one of the division vice presidents in opposition to Toussaint. As vice president, Stewart is entitled to a constitutionally fixed salary. But now he is in federal court complaining that Toussaint unilaterally cut his bi-weekly salary installments whenever he decided that Stewart was not devoting time to pushing the official line. Stewart claims a loss of around $20,000 up to now.

Toussaint succeeded in entrenching himself organizationally. But when TWU members voted down the contract he had negotiated to end their three-day strike, they demonstrated that the power of bureaucratic centralization has its limits.

All went well for Toussaint until the three-day New York transit strike. By a tiny majority, the membership voted down the contract he had negotiated to end the strike, a contract which he and the executive board had campaigned hard to put over. Bitter over this rejection of his authority, he denounced those who had campaigned against it. If, only they had been responsible, if only they had not misled the voters, if only they had not lied, he insisted, what he proclaimed to be a fine contract would never have been defeated.

In this, he was perfectly correct. If no one had spoken against it, if everyone was willing to go along, of course it would have been adopted. But that’s not how the world works. If only Republicans had not criticized Democrats, John Kerry would be president today, or Al Gore. Toussaint says they lied about the contract’s defects; they say he lied about its virtues. That’s how it goes. Leaders in unions, as in politics, must live with it. No one is entitled to an automatic pass.

It’s tough to get a great contract these days, one that excites near-universal delight. You take the best you can get. Sometimes, you even have to take the least bad. Everyone should know that; New York Transit workers surely know that. Any debate over conflicting details gets so complicated and confusing that it’s often impossible for working members to decide what or who is right. And so, how can they make up their mind? They tend to accept the advice of leaders whom they respect and in whom they have confidence. Toussaint knows that. In a letter to The Chief discussing his contract defeat he wrote that the question is “why enough transit workers weren’t willing … to say that if Roger and our executive board say this is the best we can do, we trust them.” And he referred to this question as the “central issue of confidence in our union.”

Is he aware of the significance of his own words? A majority of the voters rejected the contract because they had less confidence in Toussaint’s executive board and more confidence in rank and file leaders who were independent of Toussaint and critical of him. In solidifying his personal power, Toussaint alienated a whole cadre of respected, independent-minded, local leaders, many of whom had originally supported him for president. In losing their support, he lost the support of the voting members.

Alan Saly, former managing editor of the Local 100 newspaper, told The Chief that when Toussaint fired one close supporter who opposed him on a minor matter, ”He made one too many enemies.” Richard Steier, editor of The Chief, wrote, “Mr. Toussaint has compounded his internal problems by taking harsh action against numerous former allies…. The net effect has been to wind up running the union largely on the strength of his own will.”

After his election, Toussaint ran a local which stands up militantly on behalf of its members against the Metropolitan Transit Authority. That might have been enough in a local of new unionists, subdued, inexperienced, grateful for modest gains, a union where no possible alternative leadership had yet emerged from the ranks. But Local 100 has a membership which has already fought its way up. It has a long tradition of internal political rivalry; Toussaint rode that tradition into power. On the job, transit workers fight for dignity and demand respect from a mean employer. Toussaint responded to that demand. In the union, however, there are rank and file leaders who insist on respect and dignity inside the local itself. In his obsession with power, Toussaint feared that insistence as a challenge to his authority.

Local 100 is composed of seven divisions, organized by job titles. Each division membership elects its own chairperson and is represented on the local executive board by one local vice president. The three top officers, plus the seven VPs plus 39 representatives elected by the divisions make up the 49-person executive board. In this big 38,000-member union, only the seven VPs and the three top officers receive any salary by virtue of their union office. Apart from these ten, the entire paid union staff numbering in the scores --- somewhere around sixty or more --- are all appointed by Toussaint. Division chairs get no pay unless appointed to a paid position y Toussaint. Disputes over this structure have triggered many a bitter battle.

The elected division chairs have position but no real power. The paid staff assigned to the divisions is appointed by the local president. The local president, not the division chairs, designates who can be released from their job and be paid temporarily for division union work. Insurgents have fought to give real power to the elected division chairs. A key demand in their platform, while Toussaint was part of the opposition, was to turn those powers over to the elected chairs. The old guard resisted. Once elected, Toussaint, having changed his mind, continued the old system, which remains today.

In 1999, according to Naomi Allen, Ainsley Stewart and Toussaint, then collaborators, sued to win the right of division chairs to a measure of participation in contract negotiations. They won something in court, but nothing changed on the ground. According to Toussaint’s critics, division chairs are still shunted aside at contract time.

In the past, the seven division vice presidents had been elected at large. In 2000, the insurgents won their battle for election of VPs by the membership they represented when the old guard yielded and changed the bylaws. Since then, the VPs, now elected by the members they represent, have become one source of potential power independent of the president. They cannot simply be ordered about; they must be convinced.

After many years of battles against private owners and city officials to establish a strong union, after decades of internal union battles over power and democracy, Local 100 developed a strong cadre of independent-minded union activists, sometimes in the ranks, sometimes in the leadership. Precisely because they were there, Roger Toussaint could be elected president as an insurgent in opposition to the local administration and in defiance of the international. After election, in his drive for centralized power, he alienated precisely the kind of unionists who lifted him into power.

In searching for the source of Toussaint’s troubles, his union rivals and outside neutral commentators alike find the answer in his personal quirks, in his inability to tolerate even mild criticism. Perhaps. But there is more to the story. His regime is representative of a growing trend in our labor movement, one which is moving beyond (or below!) the familiar bureaucratism of narrow-minded union officials: authoritarianism in practice but not backed up by ideology. The new tendency is most obviously revealed by the Change to Win coalition of unions which have seceded from the AFL-CIO. Its advocates, many of whom are dedicated unionists with an honorable record in civil rights and labor causes, offer an alternative philosophy. For them, authoritarianism is not an embarrassing problem; it is an indispensable part of the solution.

They would solve labor’s problems by undercutting local autonomous rights and concentrating power in the hands of a small well-meaning leadership. To them, union democracy, while perhaps fine as a somewhat Utopian long range goal, is an immediate practical hindrance. They would bureaucratize to organize. One model is supplied by the Carpenters union, which has merged locals into big regional councils, wiped out membership rights, turned locals into powerless administrative units, and assigned overwhelming authoritarian powers to a single council executive secretary treasurer.

In milder form, the Service Employees International Union has dissolved and merged locals into huge sprawling units, held together and administered by a small top leadership with full control over the paid staff, a system which makes it enormously difficult for any alternative leadership to coalesce.

In that new spirit, the regime of Roger Toussaint took form. At one critical moment in the local’s experience, in the post-strike contract referendum, that system obviously failed.

