Opposition in one of America's biggest unions.

international | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Sunday September 16, 2007 14:04 by john throne - Labors militant voice loughfinn at aol dot com

Co-operation with management under pressure.

The Service Employees Internation Union in the USA has led the way in the policy of co-operation with management. It is now facing increased opposition from within its own ranks to this policy.

The Service Employees International Union, SEIU,

is both one of the largest and most controversial

US trade unions. Its growing numbers go counter

to the wider trend of declining membership and

concentration of union members while its

leadership, spearheaded by Pres. Andy Stern,

carries out what they call a 'win-win' strategy

relying on cooperation with corporate management.

This spring, a reform movement within the SEIU

forced the national leadership to abandon one

such agreement with the northern California

nursing home operators on May 31st. This article

seeks to examine that agreement and the push

against it. Hopefully, there are useful lessons

for us who face the 'bottom line' pressure of

Corporate America on our jobs as well as in our

lives outside work.

Hopefully, this reform fight and its limitations

shed useful light where overly optimistic or

cynical people only see one aspect- the fight

itself did win. For one, it illustrates the

different interests of different sections of the

union hierarchy that prompted this fight. It

shows how the SEIU's collaboration with the

profit-first operators hurt both the workers and

the wider, working class public who live in these

nursing homes. It also illuminates the need for

us to develop organizations not dependent on the

feuding factions of the union management

structures- organizations founded on our common

needs and interests as part of the working class,

worldwide, faced with today's global capitalism.

To stand up to management, it's inadequate and

harmful to simply back the 'lesser of 2 evils'.

To create the networks and learn how to fight, we

need a careful examination of such struggles.

The initial Union-corporate agreement lasted

4-1/2 years of its 7-year package before the

national SEIU leadership was forced to end it as

of May 31, 2007. The initial agreement was a

tradeoff: the union agreed not to publicize or

oppose any unhealthy or harmful practices, such

as short staffing, to state regulators or the

media, except those already mandated by law. The

SEIU in CA even opposed legislation that would

have forced healthcare owners to improve patient

care and safety. To start the ball rolling, the

union led the successful fight for higher state

payments to the operators.

In exchange for all this and more, the

owners/operators agreed to allow employees to

join the union without opposition. These new

union members, some 3,000+, were then covered by

'template agreements', put into the master

agreement and not negotiated by the workers

themselves or their chosen representatives. These

template agreements gave up the right to strike

as well as the right to campaign against

mistreatment of the workers and the patients.

According to an internal analysis done after 4

years under this 'win-win' agreement by the

regional SEIU branch, United Healthcare Workers -

West (UHW), these deals "allowed for very little

power on the shop floor with no right to strike

and no clear path towards full collective

bargaining rights." (This quote and much of the

information regarding the partnership and the

reform effort come from "Internal Pressure Ends

'Sweetheart' Contract Early" by Mark

Brenner-http://labornotes.org/node/989)

This agreement with the northern CA nursing home

owners was also important since it also served as

a template for the wider international union

strategy espoused by the SEIU's Stern but also by

most national US unions- partnership with the

employers. This trend is to 'grow the union' by

such agreements while creating huge, so-called

locals as big as 100,000 members. Internally, the

SEIU is moving towards the corporate mirror

image, internally as well in its main

relationship with corporate management.

The SEIU may be the most 'advanced' example, but

it is not alone in its practice of selling out

the workers' need for actual power in exchange

for 'peaceful relations' with management. In

fact, this has been the dominant, if contested,

practice in US unions at least since the victory

of the Cold War anti communism of the late 1940s.

That victory was sealed at the 1949 CIO

convention when those who believed in working

class unity against the demands and priorities of

capitalism (sometimes referred to as

class-struggle unionism) were excluded from union

positions and whole unions from the CIO itself.

Today, Andy Stern is the most outspoken union

leader espousing this 'win-win' collaboration

(combined with judicious pressure). Thus, the

agreement, its effects, and its demise have

relevance greater than its impact upon those

workers directly.

