[Note: The following article is reprinted from Issue No. 196 (August 15, 2006) of the ILC International Newsletter. To subscribe to this weekly online newsletter, write to <ilcinfo at earthlink.net.>.]
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Andy Stern & "Corporate Partnerships": From Immigration Reform to Single-Payer
By ALAN BENJAMIN
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has been spending a lot of time lately hanging out with the CEOs of some of the largest U.S. multinational corporations in his quest to work out a "much-needed partnership" to the big problems facing our country.
In February, Stern addressed a gathering of corporate lawyers in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he told them that "SEIU's goal for 2006 is to bring unions and corporations together as partners, not enemies." He continued: "Employers need to recognize that the world has changed and there are people who would like to help them provide solutions in ways that are new, modern and that add value to companies. ... A partnership between labor and corporations would be a step towards the intended goal."
Then, addressing himself directly to the trade union movement, Stern stated:
"On the other side of the coin, union members have to understand that companies are not their enemy, but must think about increasing shareholders' wealth. ... Labor should ask itself, 'how can I contribute to meeting those [shareholders'] expectations in a way that also meets mine'?" (Epoch Times, February 27, 2006)
For Andy Stern this is not just rhetoric. Stern's first project was to build a "partnership" with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart known as the Essential Workers Immigrant Coalition (EWIC). Together with these "partners," Stern and SEIU drafted the outlines of what would become the McCain-Kennedy "immigration reform" bill - an essentially anti-immigration bill that was approved earlier this year by the Senate in a slightly amended form.
The SEIU-sponsored bill calls for futher militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border, expanding the second-class "guestworker" (or "essential worker") program, increasing employer sanctions, and expediting deportations. These measures have been advocated for many years by the corporate CEOs.
What was the tradeoff for labor and the immigrant rights movement? It was the inclusion in the Senate "compromise" bill of a "path to citizenship" -- after 11 years or so, and after clearing major hurdles -- for some of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Most immigrant rights advocates have called this tradeoff unacceptable. Nativo López, president of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), calls it a "Corona-Lite" version of the widely despised Sensenbrenner bill adopted by the House of Representatives last December.
"If they thought that compromising on the enforcement measures to obtain some form of legalization would satisfy the immigrant community or the immigrant rights movement," López said, "they're absolutely wrong." (Democracy Now radio program, June 26, 2006)
Speaking at a July 24 Educational Forum sponsored by the San Francisco Labor Council, Olga Miranda, president of SEIU Local 87, said openly it was not the role of a union to seek out "common ground" that would compromise the interests of union members. Such "joint solutions," Miranda noted, are inevitably detrimental to immigrant workers and to the labor movement as a whole.
Miranda insisted that her union must return to its traditional role of fighting for the rights of its members -- and for the rights of all working people -- against the bosses' agenda.
Miranda said her statement was not an "act of defiance" against her union. Rather, she insisted, it was an act of defense of her union against the attacks on the labor movement by the bosses and the Bush administration -- attacks that have been relayed, "misguidedly," by the leadership of her union.
Comments such as these by Sister Miranda are becoming more and more commonplace within SEIU and some of the other unions that are part of the newly formed Change to Win coalition.
Perhaps what most shocked SEIU members - particularly those within the union's Latino caucus -- was when SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina publicly praised Bush's May 16 speech in which Bush briefly mentioned the so-called "path to legalization" while announcing he was sending 6,000 National Guard troops to beef up border enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Medina said, "We are encouraged that the president understands it will take a comprehensive solution to address the complex immigration crisis our country now faces."
SEIU members across the country were outraged that Medina ignored all the repressive aspects of Bush's proposals. Many pointed out that Bush's directive will lead inevitably to more deaths of undocumented immigrants seeking to cross the Arizona desert.
Opposition to Stern's new course, in fact, has expanded throughout the labor movement.
Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO and director of the labor federation's immigrant worker program, called the Senate "compromise" bill "punitive and inhuman." And she added, "The fact that some national Latino organizations and some unions have signed on to it is very offensive." (interview with labor journalist Lee Sustar on May 19)
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, was asked to comment on Stern's policies during a 15- minute segment of CBS TV's "60 Minutes" that was devoted to Stern's "new course for labor." DeMoro told Lesly Stahl of "60 Minutes" that Stern's "partnerships with giant corporations [would] result in undermining a union's prime mission to defend and advance the interests of its members."