2006-01-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

Technorati Profile

Thinking about the New York City transit strike

2006-01-10T13:18:00.000-05:00

By Herman Benson

Most of the media comments and all of the outrage were focused on the inconvenience inflicted on the suffering riding public by the 33,700 New York City subway and bus workers during their three-day strike, right in the middle of the holiday season. All those mythical million dollars worth of business presumably “lost!” But why did they do it? That question, lost in the arguments over bargaining details, never got the attention it still requires.

Before authorizing the walkout, members of Transit Workers Union Local 100 knew that they would be violating state law; they knew that the strike would cost them at least two days pay for each day out, that they each risked heavy additional fines imposed by a judge, that their union’s treasury and all its assets could be rapidly wiped out by murderous fines, that their leaders faced jail sentences. With all this at stake, the strike decision was no off-the-cuff action. It had been a long time brewing. Or festering. At AUD we could tell, because the prospect had been revealed in the bitter internal union battles over the years.

There had to be a transit strike, if not now, then not much later. It had to come because so many transit workers viewed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as a mean, heartless employer, contemptuous of their human needs. As so many put it: we want dignity! That basic aspiration was a powerful undercurrent during negotiations in 2002 when it was reported that the MTA had averaged around 10,000 disciplinary citations a year against its 33,700 employees. As a decisive factor in reaching an agreement without a strike that year, the MTA agreed to be a little more understanding, a little less strict, by cutting the citations by 25%. Even then, 40% voted to reject the contract that year. Forward to 2004. Last year, according to the N. Y. Times, the MTA filed 15,200 disciplinary citations against its 33,700 employers, almost one for every two workers.

Years ago at AUD, we became acquainted with the human face of that arithmetic.

My former landlord, John LoPinto Sr., drove the No. 68 bus along Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn until he finally retired. He was a peaceable, responsible, intelligent citizen, easy to get along with, not looking for confrontation with anyone. He was the first to tell me about the nitpicking MTA that kept a disciplinary dossier on its workers, as long as your arm and much older; he showed me one copy (not his own.) As I remember, it was he who told me about the time a driver saw an elderly man trip and fall to the street as he was getting off the bus. The driver left his seat to help the man only to end up with a demerit for leaving his bus without proper authorization.

Larry Labrocca, a Staten Island bus driver, came to AUD with his story: One evening, while driving along the streets of Staten Island, he was attacked by six young thugs, one armed with a knife, knocked unconscious, and landed in the hospital with a fractured skull. While out of work, he faced charges from the MTA for being absent without authority. “Failure to report will result in action being taken to have you dismissed from the Authority.” He needed a lawyer to beat off summary discipline and ended with an eight-day suspension.

These incidents are years old but nothing much seems to have changed. When police officers and firefighters are injured or killed on the job, city notables rush consolingly to pay their respects. When transit workers are killed or injured, the MTA seems more concerned with proving that the victims themselves may have been at fault. I have not yet heard of any transit worker, who got disciplinary citations for getting themselves killed without permission, but there always could be a first time. Especially if compensation money is involved.

All that explains why, at one point or another, transit workers would strike. There had to be some way to release the pent up fury, to express their outrage against a thoughtless employer. From that standpoint, the precise details of the technical contractual issues were almost irrelevant to that broad section of the Local 100 membership who wanted action. There was little that Local President Roger Toussaint could have done to stop them, even had he wanted to.

MTA negotiators made a chronically tense situation even worse. They demanded that the retirement age be lifted from 55 to 62; that workers begin paying part of their medical insurance; that wage increases be paid for by assorted workplace givebacks in the name of productivity. It seemed as though the MTA hoped to humiliate the union or even to provoke a strike that could undermine the union’s public credibility. And then on the edge of a deadline, when an agreement seemed possible, the MTA unexpectedly inserted a new demand: that all new hires, but not current employees, be required to pay 6% of their pay into the pension fund. It was the demand for the introduction of a two-tier system, a poisoned bait that offers an advantage to older union members at the expense of those who would come later.

For TWU Local 100, President Toussaint rejected the MTA demand. The union, he declared, would not sacrifice “the unborn” as the price of reaching an agreement. (And in the end, the union succeeded in warding off this demand.)

The strike lasted three days. The press, like the mayor and governor, were unanimously hostile. Despite all the inconveniences, the response of the public was surprisingly mixed; there was the expected flurry of denunciation against the workers as irresponsible and selfish; but there were perhaps as many expressions of sympathy for the strikers and of suspicion of the MTA

The most damaging moral blow to the embattled strikers came from the international office of their own Transport Workers Union, the parent body of Local 100. The TWU international president publicly denounced Toussaint and the calling of the strike as irresponsible. That kind of obvious stab in the back is mercifully rare in the labor movement. In this case, it is explained by the bitter, years-long, faction fight between Toussaint and the TWU international administration. Factionalism spilled over into a treachery bordering on overt strikebreaking.

On the whole, the labor movement in New York was sympathetic to the strikers. Sympathetic, but without enthusiasm. There were mild expressions of support for Local 100’s aims but no resounding declarations of support for the strike. There was no suggestion that transit workers might be carrying the ball for the whole labor movement. How could it? Local 100 was resisting the demands for givebacks by current workers and sacrifices by future workers as costs of a new contract. But many unions, especially in the public sector, had already abandoned the cause and had agreed to those conditions in their own bargaining sessions. Still, New York unions did not desert the strikers; many had supported New York Mayor Bloomberg or Governor Pataki for reelection; and they seem to have used their influence to end the strike on terms acceptable to the union. Through the intervention of mediators, the strike was settled without either side proclaiming victory over the other. But the union still faces fines of $3,000,000 and the strikers a loss of at least six days pay. The agreement now goes to the workers for a ratification vote.

Because the transit strike violated the law, immediately affected millions riders, subjected thousands of workers to legal penalties, and inflicted outrageous judicially imposed crippling fines upon the union, all the issues involved were raised to a height of emotional intensity. The dispute over the “unborn,” highlighted by Toussaint, focuses attention on a mounting conflict over the future standard of living of American people.

This issue has been slurred over by a growing concern over the needs of those millions of super exploited workers living and working at the edge of poverty, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the low-paid service workers of every nationality and color. One encouraging feature of American life today, is the growing consensus among decent people of every walk of life, conservative and liberal, religious and secular, an ecumenical agreement that something must be done to lift the poor out of their poverty so that they can enjoy our “American dream.”

However, transit workers fall outside that familiar circle of current interest. True, many NYC transit workers --perhaps most-- are members of racial minorities: blacks, Latinos. And, true, many others are foreign-born, like Toussaint himself. But they are not super-exploited victims, candidates for clucking sympathy. To an important degree they fought their way up, joined mainstream American, and share in that American dream. And more, they are determined to stay there, and defend what they have, and perhaps even improve it. And so, as part of mainstream America, they too face an acute problem: how to make that dream a reality and keep it so.