The UHW elected leadership, staff members and

local stewards began a campaign to change or

scrap the operating agreement several months

before the national leadership gave in and

dropped it. The UHW leaders made a study of the

agreement, mentioned earlier, and sent out a

letter to all members which said, in part, "

Some in the national SEIU are negotiating an

agreement with nursing home employers-in

California and nationally- and have repeatedly

excluded UHW nursing home members and elected

representatives from the process."

Of course, the newly organized members had always

been excluded, from the first day of the

agreement. So, what was new? Why did the local

leadership only organize opposition after over 4

years? After all, this deal had excluded the

workers themselves from negotiating their

'template' agreements which gave up the right to

strike and the right to campaign for their own

and patients' safety. What was new? "Why Now?"

is always a timely question.

One reason appears to have been the growing

exclusion of UHW leaders from negotiating the

follow-up agreements. This is part of the SEIU's

super-centralization whereby most 'local' unions

are organized in 'efficient' organizations of

20,000- 200.000, often encompassing entire states

or even geographical regions. This

super-centralization also happens to minimize the

ability of local work groups to impact their own

'local' union unless they develop wider networks

and organizations. Thus, the growing exclusion of

local leaders and workers from negotiations flows

from the extreme version of collaboration and

'corporatizing' the union itself. This

development indicates the actual necessity of

developing working class, I would argue,

socialist organizations based on common class

needs and opposed to this widespread

subordination of workers' interests to corporate

and Union management.

Instead of developing the natural affinity and

unity over working and health conditions, this

agreement actually pit the healthcare workers and

the union against the patients and their

families. It illustrates perfectly the contrast

between class collaboration and class struggle

unionism. This development also shows how the

different and competing interests within the

union structures can and did lead to greater

worker involvement, opening the door to concerned

workers seeing and helping develop their own

collective potential to force change.

Once the UHW leaders did initiate open and

internal struggle against the agreements and the

negotiations that froze them out, over 20,000 UHW

members signed the petition within a few weeks.

This response shows some potential for a real

fight, not a sham fight run by a group which

itself actively pressures workers to serve

profiteering management against their own and

their class's real needs. As a shop steward

Brenner talked with put it, "We've signed up over

half the members where I work. What really got

people upset was this idea that guys in suits,

sitting in Washington, D, C,, will bargain our

contracts.

These are people who have never worked in a

hospital and who don't know anything about our

jobs. Then, to top it off, we won't even have a

right to vote on the contract they negotiate."

The UHW

workers were very much against the SEIU's

extending that agreement covering new workers

onto them. They showed no trust in the national

leadership to 'look out for them'. Quite the

contrary. These testify to the lie that workers

are passive and trust their leadership. It shows

the potential for a powerful working class fight,

but only if an alternative develops to challenge

the strategy of 'win-win' collaboration.

In other words, when the SEIU leadership froze

out the local leaders from negotiations, those

leaders took the initiative to fight, for their

own reasons. When it was 'just the workers' who

were frozen out, they did nothing. The local

leaders had their own reasons for fighting; that

fight then illuminated the level of discontent of

most members. It opened the door to workers'

organizing and talking amongst themselves over

what this would mean. It created an opening which

will need to go beyond this limited resistance if

they're to realize the potential for expanding

their own networks not dependent upon the

initiatives of the local leaders.

I don't write this to denigrate those UHW

leaders. Far from it: in fact, they undertook a

fight, which could have put them out of a job.

The SEIU, like most national unions, including my

own, AFSCME, has constitutional, vague provisions

allowing the national leaders to place local

unions under trusteeship, wherein the national

leaders take over the local and appoint officers

who make decisions for the local. The fact that

the UHW-W leaders started this internal fight

shows how threatened they (and others in such

positions) must have felt by this totally

centralized, corporatized setup pushed by Stern

and his allies.

You might recall the original "Justice for

Janitors" campaign in Los Angeles back in the

early '90s. There was even a movie based upon it.