"Unions," DeMoro said, "would have to make enormous concessions to get corporations to accept them as junior partners, to the detriment of their members." (CBS TV, May 14, 2006)
Trade unionists understand instinctively that what DeMoro said on "60 Minutes" is right on the mark. The corporations' only interest in seeking a "partnership" with the unions is to co-opt the unions into accepting -- and co-administering -- their anti-labor agenda.
Stern and Single-Payer
But Stern has not been content to deal only with the issue of immigration reform.
As trade unionists and healthcare activists around the country are fully aware, the fight for single-payer healthcare is back on the front burner. Nationally, there is growing support for HR 676, the single-payer resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Conyers of Michigan. HR 676 now has 72 congressional co-sponsors. Unions across the country are coming on board.
In California, the fight for single-payer is heating up as unions and activists are increasing their outreach and lobbying in support of SB 840, the single-payer healthcare bill introduced by State Senator Sheila Kuehl. A vote in the State Assembly on this bill is expected in the coming weeks. SB 840 supporters believe they are on the verge of securing the votes of the 41 State Assembly members needed for the passage of the Kuehl bill.
A big boost to this effort occurred on July 25-26, 2006 when the biennial convention of the California Labor Federation endorsed SB 840.
It is precisely at this moment -- when momentum is beginning to shift toward single-payer -- that Andy Stern has chosen to reach out to his wannabe corporate "partners" to implore them to do the "right thing" by addressing the healthcare crisis. But what single-payer activists find scandalous is that in all Stern's recent statements and invocations to the corporations, Stern has openly and forcefully dismissed single-payer as a viable option.
This Part Two of Stern's "corporate partnership agenda" began with an op-ed article by Stern published June 17 in the Wall Street Journal in which he begs corporate leaders to do something, anything -- except single-payer. Stern writes, "Today I sent a letter to every CEO in the Fortune 500 asking them to make healthcare their national priority. I urge corporate leaders to come forward."
Stern's letter to the business leaders concludes as follows:
"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 healthcare union in the country. Our membership includes nearly one million nurses, doctors, hospital staff, nursing home and home care workers. We know health care. You know business. Together, let's build a new 21st-century American economy."
Stern's letter is explicit in stating that "single-payer is not viable," as it will not be supported by corporate America. This, of course, is true. Countless corporate CEOs and politicians talk about the need for "universal healthcare" -- but they are adamant about keeping all the health insurance companies, which are reaping mega- profits, in the mix.
Single-payer would eliminate the healthcare insurance companies from the healthcare system. These companies are the middlemen who contribute nothing of value to the system. The savings realized by getting rid of them would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars annually and would be enough to provide coverage for all who are currently uninsured.
Stern's proposals -- in the name of "universal healthcare coverage" -- call for tinkering with the current healthcare system; nothing with which the bosses could disagree. In fact, the very same day Stern published his article in the Wall Street Journal, GM CEO Richard Wagoner came out with a plan similar to the one proposed by Stern.
Stern Reneges on 'New Deal Answers'
Stern presented his case to the employers more fully in a talk he gave at the pro-business Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on June 16. He was one of many panelists asked to address the healthcare crisis. Other panelists included the senior vice president of Costco Corp., the president of the National Small Business Association, and the director of the Health Policy Program of the New America Foundation.
The transcription of Stern's talk, published on the website of the Brookings Institution, reveals Stern's all-out effort to find "common ground" with corporate America -- that is, with the very people who have been cutting workers' wages, reneging on paying healthcare to their employees, dropping pension plans ... and just simply attacking all the gains and rights won by working people through bitter struggles for close to one century.
Stern's starting point, as usual, is his desire to help the corporations find solutions to their growing woes. He states:
"Obviously, we have a huge problem for American business because it is pretty hard to compete in a global economy when the price of your healthcare is put on the cost of goods, while in other countries, it is shared amongst society....
"We live in a new century, and we need a new healthcare paradigm because we have a new economy. ... We can't drive into the future in America, looking in the rearview mirror. We are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from Abraham Lincoln. ... I don't think we can simply look back to the answers in 1935 and imagine them working today."
But what are the "answers of 1935" if not the recognition of trade unions by the Wagner Act, or the understanding that the State has a fundamental responsibility to all its citizens to provide Social Security, healthcare, public education, and other vital social services? Isn't single-payer healthcare one such 1935-type answer?