Ironically, as social forces gather on behalf of the poor, equally powerful forces pull in the opposite direction. There is a growing consensus that those who may once have achieved the dream, or even have lifted themselves substantially above the poverty line, must now reduce their expectations and reconcile themselves to a desiccated version of that dream. That is what is involved in all that talk about the unborn.

Workers in manufacturing and on the airlines are forced to submit to slashing wage cuts. Workers must pay for their own increases in wage rates by givebacks, that is, by accepting a decline in other working conditions. Future workers –already born and yet unborn!— face the diminished standards explicit in two tiers in wages, pensions, and insurance benefits. When these cuts are imposed on weakened unions in private industry, it can be viewed as part of the age-old conflict between capital and labor. But when the same disabilities are accepted, copied, and imposed by government upon public employees, we are faced with a newly emerging consensus on public policy: American workers, starting now and accelerating with the next generation, are supposed to submit to a downward pressure on the American standard of living.

The MTA demand that future workers pay more for their pensions was only a minor element in the final settlement, but it was reminder of larger social issues. In forthrightly rejecting that demand, New York transit workers made an important statement on behalf of others.

The Blue Eagle: reviving an old legal weapon to open a new road for labor

2005-11-02T00:36:00.000-05:00

The Blue Eagle at Work; democratic rights in the American work place, by Charles J. Morris. Cornell ILR Press. 310 pp. 2005.

Reviewed by Herman Benson

Law professor Clyde W. Summers inspired this book. Theodore J. St. Antoine, who writes the foreword, calls Summers “that imaginative legal thinker and doughty champion of workers’ rights.” In 1990, Summers wrote a short piece in the Chicago-Kent Law Review entitled, “Unions Without a Majority –a Black Hole.” His theme was taken up briefly and unobtrusively by a few legal scholars, notably Alan Hyde, apparently without making much of an impact at the time. But now, with this book-length treatment by law professor Charles Morris, Summers’s 15-year old law review piece commands attention.

Before writing this book, the author set out “to determine the accuracy of Professors Summers’s thesis.” After prodigious research, Morris was so convinced that he came up with a persuasive, closely reasoned work that is essentially a 230-page legal, moral, and practical brief in support of Summers, accompanied by 60 pages of bolstering citations and references in the form of notes.

The National Labor Relations Act, in section 9(a), provides that “representatives selected by a majority of employees in a bargaining unit shall be the exclusive representative for the purposes of collective bargaining of all employees in the bargaining unit.” But what about those situations where no majority union has been selected, or even where a majority of the employees have voted to reject any union representation? Where there is no majority representative, Summers insisted, the law clearly protects the right of unions which represent a minority to act on behalf of its own members, not to represent the majority but its own members. The “black hole,” he argued, was the failure of the labor movement to demand that right and to exercise it, and the failure of the National Labor Relations Board, in practice, to defend that right.

Summers wrote that in 1935 “Congress proclaimed basic rights of American workers in the sweeping words of section 7 of the Wagner Act” which reads:

“Employees shall have the right to self organization, to form join and assist labor organizations, to bargaining collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”

This provision is reinforced by Section 8(1) which declares, “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by section 7.”

In the absence of a majority union with exclusive bargaining rights for all employees, Summers argued, the law gives a union representing a minority the right to act for its members and to seek bargaining rights to represent its members, not the majority but only its own members. And he listed a whole series of practical measures that such a minority union could legally undertake to enforce its rights, including a strike, so long as it seeks to represent only its own members, not the majority.

What are the obligations of the employer? Summers wrote, “We have probably proceeded too long on the questionable assumption that the employer has no affirmative duty to bargaining with a non-majority union to now recognize that duty short of a statutory amendment.”

In at least one respect, however, author Morris exudes a conviction, even an enthusiasm, that goes beyond Summers. Morris agrees that new remedial legislation to impose upon employers the obligation of bargaining with minority unions is not likely. But he is convinced that the law’s requirements are already textually so clear, and the arguments for them so persuasive, that new legislation is unnecessary. He concedes that it will not be easy to overcome employer hostility or to reverse the NLRB’s presumption against minority union bargaining. But what he presents is no mere intellectual exercise. In his own words he offers what “is in effect, a procedural manual on how workers and unions can more efficiently reach the goal….”

In the early confrontations between unions and employers, Morris notes, it was common practice for unions to represent only their own members, especially when employers, resisting the union shop, sought to limit union power. In the early days of the New Deal, before the adoption of the Wagner Act, minority union bargaining was an accepted fact. Even after the adoption of the Wagner Act, the first union agreements with U.S. Steel and General Motors recognized the Auto Workers and the Steel Workers as representatives only of their members and no others. It was only later that the unions won the exclusive right to represent all employees. Morris emphasizes that today, just as the in the thirties, wining the right to minority representation can be the first step toward wining the majority.

He piles up the evidence: from the plain text of the law, from the record of Congressional intent, from U.S. obligations under international law. And even from the constitutional right to assembly.

It has taken years of neglect, he argues, for the experiences of the past to be forgotten and for the assumption to prevail that only majority unions are entitled to collective bargaining rights, an assumption that is not backed, he says, by any case law. To reestablish minority rights he maps out a multi- pronged practical program of action:

He proposes that a union representing only a minority demand recognition by an employer as representative only for it own members. When the employer refuses, as is likely, the union files an unfair labor practice with the NLRB.

If the NLRB rejects the complaint, as is also likely, the union pickets the employer demanding recognition, always only for its own members. If the NLRB, at the behest of the employer, finds the union guilty of an unfair labor practice, the union can raise the issue in federal court by challenging the NLRB ruling.

To bring pressure on the NLRB and to help bring the whole issue to public attention, the labor movement, he suggests, can file a petition with the NLRB, backed by a public campaign, asking it to adopt a rule, substantially as follows:

Where employees in an appropriate bargaining unit are not currently represented by a certified or recognized section 9(a) exclusive/majority labor organization, the employer, upon request, has a duty to bargain with a minority labor organization on behalf of the employees who are its members, but not on behalf of any other employees.

This book can be heavy stuff for the general reader. Much of it seems designed to persuade union leaders, labor lawyers, judges, and NLRB personnel. But it is an important book; these days, it can be a very important book. The labor movement is looking for new ways, new weapons to organize the unorganized. The SEIU has formed a Wal-Mart Workers Association to bring workers together in a hostile anti-union environment. The Communications Workers of America has organized groups of workers in non-union GE shops. Author Morris shows one way to break through the anti-union wall. He seems so committed to the aim that he might even be available to help.