The national SEIU paid local activists to

organize mostly Central American and Mexican

immigrant communities for militant confrontations

and mass marches in solidarity with the union

organizing drive for downtown janitors. After the

workers and SEIU forced the corporate employers

to sign a decent contract, the militant activists

formed a slate and won local union election. To

show that they didn't mean to threaten the union

establishment, this solidarity slate chose not to

run a candidate for president. The SEIU

leadership responded quickly; they took over that

local, dissolved it into a statewide SEIU 'local'

and bought off one or two of the original local

leaders. Who were the chief SEIU officers at he

time? John Sweeney, current AFL-CIO president,

was then the SEIU president while Andy Stern was

his loyal VP. It took courage and shrewd

judgement for those UHW leaders to make this

fight; make no mistake. But it's also important

not to lionize them and their initiative.

In fact, like most unions committed to such

'junior partnerships', the UHW-W has consistently

promoted corporate interests over workers' for

many years. A recent article by Charles Andrews,

"Who's Right about Kaiser-Michael Moore or SEIU?"

gives us several examples and insights based on

their, SEIU's, junior partnership with Kaiser

Permanente.

(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/andrews050907.html)

While Moore's recent movie SiCKO refers to Kaiser

as an example of profiteering health exploiters.

It ran tape where Nixon approves the Kaiser

practice of using healthcare premiums as their

money, essentially for profits and not to provide

healthcare. In fact, Kaiser was the poster child

for the HMO Act of 1973. As Andrews puts it, "

Erlichman assured Nixon that the incentives at

Kaiser run toward less medical are. The less care

provided to members paying a flat premium, the

more money Kaiser makes."

A document supplied by Kaiser, responding to

SiCKO, was a Feb. 6, 1971 letter from chairman

Edgar Kaiser to Erlichman in which " Mr. Kaiser

explained that Kaiser physicians, organized as

the Permanente Group, receive both a salary and a

share in any surplus left over from the

contractual payments by the Kaiser Heath Plan to

the Permanente Group." According to Andrews, "The

incentive is to minimize the number of physicians

in ratio to Kaiser members." In other words,

these doctors got a piece of the pie in exchange

for short-changing patients, for increasing the

ration of patients to doctors.

That's not all. According to Andrews' report,

UHW-W actively helped Kaiser Permanente train and

" award bonuses to call-center clerks who spent

the least amount of time on the phone with each

patient and limited the number of doctors'

appointments." ( Los Angeles Times, May 17,

2002) As Andrews puts it, "UHW-W officials

served as straw bosses, working with Kaiser

bosses urging clerks to get with the program."

This gives workers a small payoff for helping

management screw over and exploit everyone else.

This is poison to the solidarity of workers with

those we impact or serve. It pits some against

all. That's what this 'win-win' junior

partnership means, in daily life.

How did the UHW-W leaders respond to Moore's

charges and Kaiser's defense? Andrews puts it

this way: "UHW-W attacked Michael Moore for

'smearing the reputation of one of our nation's

most progressive, reform-minded, pro-worker

health-care organizations: American's premier

not-for-profit, pre-paid, integrated health-care

delivery system, Kaiser Permanente.' "

Is this just a war of words or part of a war

against the working class, playing divide and

rule with payoffs for those who collaborate and

hard time for those who don't?

From what I can see, they only stepped up after

the national leadership was freezing them out and

marking them as expendable. The UHW-W

leadership's letter and petition was coupled with

an intense internal SEIU fight. It apparently

caused the end of the northern CA agreement

within days of the petition. That internal union

fight is not over, altho this particular battle

is. One thing is clear: contradictions exist

between the national leadership and local

leaders. The strategy to centralize everything

has and will create more such. So far, this

internal fight appears to be between two wings

that essentially agree on the overall jr.

partnership relationship with capitalist

management and priorities.

Brenner illustrates this with the case of Jerome

Brown, former president of SEIU's massive 1199

New England health care regional union. According

to Brenner, Brown exemplifies a dissenting voice

within the national SEIU, one who recognizes that

"only after a period of open conflict can 'strong

unions and engaged members enter into mature,

cooperative relationships' with their employers."

