I would like to thank Calitics for hosting this debate about the future of workers in this country.
I have worked along side Sal Rosselli, the president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (UHW-W) for 25 years, starting when both of us worked on staff for SEIU Local 250 (which is now called UHW-W). I was the organizing director and he worked in the East Bay as a union representative.
I also worked closely with him when I was in charge of SEIU's hospital organizing campaign in Southern California from 1999 to 2004 that ultimately resulted in 26,000 workers becoming members of UHW and gaining major improvements in pay and benefits.
So I am surprised by his recent actions. He has been attacking the democratic decisions made jointly by the huge majority of SEIU local unions across the country. In fact, he recently resigned from the SEIU Executive Committee, saying he could no longer abide by decisions made by "simple majorities" of elected SEIU leaders.
(This has been an interesting discussion (when people are not flaming each other), so let's keep it civil. - promoted by Julia Rosen)
Thanks to Brian for his post on the blogger discussion with SEIU's Andy Stern and for opening this discussion. I'm new to the Calitics community and the new UHW Online Communications Specialist.
As a first contribution to this discussion, I thought it would be helpful to share the broad background of our dispute with SEIU, and the outlines of a few of the lessons we've learned in the course of many campaigns to build our union. Through focused efforts to improve the lives of healthcare workers and the people we serve, UHW has developed a model of growth through strength that at the same time achieves the goal of growth for strength.
For the first two terms of Andy Stern's presidency, from 1996 to 2004 and beyond through the initial days of Change to Win, UHW and SEIU shared vision of increasing union membership and improving workers' lives based on building the capacity of strong local unions, maximizing member partcipation in organizing and politics, coordinating our strength across entire industries through democratic structures of accountability to rank and file union members.
However, in recent years, SEIU's priority of growth has lost its qualitative dimension. It is now an act of blasphemy to question what kind of growth makes sense or what purpose growth should serve or what role the informed consent and active participation of workers should have in growth. It is expected that local leaders accept the gospel of growth for growth's sake and accept the quickest short cuts possible to achieve it, even when that means putting employers agendas ahead of workers' aspirations, taking decisions out of workers' hands, and limiting workers' rights to advocate for themselves and for the public interest, both now and in the future.
Just before the holiday break in December, the Courage Campaign hosted a conference call with several California bloggers and Sal Rosselli, head of United Healthcare Workers-West, and other members of the reform coalition to discuss the health care reform bill, ABX1 1, that is still pending in the legislature. The call spawned a follow-up discussion between some of the participants and Sal Rosselli over e-mail, which the participants (including Sal) wanted to post here.
Specific issues discussed include the relationship of UHW and other union leaders in the health care reform coalition to their rank-and-file, the financing of the ABX1 1 proposal, the political landscape against which this happens, and the relationship of ABX1 1 to single-payer care.
It's my hope that the conversation Sal was gracious enough to help initiate can be continued here, with input from others on Calitics and in the netroots. Read what we've all said, and then weigh in with your own thoughts. These kinds of discussions between progressives are essential to the construction of a better California, even when - especially when - we have disagreements on policies. Thanks to Sal Rosselli for his continued engagement with us, and to the Courage Campaign for initiating this discussion.
Update: So there's another story about this in Harper's Blog:
Yet Stern is currently presiding over what some within the union describe as a power grab, and one that could squelch opposition to some controversial deals he and his allies have supported (like a provision, ultimately shot down by internal opposition, that would have imposed a seven-year ban on strikes by Tenet Healthcare union employees). On Friday morning Stern is seeking to push through a deal that would severely weaken his chief critic inside the SEIU, in the name of “restructuring.”
“Stern is essentially seeking to take a public entity private,” one person familiar with the situation told me.
The chief battleground is California, where SEIU has around 650,000 members, 40 percent of its total membership. Back in 2004 there were 38 SEIU locals in California but that number was subsequently reduced to 20. This has occurred because in 2006 Stern and his allies pushed through a statewide reorganization that merged numerous locals into bigger entities, whose membership, critics say, was gerrymandered. Stern then handpicked the leaders at the newly formed unions, installing close allies as officers.
I guess to some extent, I was sucked into the frame of the LA Times story, that this was some profound change in SEIU's health care policy. And while there might be some long term impact on health policy here, I think it might require a keener eye than my own to see really what this is all about. This could be about something more basic about what organized labor is, what their goals are, how to build a strong union. There's most assuredly some personality and ego issues involved, but the timing of this potential putsch seems a bit sketchy.
Updated: I should also link to this SF Weekly article about some of the differences between the two leaders here, just as background if you care to learn more. Ok, back to your regularly scheduled update.
This has been a crazy "YEAR OF HEALTHCARE REFORM," hasn't it? The Governor's Plan doesn't even get a hearing until the special session. The best solution, SB 840, Sen. Kuehl's single payer bill, doesn't get very far because everybody's aware of the veto that would rain down upon it like a South Pacific typhoon. The Assembly Dems and the Senate Dems eventually formed a comprimise plan at the end of the session only to see it get vetoed by the Governor. And now, while the Governor has moved on some important issues, like the lottery as a funding source, and changing his employer fee from 4% to 6%, an actual deal could yet elude us.
And even when (and if) we actually get a deal, because of the funding provisions, we still have to go to the ballot. And now, there's issues in labor. Exciting, huh?
I'm on my cell, so this will be a short post. And I point you to the Courage Campaign blog for more detailed coverage. But what I want to say right now is that this is clearly an organization that is growing and beginning to understand how important the bridges between labor and bloggers really are. I'll post more when I get a chance.
UPDATE: I'm back at home now, so I wanted to post this picture of SEIU-UHW president Sal Roselli. Elliott Petty of Courage Campaign and I had a few minutes to sit down with him. He had some really great ideas on how to connect labor with new constituencies and the internet. I'll get a much broader post on this up on Monday.