(The above is an advance copy of a review to be published in “Religious Socialism.” For a sample copy of the periodical, write to One Maolis Street, Nahant, MA .01908)

A fine feud with no fighting!

2005-10-22T10:54:00.000-04:00

Seven unions, united in the Change to Win coalition, have finally formed their new federation to rival the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters had left the AFL-CIO long before; it is now a model of bureaucratic, non-democratic centralism. The Teamsters, Laborers, Service Employees, UNITE/HERE, and the Food Workers have just seceded. The United Farm Workers remains affiliated to both rival federations. Even before any battle has been engaged, the two camps already seem to have arrived at an unspoken armistice. Many on both sides, forced by their international affiliations to become partisans, seem shaken and dismayed by the split. Their reaction suggests what is the probable reality: that the new federation is on a fast track to nowhere.

Bob Proto, president of UNITE Local 35 and head of the New Haven, CT. Central Labor Council, told the New Haven Register, "What does the AFL-CIO split mean for New Haven? It means that the Central Labor Council and the Connecticut State Federation of Labor will form the glue to keep everyone together. We cannot allow national divisions to infect our local and state federations."

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers remains loyal to the AFL-CIO. Frank Halloran, president of its Connecticut Local 90 told the Meriden Record Journal that the split would not lead to dissension in the state. "Collectively in Connecticut," he said, "all affiliated unions of the building trades will continue to work together."

AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) seems saddened but not angry at the split. Gerald McEntee, AFSCME national president: "We are sorry to see SEIU and the Teamsters leave." Lillian Roberts, head of AFSCME's District Council 37 in New York: "There is always the possibility that we will eventually get back together." True, of course, but not quite a stirring call to a defensive battle.

The New York Times reported on September 20 that Stern’s Service Employees and AFSCME (hot for the AFL-CIO) signed a two-year no-raiding pact and agreed to a joint campaign to organize 25,000 homecare workers in California.

Edgar Romney, who is executive vice president of UNITE (another hot anti-AFL-CIO union) and who is also on the board of the NYC and NYS AFL-CIO federations, told the Times, “We hope that we will continue to find ways to work together." Brian McLaughlin, president of the NYC Central Labor Council, said that he met with the Teamsters, SEIU, UNITE, and Food Workers to discuss continued cooperation. Mike Fishman, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, told the Times, “We want to continue our relationship with everyone who wants to cooperate with us."

Brian Sabourin, conflicted as a member of the SEIU and president of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council in Worcester MA, told the Wall Street Journal, "I wish I didn't have to leave, because most of the work is done at the local level." Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU's United Healthcare Workers, which the Journal says represents 140,000 in California, said, "We fully intend to continue working together with unions both in and outside of the AFL-CIO."

John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, the very man who Change to Win tried to drive from office, proposes to issue special "solidarity charters" to locals of the seceding unions to allow them to remain in AFL-CIO state and city federations. The move was promptly endorsed by Dennis Hughes, president of the NYS Federation of Labor, as a means of preserving a "united front" of labor.

Compared to the bitter battles between the AFL and the CIO in the raucous thirties, this is a fine feud with no fighting.

On organizing

Change to Win zealots argue that they had to leave the AFL-CIO to organize those masses of poor underpaid workers. But the American Federation of Teachers, still in the AFL-CIO, is deep into a campaign to organize 52,000 family providers in New York State. No need to secede or to dump Sweeney!

The SEIU, free of Sweeney, announces a "new" approach in organizing Wal-Mart workers. It has formed a Wal-Mart Workers Association to campaign for employee rights even before seeking collective bargaining status. As a method of battling against a resolutely anti-union employer, it is a great idea. But it is not new. The Communications Workers of America instituted precisely such a campaign many months ago in non-union shops. No need to secede or dump Sweeney. The CWA has been outspoken in its rejection of the Change to Win line.

(Both the Teachers union in its drive to organize family care workers and the SEIU in organizing Wal-Mart workers have joined with ACORN, the national community organizing group.)

On political action

The Change to Win people insist on a change in political action policy. They argue that the AFL-CIO policy of clinging to the Democratic Party has won nothing for labor, that the Democrats simply take labor for granted and give nothing in return. And they intend to change all that. It is a criticism that might make sense if the critics were threatening a genuinely new independent policy, like supporting the Working Families Party of New York, or a New Party nationally, or Naderite Greens, or a Labor Party, or even a massive shift to liberal pro-labor Republicans. But so far, nothing like that. Quite the opposite.

In 2004, Stern's SEIU donated $500,000 to the Republican Governor’s' Association, not a hotbed of pro-union sentiment. Three Republican governors, by executive decree, illegalized collective bargaining for public employees in their states: Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri. A fourth, in Maryland, voided a pay increase that the union had won under his predecessor. The donation obviously went to the Republican Party's right wing. If that $500,000 political investment is a harbinger of what is to come from the Change Coalition, it indicates that they may hope to make union organizing more palatable to the Republican right by buying it off with contributions. No question. That, at least, would be a change, but not necessarily a change to win.

Why?

It is hard to know where the new federation is going and why it had to split off from the AFL-CIO to get there.

However, the course of at least one of the participants, James Hoffa, makes sense. Hoffa was propelled into the presidency of the Teamsters union mainly by the support of those who had tolerated the heavy infiltration of the union by organized crime figures who would not rest until they got rid of the reformer, Ron Carey. In recent month's, Ed Stier, who had been retained by the union, presumably to help keep it clean, accused Hoffa of blocking efforts to get rid of racketeers where they may still be ensconced in the union. By coming forward as a man who calls for the reform of the labor movement, Hoffa may succeed in shucking off the image of a man who could not or would not reform his own union.

AFL-CIO split poses the question: Must labor bureaucratize to organize?

2005-08-19T04:21:00.000-04:00

A discussion piece by Herman Benson from Union Democracy Review #157

Five unions may be on their way out of the AFL-CIO. Led by Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees, they promise —-or threaten—- to form a new federation that will seek to reorganize the labor movement and revive its dwindling strength. At this writing, the SEIU and the Teamsters, after boycotting the July AFL-CIO convention, have already announced their departure.

When John Sweeney took over as AFL-CIO president in 1995, he proposed to arrest labor’s decline by a massive program to organize the unorganized. He failed. Now, ten years later, Stern promises to arrest labor’s decline by a massive program to organize the unorganized, but under the aegis of his new federation.

What has Stern got that Sweeney lacked?

Sweeney hoped to inspire the labor movement to come forward as a force for social justice in America. Stern, in a kind of corporate spirit of mergers and consolidation in quest of a labor “market density,” would abolish unions he feels are too small and force them all into a few big unions, each guaranteed against competition by being assigned a monopoly grant in its “core” industry. Other unions might have to give way; but Stern’s SEIU and those that now support him would, apparently, be among the exempt lucky few to survive the major surgery. These remaining Leviathans would confront the corporate enemy in a mighty campaign to rebuild the labor movement. Stern calls for the drastic reorganization of the whole labor movement because without it, he insists, the labor movement is doomed to oblivion.