In other words, Brown is all for these

'cooperative relationships', but only after

establishing and then taming an 'engaged'

membership. Same goals, different tactics. Still,

here's yet another example of contradictions

within the same structures, more conflicts that

can and do open more doors to similar

developments. You can see the contradictions when

Brown wrote, in a review of Andy Stern's latest

book, "A Country That Works" (which I plan to

review here soon),

"We have to ask ourselves if these methods

(referring to practices like the northern CA

nursing home agreement) can produce a real,

democratic workers' organization or if it is more

likely that they will produce a 'membership' that

sees itself, correctly, as a third party in a

relationship with union brokers and employers-the

very antithesis of true rank-and-file unionism."

We might also ask, "how does pursing 'mature'

collaboration of once-militant unions help

workers? Should we take a close look at how this

has played out in the airlines, in steel, or in

auto where pay, conditions, pensions and

healthcare are all being sacrificed on the same

alter?

Still, that process of inner-union conflicts

opens the door to a deeper development- one where

the active workers can break free to pursue their

own interests as workers, unlimited by what's

acceptable to various layers of union officials

who are 'on board' for the collaboration strategy

embodied by Andy Stern and the current SEIU

national leadership.

For the recently- activated northern CA

healthcare workers in UHW, this means more a

chance to develop local and regional networks and

groups to discuss and possibly fight for their

own working conditions. This then means they can

take up the direct and public fight for better

healthcare conditions for the patients and

through them with the wider working class. This

would no longer depend upon the local leaders,

altho it doesn't have to be against them where

they're willing to support and help lead such a

fight. The parallel with education and other

public sector workers seems clear: we are the

largest unionized sector of the workforce. Our

working conditions are usually other people's

care or 'service'. For teachers, our working

conditions are students' learning conditions.

And that can encourage those who are also

discontented with their/our own union leaders,

most of whom practice the same 'win-win'

partnership as the SEIU, even if not always taken

to Stern's extreme. Clearly, the growing

pressures of corporate capitalism are tilling and

preparing the ground for resistance. The question

then is, "What kind of resistance?" We can sit

back and feel good about this victory in CA, or

we can take heart and use it to build on, towards

a working class movement that organizes around

our common good and living links, rejecting the

'win-win' collaboration strategy which is really

a 'lose-lose' for us. In my experience, those who

reject capitalist priorities and work for a

different society have special contributions to

make.

To fight effectively, the internal opponents,

like in UHW-W, must sometimes mobilize and try to

steer the workers affected. This opens the door

to workers to fight for things like good

staffing, providing quality healthcare, defending

pensions, et.al. To fight within such a context,

it is necessary to reject the ideas that guide

collaboration and have ideas and goals- like

providing quality health care for all by building

worker-patient or teacher-student-family unity.

Ideas and strategy/tactics, which make sense and

can inspire others to stand up and face attacks.

Since most unions oppose this outlook, in daily

life, we must develop organizations working

towards working class solidarity, of

one-for-all-and-all-for-one, and against this

dog-eat-dog, illustrated by even the 'reform'

leaders of UHW-W in this case.

The deepest expression of and the goal of

creating solidarity requires overturning the

capitalist system and creating a socialism that

Marx saw as inherent in our struggle with the

domination of capital. He saw and worked for a

world free of class or other forms of oppression.

For those of us who're either convinced of Marx's

analysis or just engaging his ideas, this

successful fight inside the SEIU points towards

the living class struggle as the organic, natural

grounds for developing class awareness,

independent organization, and greater

understanding of how the system works and how we

can all 'work it' for our common good and future.

Earl Silbar is a lifelong socialist activist who

has been a Teamster, a member of Laborer's

International, the IBEW, part of an in-plant IAM

organizing committee, and a founding member,

activist and citywide elected officer, delegate

to state and national AFSCME conventions, Local

3506 delegate to the Chicago Fed. of Labor, and

as chief steward of AFSCME 3506. He recently

retired after teaching GED for 27 years in

Chicago's City Colleges. Red1pearl@aol.com

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