By Harold Meyerson - Washington Post
The special gift of this union has been its ability to do things differently Andy Stern told me on Tuesday as he looked back on his 14-year tenure as president of the Service Employees International Union in the wake of his reported decision to resign which shocked Washington after it leaked out Monday.
Sterns resignation could be Exhibit A in the SEIUs Doing Things Differently file. It comes at the height of his power not just as the leader of Americas most dynamic union but also as the leader of liberalisms most effective political organization; one with the best access to President Obama and that has done more than any other to build a nationwide progressive infrastructure over the past couple of decades.
The resignation comes on the heels of several notable victories: the enactment of health-care reform for which the SEIU had campaigned for years; the appointment of pro-labor members (including former SEIU attorney Craig Becker) to the National Labor Relations Board; and a California court verdict largely upholding the SEIUs position in a bitter dispute with onetime leaders of its major Bay Area local. If anything these victories make Sterns departure even more of a conundrum by normal Beltway standards.
Yet Stern who went to work for the union straight out of college 38 years ago has wanted to step down for some time and these recent successes offered the opportunity to go out on a high note. Those who know him find his resignation anything but a surprise. He decided a long time ago that he would not be one of those people who would hang on forever says one of his closest friends. I know you dont see people at the pinnacle of their careers doing this but Andys always been outside the box.
Sterns outside-the-boxness may be the only attribute on which his supporters and critics -- both are legion -- can agree. After then-SEIU President John Sweeney made Stern the unions organizing director in 1984 Stern began directing organizing efforts toward whole categories of workers that the rest of the labor movement was largely ignoring including janitors who clean the office buildings of Americas downtowns and later home-care and child-care workers and private security guards. These workers were immigrants women and people of color in jobs and sectors said Stern that many other unions didnt know existed.
He rewrote the rules of organizing says a competing unions organizing director. Unionizing janitors required raucous street demonstrations and pressuring the financial institutions that owned the office buildings. Efforts were made to enlist immigrant communities and churches in the cause. Organizing home-care and child-care workers who were largely paid out of state funds meant getting governors to sign orders permitting the workers to form a union which in turn compelled the SEIU to become a major electoral player in numerous states. Organizing security guards who are increasingly employed by massive transnational conglomerates required the SEIU to form and fund worldwide alliances of guard unions that have compelled those employers to acquiesce to global organizing accords.
At a time when the labor movement as a whole was shrinking the SEIU grew tremendously -- from 625000 members when Sweeney became president in 1981 to a little over 1 million when Stern became president in 1996 to 2.1 million today. The best measure of success however is the transformation of members lives. SEIU janitors for instance have health insurance for themselves and their families which cannot be said of the millions of nonunion workers in similar jobs.
Meanwhile the SEIU built a reputation for turning out more precinct walkers and phone-bank workers among its members than almost any other American organization. It funded the groups that mobilized nonmembers -- chiefly new immigrant voters and inner-city African Americans -- at election time. As Walter Reuthers United Auto Workers was the chief funder of many civil rights campaigns during the 1960s so Sterns SEIU has been the leading force behind many immigrant-rights campaigns today.
Not all of Sterns outside-the-box ideas have been good. His decision to split from the AFL-CIO and form a separate federation Change to Win has not led to the uptick in organizing he predicted. Just changing union structures may help Stern acknowledged Tuesday but is not in itself determinative. Indeed with each passing month Change to Wins raison detre grows harder to discern even as the cost it imposes on labor solidarity rises. Stern -- who seems at times a figure of Dostoevskian complexity -- has displayed a consistent inclination to step on other unions toes and his internal reorganization of SEIU which has resulted in bigger and fewer locals has dismayed many within the unions ranks and some union-democracy advocates.
Not even his fiercest critics can ignore his successes however during a time when union successes were few and far between. Stern leaves as he presided -- way outside the box.
meyersonh@washpost.com