On the face of it, something is wrong here. The acute symptom of labor’s ailment is that only 8% of workers in private industry are organized. How can the fate of that 92% without unions depend upon rearranging the tiny band of 8% with unions? Doesn’t ring true! Actually, the kind of reorganization that the Stern forces demand suffers from two fatal flaws: For one thing, it will never take place. For another, it is irrelevant to the main difficulties that face the labor movement, difficulties that will not respond to technical rearrangement.

The partners in Stern’s Change to Win coalition don’t take their own professed principle of “core” reorganization seriously. Take the Laborers Union [LIUNA],which enjoys the affiliation of 50,000 (non-core!) postal workers. Because these are federal employees, some kind of crazy arrangement allows LIUNA to enroll some 400,000 other federal employees as “associates” in a federal health insurance plan. The LIUNA postal affiliate gets fees of some $16,000,000 a year of which $3,000,000 goes to the international. No sign of reorganizing that $16,000,000 out of LIUNA.

IBT organizes everything

Take the biggest Stern partner, the Teamsters union [IBT]. (The very notion that its president, James Hoffa, will be leading the charge for a brave new world of labor is mind-boggling. While admonishing other unions to stay at their core, he has just absorbed two railroad unions into the IBT (rails compete with trucking!) He has just taken in the Graphic Communications International Union, a printing union. Meanwhile, he holds on to the 20,000-member Local 237, the union of NYC housing authority workers, lawyers, and other public employees and to assorted factory and miscellaneous workers. Hoffa makes no bones about it: the Teamsters union is already a general union of disparate sectors; and he has no intention of changing it. In an interview with the Nation he was asked, “You organize in every industry. Are you going to stop doing that?” No equivocation in his blunt reply: “Absolutely not. We would not give up members….We have from A to Z in our union, airline pilots to zookeepers….We will always be a general union, and we are not giving up our right.”

HERE/UNITE, an enthusiastic Stern ally, is an amalgam of hotel-restaurant workers with remnants of a clothing union. Its merger has nothing to do with core organizational values and market shares; it is a marriage of convenience between actual members and the ample treasury of a sick union.

And finally the SEIU, the banner bearer of the move to strip, consolidate, and eliminate others, is itself a minor miscellaneous federation of labor with a self-selected range of jurisdiction that stretches from anywhere to everywhere. A good part of its growth consists of absorbing workers already organized, like Hospital Local 1199.

Physician, heal thyself! The notion that this motley collection could ever convince other unions to do precisely what they themselves will not and cannot do is ludicrous. It will never happen.

But in any event, even hypothetically, the Stern scheme is mostly irrelevant to the big, sometimes intractable, problems facing unions in today’s climate. An important and growing sector of American unionism is among federal and local government employees. President Bush by a stroke of the presidential pen wipes out unionism for tens of thousands of Homeland Security workers. By executive order, the governors of Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri eliminate collective bargaining for thousand of public employees. The NLRB destroys unions of graduate students. The labor movement can reorganize, organize, and reorganize again, dizzyingly enough to mollify even Stern, without noticeable dent on government unionism. Irrelevant! The issue here is obviously political.

Unionism is under intense pressure everywhere in mass manufacturing: auto, aircraft, steel, rubber, etc. weighed down by awesome international forces. Can anyone seriously suggest that their solution lies in internal union reorganization? For this sector of unionism the Stern camp is irrelevant.

Competing unions among the airlines? The Stern group seems to think they can remedy that divergence by fiat. It won’t work as long as workers still retain some freedom of choice. A more effective remedy might be to find out why workers are so dissatisfied with one union that they seek another. But in any event, that too is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Can anyone seriously contend that the solution to union problems in the airlines lies in re-organizational manipulation?

Stern and company keep hammering away at the need to organize that unorganized 92% outside union ranks; and in this, of course, they receive credit for focusing attention on what everyone knows. But how? All their talk about reorganizing is not simply irrelevant; it clouds over something at the heart of this one-sided discussion. (One-sided, because the Sweeney folks have had nothing consequential to say.) In the guise of a case for technical reorganization, the Stern forces are popularizing the concept of a super centralized, bureaucratized labor movement in which leaders at the top wield new authoritarian powers. They would bureaucratize to organize.

The reorganized carpenters union

The process is already completed and on full display in the Carpenters union which has already reorganized itself in the new spirit. The Carpenters union, which had left the AFL-CIO, is an important force in the new Stern coalition.

That vision of a highly centralized labor movement which restrains membership initiative in an authoritarian straightjacket is no mere bad dream, no reverse utopia. Carpenter locals have been reduced to impotent units. Merged into sprawling regional councils, locals are not permitted to pay any officers or staff members; their main source of income, the work tax, is taken over by the councils. Locals have lost all control over collective bargaining. Business agents are appointed from above. No member can hold any paid staff position in the council or any local without the permission of an all-powerful executive secretary treasurer. Local delegates, who elect the EST, cannot hold a paid union job without his or her endorsement. If that system were to be applied to public government no member of Congress or staff employee could be paid out of government funds, without permission of the President. It is reorganization carried out to the point of parody. The Stern camp validates that trend and encourages it. What the labor movement needs today is, not a further intensification of its bureaucratic tendencies, but democratization.

Any comparison, or identification, of the position of labor in 2005 with the state of the CIO in 1935 is completely off the mark. The CIO arose in a period of hope, of rising expectations, under the impulse of the New Deal coalition. Some workers flocked to the CIO in a spontaneous wave of strikes and sit-ins. Today in a defensive period of gloom and doom, the balance of political power in America is anti-union, blocking the way to a more just society.

With some 16,000,000 members, most in the AFL-CIO, who with their families make up perhaps 25% of America, the labor movement still constitutes a formidable social and political force capable of changing that balance of power. The trouble is that the AFL-CIO cannot convince almost half of its own membership, above all its white working class membership, to follow its political lead. They couldn’t get them to follow their lead in the 2004 Democratic primaries, or to defeat Schwarzenegger in California, or Bush in 2004. And it was not for lack of trying. The AFL-CIO campaign in the 2004 elections was one of the greatest outpourings of electoral activity ever, that’s the problem. How can you solve this problem by recruiting more members, when you can’t convince half of those you already have?

