I think the people who you're talking to are either drinking Andy Stern's koolaid, lying to themselves, lying to you or some combination of the three. SEIU has been actively involved in undercutting single-payer activism since before Stern took over. After he became president, he cut the deal with Kaiser, which put them directly in bed with the corporate health care industry, and they've fought against single-payer, or any other form of real national health care, everywhere ever since. And all this crap about how we can incrementally reform our way to social democracy with corporate partnerships has the stench of Bernstein and more cynical strains of class collaborationism all over it (to which the smart, Ivy League union staffers respond that that was then, this is now, and produce charts to show how the transition is going to come about if we can just increase "union density" a couple of percentage points by the next election and get a few more Dems elected). The pageantry of mobilization -- the carefully orchestrated Potemkin demos featuring spirited crowds of black and brown workers in purple jackets and t-shirts is a perfume over that stench. This is exactly what I've been saying about Stern all along. I used to think that his model of the union is One Big Company Union; in the last couple of years I've decided that it's more One Big Collective Human Resource Dept. It's telling that Stern/SEIU remain the darlings of the left; it's a measure of the left's dilettantishness, insularity and stupidity; the pathology of identity politics; and the Yuppieization of that wing of the labor movement. A few years ago I was struck to come away from a meeting with a young union official thinking that she reminded me of a combination of Alexandra Kollontai and an Ivy League-trained corporate lawyer. This is a longer conversation but one I'd love to have. Have you seen Steve Early's review of Stern's book?