Serious question- why do you assert Freeman is a 'Stern protege'? Look, I just find it hilarious, because he most definitively is NOT. There certainly are proteges of particular leaders in the union, in the sense that, in say the organizing department, that Scott Courtney was once Bob Callaghan's protege or Mark Raleigh was August's protege, or in Ohio that Becky Williams was Dave Regan's protege. But it baffles me why you seem to think Andy Stern is this singularly omnipotent and evil mastermind who controls everyone and everything in SEIU except for four minority dissident oppositions in two locals. You seriously overestimate the amount of power Stern himself has to control everything. Although the international executive board does wield a good deal of collective power in steering locals with a power vacuum and often send high-level staff places to take roles there, what happens after that is usually a matter of that officer's record and actions there.
The case of Freeman actually is an excellent study of some of the realities your argument does not deal with. A member comes out of the rank and file as an organizer, and over the course of helping run a succession of organizing campaigns and locals in places like Atlanta and then LA, climbs to a position of emerging leadership in SEIU as a whole due to a track record of success, a great deal of personal charisma, popularity among the members he comes to represent and a talent for building bridges between the union and the local african- american community at large. Once in LA, his leadership position owes less to the machinations of the international board in DC, and more to his record locally and base of support there--- what organizing and political program does his team run, what kind of contracts he settles, how he relates to different factions and currents of members, officers, staff and the community, how popular he is with the members and with the community at large, etc.
How about me? Am I a 'Stern protege'? I must be, because I support the organizing program of the union and work for it despite disagreements with a variety of aspects of it or the union overall. How about the worker I was working with yesterday who got twenty cards from her co-workers during this union drive I'm working on? Is she a 'Stern protege'? Well, I guess since she's a member, you would regard her instead as a foolish dupe of Stern's right? Certainly not a real person in a real workplace fighting with her co-workers to form a union for real material gains in an imperfect, complicated world. No, she's just a dupe in Stern/my plan to form company unions for corporations so we can get cigar bribes. Right?
> entertains the idea of spending $10,000 of union money for time spent
> in an elite smoke filled room, much less acts on it? Is this part of
> the partnership with companies plan? That's a serious question.
>
Let me get this straight. SEIU, like all other organizing unions, fights companies with carrots and sticks to get card check or other organizing codes of conduct so more workers can successfully form unions. You're alleging that this is in fact part of Tyrone Freeman's corruption? That we actually fight to get card check so that the evil, omnipotent andy stern can get a bribe from a hospital chain to go to a fancy cigar store with?
Come on. There are serious criticisms to make of SEIU. There are serious debates to be had about the nature of organizing agreements and employer partnerships. But you're indulging yourself in manichean fantasy.
> And how much sympathy are strikers going to get if they walk out the
> same day the news of Freeman's taking a leave of absence hits the
> front page?
Apparently not much from this list. But the average working-class person in LA supports the janitors getting a better contract, and doesnt change their mind about that when a union president gets kicked out for doing this kind of corruption.