The stalemate in America

Despite the potential people power still at their disposal and despite the apparent attractiveness of their formal stance on issues, the leaders of our labor movement have not been able to break the stalemate in America. One reason, one very important reason, the decisive reason, is that they have been unable to bring to bear the power of that army of 16,000,000. They can activate their staff cadres; they can sometimes bring an impressive portion of their already-convinced membership to the polls. But they have been unable to inspire the overwhelming bulk of their membership and mobilize them as a force for social justice, because they have failed to imbue them with a deep conviction that this movement belongs to them.

Too many leaders on top run the works with contempt for the members below. As a citizen of the United States, you can freely, and without fear, criticize the president all you want. But in wide sections of the labor movement, especially in the building trades, if you criticize your business manager, your family suffers because you can’t work.

It is time to give union democracy a chance. Defend a member’s right to work in dignity and self-respect, not only at the job site, but in the union hall. Encourage them to run for office. The labor movement has no poll tax but it does impose niggling restrictions on the right to run. Let them know their legal rights. Guarantee fair elections, the right to elect stewards and vote on contracts in honest referendums. Democratize the labor movement and it can win the respect of its membership and the moral right to lead them in politics. As Walter Reuther put it: It is not enough to organize the unorganized; we must unionize the organized. Convince members of the justice of the cause, and they will convince the nation.

Despite their professions of good intentions, their apparent determination to devote time and money to organize the unorganized, the Stern followers, by bureaucratizing the labor movement, lead it precisely in the wrong directions and undercut their own efforts.

The unions in Stern’s Change to Win are an odd coupling. Of the four unions identified over the years as most heavily infiltrated by organized crime, three found their way into the new movement: Teamsters, Laborers, and Hotel. (The fourth, the International Longshoremen’s Association, not involved these events, faces a federal RICO suit.)

Total collapse of self-reform

The Teamsters union can report the total collapse of its touted self-reform program. Ed Stier, who IBT President Hoffa retained to devise an anti-corruption program, now charges that Hoffa is part of the problem, and that the union is unwilling or unable to investigate suspicions of organized crime infiltration in Chicago. The IBT, a museum of swollen multiple salaries, supported Stern’s demand that the AFL-CIO give massive per capita tax relief to its affiliates. Will the IBT use the windfall for organizing? To ask is to wonder.

Terrence O’Sullivan, who took over as Laborers president; and John Wilhelm who became Hotel union president, both have personal reputations as clean progressive union leaders. But their rise to power was not the outcome of any organized reform movement in their unions. They came out of the old union regimes; their accession to power was made possible only by the action of law enforcement authorities and by federal monitorship over their affairs. Cleansing at the top does not automatically bring change below. (The Laborers, although part of the Stern coalition, says it will not split off from the AFL-CIO. After years of government oversight, it still faces organized crime problems in New York-New Jersey.) Before its partners deserved credence as a “Change to Win” coalition, they would have to change themselves; some simply to reorganize; others would have to reorganize and reform.

One legitimate difference separates what the two camps say. (What they actually will do remains to be seen.) Stern says that labor must organize in order to strengthen its political power. Sweeney says that labor must strengthen its political power in order to organize. Which comes first the chicken or the egg? The answer can hardly justify splitting the federation.

Talk at AFSCME Local 1930

2005-08-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

Herman Benson spoke at a book party hosted by AFSCME Local 1930. Ken Nash, of Building Bridges, the community-labor report on WBAI radio in NYC, recorded the talk and aired these excerpts. (http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=13402)

(The interview with Huck and Konopacki that follows is a welcome break from somber musings on the AFL-CIO split.)

A glimpse at labor’s projected future

2005-06-08T09:25:00.000-04:00

(from the May June edition of Union Democracy Review)

Shall the Hotel union get a guaranteed monopoly over organizing workers at Indian tribe casinos in California? A dispute over that question is a recent spin-off from the Great Debate over labor’s future.

To lift that fog of enforced false unanimity that regularly settles over the labor movement like morning mist in the valley, almost any kind of a controversy over policy would be welcome. In 1995, John Sweeney initiated a debate by campaigning against Lane Kirkland and Tom Donahue; now, poetic justice, it’s Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, against Sweeney. He wants to rearrange the AFL-CIO into a few giant unions, each with a closely defined jurisdiction protected from competition from all others. Ironically, he is deploying all the tools of democracy to advance an authoritarian, super-centralized, conception of the labor movement. From the top, the AFL-CIO would issue patents to the big union monopolies, and members would be lined up wherever they were assigned. No room for small nations here; imperialist powers take over the world.

We are granted an advance glimpse into the Stern world of tomorrow by a seemingly minor jurisdictional dispute over who has the right to organize workers at Indian tribes’ gambling casinos in California. The UNITE-HERE Employees union, a close Stern ally, has gone to court to cut out the Communications Workers of America.

According to the New York Times, UNITE-HERE argues that it was granted exclusive jurisdiction by the AFL-CIO over the California casinos. It is willing to overlook the two casinos already organized by the CWA. It claims, however, that the CWA had agreed to respect the UNITE-HERE license to control all the others. When the CWA campaigned to organize a third casino, UNITE-HERE sued in court for breach of contract. The issues will be settled, most likely after tedious proceedings in court and at the AFL-CIO. What is most significant, however, is the Stern ally’s claim that their AFL-CIO certificate of exclusive jurisdiction gives them rights over workers whom they may not yet have even approached. No one has consulted casino workers on the subject.

The reliance on parceling out exclusive jurisdiction takes us back 70 years before the rise of the CIO. It was the CIO that made the principle obsolete when it successfully resisted the AFL-backed claims of the craft unions to ownership of all skilled workers. And once the CIO won its battle, the claim to sanctified jurisdiction collapsed. Under pressure from an expanding CIO, the AFL was transformed into an assemblage of industrial-type unions as they all fought to organize everyone. The great days of labor’s advance came when they all competed freely everywhere to win over the allegiance of dues-payers. The Stern family would reassert a principle that frustrates workers’ choice and turns them into a traded commodity. If labor leaders are compelled to compete for the hearts of workers, it makes unions more responsive to the membership and strengthens the labor movement.

(Here, we’re reminded of how zealous fans of jurisdictional property rights defend the AFL-CIO no-raiding pact. “Why should we compete for the same workers?” they ask, “When we take 50,000 from you, and then you take 50,000 from us, there is lots of trouble but a net gain of zero for the labor movement.” It is a perfect argument from the standpoint of officials who want a simpler life for themselves. But not from the standpoint of union members. When those 100,000 move from one union to another, they are liberated from a leadership they do not want and are free to seek another.)

How the Sweeney camp ignores its own first principle

2005-05-10T13:29:00.000-04:00

“… one thing is clear: debate about the most optimal structure for the labor movement in the years ahead has already made the issue of union democracy central.” Joseph A. McCartin in Dissent, Winter 2005.

