A LESS PERFECT UNION?

J.B. Powell, writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, thinks that "At a time when organized labor is slipping, SEIU's national leaders are wasting their resources trying to discredit Sal Rosselli."

Below is the beginning of a lengthy article reporting on SEIU Leadership battles that ought to be heard about and thought about and discussed by all of us who care about union -- Especially SEIU and the CTW Coalition

"By nearly every measure, the Service Employees International Union has become a juggernaut. As the rest of organized labor has seen its share of the American workforce continue to dwindle, SEIU has brought in some 800,000 new dues-paying members in recent years. With the Democratic Party taking over Congress in 2006, the 1.9 million-member organization, rich with campaign funds, wields enormous political clout, and it will only become more formidable if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama wins the White House in November.

 

But all is not well inside the labor giant. Andy Stern, the union's president, has pushed hard for merging and consolidating local chapters into larger operations — and many SEIU members, especially here on the West Coast, say that's turning the union into a top-down autocracy in which Stern loyalists wield undue influence and meddling officials from Washington, DC squelch dissent.

 

And now, the Guardian has learned, Stern operatives are using their money and organizing clout in a hard-hitting campaign — not to force an employer to the table or to toss out an anti-union politician, but to discredit another labor leader.

 

The campaign is part of a bruising power struggle between Stern and dissident local leader Sal Rosselli, who runs the Oakland-based SEIU affiliate United Health Care Workers West. In the past few months, union insiders say, SEIU officials, including a senior assistant to Stern, set up what one leader called a "skunk team" to undermine Rosselli's efforts at winning key union delegate elections. At one point, the team — which involved a political consulting firm linked to big downtown businesses — discussed an opposition research file compiled on Rosselli by a health-care giant his union was fighting.

 

And leading up to the delegate elections last month, SEIU staffers worked to promote Stern-supporting candidates, possibly in violation of union rules, while actively discouraging other union employees from campaigning. That's led to a formal complaint alleging improper involvement by Stern's staff in a local union election."

The remainder of the article can be read here.

You can join and talk about this and other union issues here.