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As I read Andy Stern's rather verbose diatribe entitled "Just Us" or "Justice for All" I couldn't help think of how eerily reminiscent Stern's thought process was to the assertion put forward by President George Bush to the world leaders at large that "You're either with us or you're against us".
Mr. Stern would like us to believe that there are only two distinct questions before us with respect to the direction the SEIU and the Labor Movement can move. The first is to "pursue" what he has characterized as the "Just Us" unionism that seeks only to protect and strengthen current organized workers at the expense of those workers who also would benefit from union membership. Or, as he purports to champion, do we pursue the "Justice for All" approach that "focuses on building a broader movement that improves the living standards and working conditions for all those who have no union...?"
This argument is as flawed and devoid of a broader thought process as President Bush's argument for unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation was. Like President Bush, Mr. Stern streamlines the issues before us into an overly simplistic choice of good versus evil.
He states that, "This is not an intellectual exercise." On that I can and do agree. I believe very little intellectual exercise on the part of Mr. Stern was performed before presenting his arguments; otherwise a more detailed and varied list of options might have been presented.
The truth is we do not, as Mr. Stern suggests, have two separate choices before us. In reality, Mr. Stern is excising current members from a fair and democratic process in self-determination while championing a position that allows for an employer friendly way of organizing workers. He as much as says so in the following excerpts from his position paper:
"true worker democracy cannot exist until the 90 percent of workers in America who have no voice gain a union."
This statement clearly establishes Mr. Stern's view that we do not currently have a legitimate form of democracy within SEIU and therefore his actions attempting to crush the current reform movement are somehow justified.
What Mr. Stern is attempting to accomplish would be the equivalent of taking away every citizens right to vote until everyone over the age of 18 has registered to vote. The 90 percent worker threshold he defines as the benchmark for a "true worker democracy" gives him and other like-minded leaders an indefinite time period in which to further degrade member governance and oversight. Stern goes on to argue that:
"Was America a true democracy when women or African Americans had no vote
and more than half the population was excluded from the process?"
While it is irrefutable that the history of our democracy was morally repugnant in that it excluded African Americans and women, our country did not evolve to a more fair democracy (true or otherwise) by encroaching on the rights of those who already possessed the freedom to vote. Quite the contrary, our democracy evolved and continues to evolve today by becoming more inclusive in nature. Democracy by its very nature must expand and evolve to survive. Furthermore, African Americans and Women didn't wake up one morning with the right to vote. There was a long and bloody struggle that lead America to reform its position on voting rights.
And the struggle for social equality continues today. We have a female and African American running for the highest office in the land and yet nobody would fool them selves into believing that if either one is elected to the Presidency that we could declare that we have leveled the socio-economic playing field for women and African Americans or any other group of Americans. But what we can claim is that by including more and more people into the process we come that much closer to a "true democracy".
Unfortunately under the leadership of Mr. Stern SEIU is moving further and further away from this model of inclusiveness and more towards an Oligarchy in which he directs. Many will say we are already there as more and more union locals are consolidated into larger ones and power is wrested from members by the appointed few.
In reality, Stern's arguments are, at best, a thinly veiled disguise to tie the SEIU-UHW West member driven reform movement and its platform for change within the SEIU to a long ago abandoned union practice of protecting current union members at the expense of non-union workers, when in fact the members who seek reform are doing the exact opposite.
One needs only to compare the SEIU's "Justice for All" proposals, which lack any substantive details, to the SEIU-UHW West's member driven "Platform For Change" which outlines in detail its vision for member rights and democracy, but also has a clear and ambitious vision for bringing more workers into the ranks of the organized.
Conversely the SEIU's "Justice for All", in reality, is an oxymoron. Its narrow focus of emphasizing organizing the unorganized at the expense of current members and member democracy is two dimensional, lacks vision, creativity, and underestimates the will and commitment of SEIU's current members.
It presupposes that there can only be one focused approach to growing our union strength; and that put simply is that we can't do both organizing and strengthening current member contracts.
That is a position of weakness and the end result, no matter how many members are brought into SEIU, will create a national employer union that addresses very little of the workers concerns and pacifies employer fears over any employee voice in the workplace.
The greatest proponents of having a union in the workplace are the current members who have set the high standards they enjoy and, unfortunately, have become the focus of criticism by the SEIU under the leadership of Mr. Stern for wanting to enjoy the fruits of their labor and their successes. Mr. Stern has stated that current members of SEIU-UHW West are only concerned with "polishing their apple". This defies logic as SEIU-UHW West members have actively participated, often on their free time, in organizing efforts at the national level that have helped to secure union representation for workers in Florida, Texas, Nevada and other states including active campaigns in Colorado. Additionally, millions of dollars from dues goes directly to SEIU for national organizing campaigns.
On top of that, even with SEIU's relentless attacks against UHW West, UHW West continues to organize workers in California with close to 2,000 healthcare workers in 4 different elections from Southern California to Northern California voting overwhelmingly to join UHW West in the last 2 ½ weeks alone.
UHW West may in fact be polishing apples. They may even be sinking their teeth deep into them and savoring the sweet juice of success, but they are also telling other workers about those apples and helping them to sow their own seeds that they too may enjoy the fruits of their labor and that is truly "Justice for All". The vision that Mr. Stern has, that continues to shrink the power and decision making into the hands of a very few, is not "Justice for All". Under close scrutiny it is really "Justice for All of us here in D.C."
Michael Rivera, R.C.P.
Perinatal-Pediatric Specialist
Executive Board Vice-President SEIU-UHW West
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