>From the Op-Ed Page of The Boston Globe, Jan. 3, 2005
Is Labor's Mid-Life Crisis Leading To An SEIU Divorce?
By Steve Early As it nears age 50, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is having a "mid-life crisis."
Despite declining membership and recent political setbacks, labor officials had planned to spend this year celebrating the golden anniversary of the 1955 merger between the AFL and CIO. That event ended two decades of conflict between craft and industrial unions, during the era of labor's greatest growth and influence.
Now, the labor movement faces renewed divisions and the possible defection of its largest affiliate. Locally, the threatened departure of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) could deprive the Massachusetts AFL-CIO of 80,000 members.
SEIU has been the driving force behind a dissident group called the New Unity Partnership (NUP). NUP leaders are questioning whether the AFL-CIO, as currently structured, is capable of responding to the challenges facing labor today. In November, SEIU President Andy Stern unveiled a controversial plan to transform the AFL-CIO based on SEIU's own blueprint for "new strength and unity." If there's not a positive response by early March--when the federation's executive council meets in Las Vegas-- Stern warned that 1.6 million member SEIU might decide to quit.
As a local activist and, later, national organizing director, 54-year old Stern helped SEIU develop from a building service union into one that now represents hundreds of thousands of public and health care workers as well. When Stern's predecessor, John Sweeney, left to become president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, SEIU became the most influential force behind new federation programs involving political action and organizing.
Ten years after the AFL-CIO's old leadership was ousted, Sweeney finds himself under fire--from Stern and his main ally, HERE-UNITE (the recently amalgamated garment workers and hotel and restaurant employees unions). Other NUP affiliates include the more conservative Laborer's International Union and the Carpenters, which has already dropped out of the AFL-CIO. According to the NUP, American workers won't be able to go on the offensive again--like they did in the 1930's--until their existing unions are consolidated into 10 or 15 much larger entities, each with more resources and less overlapping jurisdiction. "Workers divided into 61 unions can never tackle global corporations," claims NUP strategist Bruce Raynor, general president of HERE-UNITE.
Sweeney's defenders point out that more national union mergers have been occurring --on a voluntarily basis--and that few AFL-CIO affiliates will agree to give federation leaders the new powers necessary to mandate them. To re-organize SEIU members into huge, multi-state bodies, Stern has put nearly 14% of his own local unions under trusteeship--a type of headquarters control that replaces elected officers with appointed staffers. In some cases, this action was necessary to eliminate corruption. But the scale of SEIU's local take-overs is now raising concern, both inside and outside the union. Even at the peak of a court-ordered clean-up of the Teamsters, no more than 10% of its locals were trusteed in the early 1990s--and this was in a union sued by the Justice Department for being a "racketeering enterprise!"
SEIU's relentless internal restructuring--plus unpopular dues increases--has triggered a backlash. Twenty thousand members defected in Ontario after a dispute about democracy and local autonomy. In August, 2,000 San Francisco janitors--who didn't want to be in a state-wide local--replaced SEIU with the United Service Workers for Democracy, an independent union. Rhode Island SEIU members recently disaffiliated for similar reasons. Meanwhile, SEIU Local 615 in Boston just narrowly survived an election challenge by unhappy janitors at MIT.
If SEIU quits the AFL-CIO, this breakaway trend could take new forms. Right now, all labor federation affiliates, including SEIU, are bound by "no-raiding" rules. These prevent dissatisfied workers from switching from one AFL-CIO union to another, leaving only the option of "going independent" or abandoning collective bargaining altogether. Once SEIU is outside the AFL-CIO, its internal critics would have a third choice--signing up with any AFL-CIO union more responsive to their views.
Is more "freedom of choice" for workers good or bad for unions? That's an interesting but controversial question. If the AFL-CIO's mid-life crisis ends in divorce and SEIU leaves the "house of labor," we may soon find out the answer.
(Steve Early is a Boston-based organizer for the Communications Workers of America, an AFL-CIO union not affiliated with the New Unity Partnership.)