The Sweeney forces have ratcheted up the Great Debate on labor’s future with 28-pages of recommendations based upon a summary of what’s been done in the last 10 years. As a series of practical proposals it seems impressive: beefed up political action and organization, coordination and concentration of efforts among unions, voluntary mergers, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. And the ten-year record, reveals an intensification of effort, if not always of results.

In the last two presidential elections, labor turned out extraordinary active support on behalf of the losing Democratic candidates. The reality is summed up by a headline in the New York Teacher: “Unions defeated at their best in election.” You can’t do better than your best. It seems obvious that a renewing, refurbishing, and rearrangement of all that went before is unlikely to bring speedy results. Come Stern, come Sweeney, the prospect is for a long-term, slogging campaign.

Read Harold Meyerson and others in the recent issue of Dissent and Thomas Frank in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” They argue persuasively what we should already know: the Democratic party is losing the white working class to the Republicans.

When we realize that the labor movement, despite its best efforts, has proven unable to deliver the white working class, it becomes clear that unions face a problem not only with government and management but with their own dues-payers. Before unions can win over the nation, they must first win over the overwhelming majority of their own membership.

This is one problem that cannot be solved by organizing the unorganized. How can you convince those already in unions to follow your political lead by taking in new members? Many of those who are preoccupied with organizing the unorganized seem to be convinced that a bigger labor movement will frighten its adversaries and/or its timid friends into falling in line. But even after organizing workers, you must still win them over politically. As Walter Reuther put it: It’s not enough to organize the unorganized; we must unionize the organized.

Here lies the importance of internal union democracy. Union democracy is the means of convincing organized workers that unions truly belong to them and not just to the officials, that unions will defend their right to justice and dignity at the workplace and in the union hall and that the labor movement, therefore, deserves respect when it proposes to lead them politically.

You will say: “There you go again, Playing that same old AUD one note” Not at all, I got it from the Sweeney team. In their latest declaration, the administration team informs us that “He [Sweeney] insisted that any and all ideas and proposals be guided by three basic principles.” And here is the first, the very first, principle: “Respect for the democratic rights of union members.” Here, at least, he veers sharply from Stern, who disparages those who talk about union democracy. What Sweeney omits, however, is any proposal, or even any hint of one, that would strengthen union democracy, not one. Here are some of the practices that must be corrected to make democracy a robust reality throughout the labor movement:

In every case that has come before the court involving internal union democracy, unions have been on the wrong side, defending restriction of workers rights in their unions.
They have defended blacklisting of critics in the construction trades. Where unscrupulous, highhanded union officials control job referrals, especially in construction, independent–minded workers are starved out and favoritism becomes a device for building an authoritarian political machine.
Extreme meeting attendance rules are used to disqualify 95% of members from running for office. Excessive continuous good standing requirements disqualify potential rivals; but these rules are waived to allow politically appointed trustees to become candidates.
Control over union trial and disciplinary machinery permit incumbents to fine, suspend, expel, and disqualify opponents. Control over election machinery permits them to manipulate the outcome of elections, dues referendums, and contract ratification
Contracts are imposed without membership ratification.
Some big international union exercise the right to bypass local trial procedure and discipline their critics at will.
Unions have unanimously resisted the provisions of federal law which require unions to inform members of the rights in their unions.

There are unions which do respect the democratic rights of their members. But these practices are widespread enough, even when they violate the law, to cry out for correction. Until the Sweeney folks address some of these problems, we can only shrug sadly at their professed concern for union democracy.

Rebels -- a review by Gene Carroll and an exchange with Paul Buhle, from New Politics

2005-03-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

"WHILE THE LABOR MOVEMENT in the United States is a beacon for democracy, too often it fails as a beacon of democracy. Herman Benson makes this clear in his remarkable personal memoir, Rebels, Reformers and Racketeers: How Insurgents Transformed the Labor Movement.

"In this account of a lifetime of support for the advancement of democracy inside the house of labor, you'll find the better-known characters and their stories of labor misdeeds, such as United Mine Workers President Tony Boyle and the coal miner he had murdered for challenging him, Jock Yablonski. But the compelling stories of lesser knowns who took on crooked unions, like Dow Wilson and Lloyd Green of the San Francisco Brotherhood of Painters -- both of whom were murdered for their courageous efforts -- are a treasure trove of historical narrative about union politics, human frailties, and true grit that form the largely untold dark drama of U.S. labor history of the last half century."

-- From the review by Gene Carroll, director of the Union Leadership Program at Cornell University's New York State School of Industrial & Labor Relations in New York City

"ANYTHING HERMAN BENSON WRITES on the labor movement is provocative and useful for discussion -- even if on occasion, in my view, it also happens to be somewhat skewed. When organized labor faces the prospect of a turning point as potentially large and also as disappointing as that of ten years ago, the implications loom before all of us.

"Benson's "The New Unity Partnership: Sweeney Critics Would Bureaucratize to Organize" (NP 37) reflects on the scant progress made since the passing of the Meany/ Kirkland/Shanker era of failure and disgrace. He correctly observes that organized labor has fewer members and not more, contrary to oft-repeated hopes and would-be rallying slogans. In June, UNITE and HERE carried through the merger of what is now to be the most vigorous and most progressive corner of American labor with the non-acronymic name, UNITE HERE. By Benson's reading, shared with many long-running reformers, size counts, but bigger (bargaining units, that is) may not be better and may very well be worse."

--From Paul Buhle's response to Herman Benson's "The New Unity Partnership: Sweeney Critics would bureaucratize to organize"

"IT IS DIFFICULT TO KNOW just what Paul Buhle is driving at; it's even more difficult to figure out what relevance his remarks have to what I wrote in New Politics about the undemocratic leanings of the New Unity Partnership. As best as I can make out, what he intends to say is this: Because the advocates of the New Unity Partnership seem to be fine people, and because they are zealous about organizing the unorganized, and because they may harbor views on American foreign policy akin to his own, they should be immune from criticism even though they seem convinced that union democracy is an impediment to organizing and even though they think it necessary to reorganize the labor movement in an authoritarian straightjacket to achieve their worthy ends. In any event, if he feels that my comments that follow here are off base, it is simply that I have trouble reading him in any other way."

--From Benson's reply to Buhle

See the full articles at http://www.newpol.org/

(posted by Matt Noyes)

No more NUP

2005-01-25T11:26:00.000-05:00

The NUP has voted to dissolve. Obviously the group abandoned all hope of winning a majority within the AFL-CIO and saw no future in splitting away from it. The NUP sponsors take credit for 1) having opened a discussion of labor’s future, and 2) apparently having won a consensus that internationals will receive a partial rebate of their per capita tax payments to the AFL-CIO.

