By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Published: February 29, 2008
Andy Stern has been hailed in some quarters as the nation's top labor leader largely because his union, the Service Employees International Union, has added members faster than any other, 800,000 over the last decade.
That official, Sal Rosselli, whose local represents 140,000 health care workers in California, says Mr. Stern has made too many concessions on benefits and working conditions in persuading employers to agree not to fight unionization drives. The union has organized hundreds of facilities and grown membership to 1.9 million.
"An overly zealous focus on growth — growth at any cost, apparently — has eclipsed S.E.I.U.'s commitment to its members," Mr. Rosselli wrote in a letter to Mr. Stern. Mr. Rosselli complained that Mr. Stern had had top officials negotiate deals with national health care corporations, depriving rank-and-file workers of adequate say in their contracts. In December, Mr. Rosselli quit as president of the union's 600,000-member state council in California after he grew convinced that Mr. Stern wanted to push him out.
Mr. Rosselli is vowing a major fight at the union's convention in June in Puerto Rico, saying he wants to end what he calls Mr. Stern's top-down style. He resigned from the union's executive board this month to protest what he said were Mr. Stern's heavy-handed, undemocratic methods, including the merger of several union locals in California.
Mr. Stern's allies argue that Mr. Rosselli, who heads United Healthcare Workers West, is betraying union solidarity at an inopportune time, when the union is seeking to rally members behind the nomination and election of Senator Barack Obama as president. They accuse Mr. Rosselli of seeking to win extra benefits for his local's members while undercutting efforts to organize millions of lower-paid, nonunion workers.
Mr. Stern declined to be interviewed. An ally, Dave Regan, president of a local representing 35,000 health care workers in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, denounced Mr. Rosselli, saying, "This is a smoke screen for a local that is now operating on a self-interested agenda, which is about them, to the detriment of the rest of the organization."
Mr. Rosselli said he was only seeking to do what was right for the rank and file.
"Andy is leading an effort for more centralization of power," he said. "We believe it's fundamentally important to empower workers. The more power workers have, the stronger the union is."
In a decade when most unions have lost members — just 7.5 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions — the service employees' is in a feverish debate about how best to grow and help union and nonunion workers.
Mr. Rosselli said rank-and-file workers should be given maximum say in determining contracts, which often results in their calling for maximum increases in pay and benefits. That, he said, would attract new members.
But the Stern camp said it was important to give up some short-term gains in exchange for employer concessions that make it easier to organize nonunion workers.
"There is no denying that the S.E.I.U. is the most innovative union in the nation and has figured out how to organize in a very inhospitable climate," said Janice Fine, a professor of labor relations at Rutgers. "This debate shows that the union is honestly wrestling with how to move forward. The union knows that standards for workers can't be defended without growth, and growth without attention to standards is also a problem."
In some ways, Mr. Stern's approach resembles that of a corporate chief executive who is willing to accept modest, short-term profits in order to invest in achieving greater size and strength for the long term.
Michael Torres, a respiratory therapist at U.S.C. University Hospital in Los Angeles, part of the Tenet Healthcare Corporation, said Mr. Stern's approach had hurt Tenet employees. He complained that union leaders had sought to make a deal that called for not pushing for pensions or retiree health coverage; in exchange Tenet would not fight unionization of 23 facilities in Florida.
"We were handicapped from the get-go in our negotiations," Mr. Torres said. "We were fighting not only the employer but the international union. I think we need a major correction within the union if we are going to build a sustainable organization."
Mr. Stern's defenders say the union's health care council, made up of the leaders of many locals, and not Mr. Stern, determines negotiating policy.
Tom DeBruin, an ally of Mr. Stern's who is president of a health care workers' local in Pennsylvania, said, "This comes down to, are we just going to focus on helping workers in one or two places in the country where our union is strong and let the vast majority of workers in the country go down the tubes?"