Stern's rejection of single-payer becomes more explicit later in his presentation. He continues:
"I think we need to find a new system that is not built on the back of the government. I am here to also say I don't think we need to import Canada or any other system. We are going to build an American system because we are Americans and we don't like anybody else's system."
Of course, the Canadian model that Stern does not wish to import is the highly vaunted Canadian single-payer system. And not building a system "on the back of the government" is the language of the corporations, not of the labor movement.
Stern Joins Schwarzenegger at Healthcare Summit
To make things even more explicit, Stern and other Change to Win top officials agreed to participate in a July 25 Heathcare Summit in Los Angeles organized by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that featured corporate executives, doctors, and medical administrators.
This forum was viewed widely by single-payer activists across California as an event aimed at undercutting support statewide for the Kuehl bill. It also was seen by most healthcare advocates as a photo opportunity for Schwarzenegger's re-election bid. What came out of the event was the illusion that Schwarzenegger cares, when in effect his record proves otherwise.
An article in the July 25 Los Angeles Times highlights the divisions within the trade union movement over this healthcare summit. It states, in part:
"As some organizations picket the talks at UCLA, others thank Schwarzenegger for convening the session on funding medical coverage. ....
"The divide was apparent in the differing tones inside UCLA's air- conditioned Covel Commons, where Schwarzenegger held his 'Summit on Health Care Affordability,' and outside in the sweltering courtyard.
"Outside, the California Nurses Association ran a picket line of 40 people. 'Any union leader that crosses is a scab,' said Rose Ann DeMoro, the union's executive director.
"The head of the California Labor Federation, Art Pulaski, recalled last year's fight with Schwarzenegger over his special election and denounced the governor for not doing more to provide health coverage to Californians.
"Inside, the national presidents of three prominent unions -- the Service Employees International Union, the United Farm Workers and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America -- took seats around a long table with the 50 summit participants, and thanked the governor for convening the session. ...
"DeMoro, the executive director of the nurses' union, which voted last year to join the AFL-CIO, said union leaders who participated in the summit were betraying their labor brethren.
"'It's really shocking frankly, because working people have been hit the hardest by the governor's healthcare policy,' she said. 'The right wing has been extremely effective in dividing the labor movement.'
"Doug McCarron, the carpenters union president, called the criticism 'ridiculous. I want to see bipartisan programs and solutions for American workers'."
Here you have it all: Stern and his CTW colleagues were inside the convention center around the same table with Schwarzenegger (who has opposed one union-sponsored healthcare bill after another) and with the heads of major corporations, while outside, picketing this anti- labor and anti-healthcare summit were the head of the California Labor Federation and leaders of unions, such as the CNA, that have been the most vocal supporters of healthcare rights and single-payer.
For DeMoro and the CNA, Stern's participation at the governor's summit was tantamount to scabbing.
California CTW Unions Not Following Stern's Course
But in California at least, SEIU and the other Change to Win unions don't seem to be going along with Stern's new pro-corporate course.
At the California Labor Federation convention in late July, the SEIU and Change to Win delegates voted to support SB 840, the Sheila Kuehl single-payer bill. They also approved a policy statement on immigration that lambastes "guestworker" programs and opposes the further militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Across the state, SEIU delegates to central labor councils have endorsed the statement by the National Network For Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which takes issue on every major question with the positions put forward by Stern.
Stern's new policies have little support among the rank and file -- and even among many top leaders -- of SEIU and the other Change to Win unions. This is a very good thing. But there is still an urgent need to organize the discussion in these unions, and more generally in the labor movement as a whole, about the dangers of Stern's new course. This pro-partnership orientation must be rejected explicitly by the ranks of the CTW unions and by the entire labor movement.
Don Bechler, who chairs Health Care for All in San Francisco and who has been a leader in the Machinists union for 17 years, explained why the unions must reject Stern's new so-called "strategy." He said:
"Union leaders have been elected to lead. Leaders should put forward what they think is sound health policy for working people. Universal healthcare with single-payer financing has been shown over and over again to be great health policy. It saves money and delivers one great class of care to all classes of people.
"What we have with the private insurance companies is delivery of different classes of care for different classes of people, wasteful spending, and most important a hideous system where insurance companies try to avoid the sick and only insure the healthy. That is good business for them, but bad health policy for America. The insurance companies are the ones who brought us the term 'pre- existing condition.' It is a term used solely by the insurance industry to deny care to those who need it.