It seems like a grand anticlimax. John Sweeney started the discussion nine years ago. The NUP’s big point was that discussion was not enough. They wanted action. Now they are happy to have had a discussion. The difference between their discussion and Sweeney’s is that his inspired enthusiasm and new public support. Theirs seems to have fallen flat. They began calling for a crusade to reorganize the world of labor. Now they take consolation in a tax cut.

Old article: The New Unity Partnership, Sweeney Critics would bureaucratize to organize.

2005-01-24T04:21:00.000-05:00

The NUP is formally history, but its spirit goes marching on. See this longer version of a piece originally published in Union Democracy Review. See also the comment by Paul Buhle and Benson's response.

(posted by Matt Noyes)

New article -- Focusing the debate in the AFL-CIO: bureaucracy vs democracy

2005-01-13T06:02:00.000-05:00

From Herman Benson's latest article, available on the AUD website: focusing the debate.

What to do? The discussion escalates. Website and internet exchanges, joint declarations, public debates, long essays in periodicals, and personal manifestos bring a rich flurry of proposals and counter-proposals. Many are reasonably familiar; some contradict others: beef up political action, encourage the initiative of central labor councils, put them under international control, united union action around selected key organizing targets, more money and manpower to organize the unorganized, strike funds, global unionism, count on the power of big union leaders on top, encourage the locals and the rank and file down below, preserve the right of workers to unions of their choice, eliminate small unions and force workers into a few big unions.

The discussion becomes heated, edgy, bitter. There's even talk of a possible split in the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters, still in the NUP, actually secede from the AFL-CIO. What's going on here? The source of the mounting hostility is not in the question posed by the NUP but in the basic quality of its proposed answer, in the dominant bureaucratic strain that runs through its proposals.

[Your Scheme Here]

2004-12-15T06:48:00.000-05:00

If you want to propose a scheme for saving the labor movement, stand in line. UNITE is there before you with a plan which begins by sequestering a vanishing clothing union into a rising hotel union. The Carpenters are ahead of you with their version: obliterating the collective bargaining rights of members and locals and turning authoritarian powers over to a small group of regional fuehrers.

Now come the Teamster leaders with their own idea. It must be important because it was highlighted in the New York Times on what must have been a slow day for labor news. Teamster leaders are unlikely candidates for showing the way; they can’t even keep their own union free of racketeers. RISE, the Teamster self-reform effort, fell apart when Ed Stier, its sponsor, charged that the union administration was blocking his efforts to take action against crooks.

The Teamsters want the AFL-CIO to refund to the internationals half of their per capita payments. Now there’s a proposal that’s bound to be popular. It has all the persuasive power of Bush’s plan to reduce taxes. Give the Teamsters, and some other union leaders, more money and they know what to do with it. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union offers statistics to show that as more money comes in as dues, it vanishes into the the double-dipping salaries of officials who have been generously paid.

TDU wants money that is already available to be directed into organizing, not diverted into higher pay and perquisites. There’s a plan. It won’t save the labor movement. But it has this virtue: it can’t hurt. It might even help.

Labor's newest savior

2004-10-14T20:37:00.000-04:00

Andy Stern can’t complain about press coverage of his campaign to dump John Sweeney. The Wall Street Journal says he “is shaking up the labor movement.” The New York Times, in a widely reprinted story, reports that he “has called for overhauling the AFL-CIO.” Business Week, in a major front page feature story, as close to a puff piece as you can get, asks ---really suggests --- “Can This Man Save Labor?” Dennis Rivera was so impressed with the BW story that he rushed copies to all members of the executive council of Health and Human Services Local 1119.

Ten years ago, running against Lane Kirkland and Tom Donahue, John Sweeney had issued the same kind of trumpet call. But there was one big difference. At that time, Sweeney’s campaign, and later victory, unleashed a gush of enthusiastic acclaim from the world of independent-minded intellectuals and liberal academics. Remember? The inspired declaration of 41 prominent writers calling for a new “alliance” of intellectuals with labor. Then the overflow crowds at “teach-ins” at all those universities. Then the formation of a new organization, SAWSJ, the Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice. (If, like me, you joined up, you may, like me, wonder: what ever became of it?)

Now Stern promises even more than Sweeney, yet there is no corresponding resounding echo from the wide world. Why? For one thing, they could be crying wolf. But there are more valid grounds for a healthy skepticism. Stern’s opening volley was sponsored by a group of five labor leaders, including himself, united in what they call the New Unity Partnership. One is Douglas McCarron, the Carpenters president, who has invented the very model of an ultra-authoritarian, centralized union which deprives members of their rights and turns power over to all-powerful district council heads whose authority derives from their unchecked right to hire and fire any paid staffer, local or district. The NUP would refashion the labor movement in McCarron’s spirit, which is why he is with the NUP even though he has left the AFL-CIO. Another NUP sponsor is Bruce Raynor, formerly president of the former UNITE. His union has disintegrated into the Hotel Union. Not a persuasive reference for someone who proposes to advise others on how to do it right.

The other two are John Wilhelm of the Hotel Union and Terrence O’Sullivan of the Laborers. Now both these unions were, for decades, on anybody’s top list of unions dominated by organized crime. That is not to say that O’Sullivan or Wilhelm are tainted. Not at all. They both are reputed to be decent fellows, able, and progressive. We will surely be cheered up in the future as their unions, under their firm direction, adopt the required inspiring resolutions on the proper subjects. However, neither led any revolt against their racket-infiltrated top officialdom. In fact they both were part of the dominant administration and emerged out of it into top leadership only under the protective arm of federal intervention. After Ed Hanley, Hotel president, was forced out of the union on corruption charges, he was allowed to retire with an annual pension of $350,000. In 1999, after Wilhelm took over, he named the union’s hall after Hanley. It would be imprudent to believe that these unions, apparently cleaned at the top, are refurbished below.

It is not a matter or moralizing over unpleasant facts. We all know the practical compromises and adjustments that life sometimes forces upon those in public life. You don’t have to be a saint to be a union leader; some say you can’t be.

If they really put their minds and their efforts and their money into it, the sponsors of the New Unity Partnership are bound to make some progress in organizing the unorganized in their selected fields. They can shake up the labor movement, which is all to the good. But can these leaders, in these unions, guided by their ideology of authoritarian control inspire a revitalization of the labor movement? Can they “save” the labor movement? Think again! We don’t need saints, but we do need union democrats.

Find more on the NUP at http://www.uniondemocracy.org/UDR/UDRhome.htm.

Before the Blog

2004-09-20T03:22:00.000-04:00

Before the blog there was the book:

Herman Benson's new book, Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers: how insurgents transformed the labor movement, is now available from AUD. You can read an excerpt and the full table of contents, and find other books and articles by Herman Benson.

To order: http://www.uniondemocracy.org/Resources/resourcehome.htm.