"Again, the role of union leaders is to advocate what is best for working people. Keeping private insurance companies in the healthcare loop is not in the best interests of workers. You always enter contract negotiations with a clear idea of your objective. When it comes to healthcare, it's not that corporations don't know what single-payer is; the problem is that they have chosen other anti- worker solutions to cut healthcare costs.
"On the issue of healthcare, Andy Stern seems to have steered away from this responsibility to lead."
True, indeed. The unions should not be groveling at the feet of the corporations, pleading with them to change their ways. They can't change; all they care about is the need to make more profits. The unions should not be seeking a place at their table. Labor's interests and those of corporate America are diametrically opposed. Labor should stick to its guns, fighting for its own interests in opposition to the employers and the government.
The only table labor should be seated at is the negotiating table, where labor is across the table from management, fighting for its demands, based on a mobilized membership to give their bargaining team the best relationship of forces possible to wrest concessions from the bosses.
This is what independent trade unionism is all about.
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Alan Benjamin is the Editor of The Organizer newspaper. He is also a member of OPEIU Local 3 and a member of the Executive Committee of the San Francisco Labor Council.
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ACCOMPANYING ARTICLE:
Telephone Worker Responds to Andy Stern on Single-Payer Healthcare
[Note: In a June 16 speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, SEIU President Andy Stern attacked a Canadian-style, single-payer healthcare system as irrelevant to the United States. John Horgan, a Boston-area telephone worker, wrote the following response to Stern. Horgan works for Verizon, where he is a union steward in IBEW Local 2222. He is active in the Greater Boston Jobs with Justice Health Care Committee. Following are excerpts from Horgan's response to Stern.]
After reading an article by Mark Gruenberg, a staff writer for Press Associates Inc., it was important to watch the Kaiser network video of SEIU President Andy Stern for a firsthand account of Mr. Stern's comments on healthcare.
It was obvious that President Stern is as troubled about the out-of- control costs of health insurance as any American. It was also obvious President Stern has no constructive solution. He spoke of the healthcare crisis in America without offering a single constructive idea as to how this crisis can be addressed. Instead he blames politicians and business for their lack of leadership on this issue. He also belittles the concept of a single-payer system while complaining that American business can't compete with countries that have single-payer systems.
First to address the question of why business leaders are not out in the street demanding health insurance reform -- after the tax breaks, the cost shifting, and the gutting of the healthcare plans: The business of American business is simply business. The American workers are out on the streets, but American business is out of the country.
President Sterns represents a service-based membership that works inside the United States in jobs that don't compete in the global market. The car industry, as well as many other industries, competes globally. What is the major difference between a G.M. worker in Canada and one in the U.S.? The benefit cost of health insurance.
Now to answer the question why is health insurance so expensive? Let's start with the big ticket item of administrative costs -- 39% of every dollar in this private employer-based model of health insurance goes to administrative costs. This model leaves 45 million uninsured, millions more underinsured and is also a cost driver of the insurance premium.
Premiums for health insurance policies are subject to the size of the liability pool. The larger the shared liability pool, the cheaper the premium. This is because the burden of the ill is disbursed across a larger number of people. Mr. Stern illustrates this exact point when he refers to the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan.
A single-payer solution is the only way to reduce costs (Medicare administrative costs are 3%), guarantee universal coverage (eliminate means testing, not worth the bureaucratic funding), and mandate quality care. The sorry excuse of a tax fear is no reason for condemning single-payer. As to real estate taxes, towns are breaking under the for-profit burden of health insurance for their employees. State taxes could use relief brought about by a 36% savings in state employee health plans. Federal employee health benefits could be even less expensive if the shared liability pool grew to every citizen in the country -- thus reducing our federal tax dollars on the portions currently going to federal employee benefits.
A single-payer system would reduce concession bargaining, lower the likelihood of strikes, and reduce taxes with the cost savings it would create. This would be funded by the tax dollars we already pay, the tax dollars businesses don't have to pay currently, as well as the fair share from businesses that have long skipped out on their fair share.
We have many leaders in Congress as well as in the labor movement demanding a national single-payer plan. They have provided the single- payer solution in HR 676. They choose to be constructive and take stands, not to sit on the sidelines and condemn. They are the leaders, and it is through their efforts that this crisis will be resolved.