SEIU holds on at NLRB. Autocracy tops Democracy.

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In an NLRB election in October, 43,500 Kaiser healthcare workers in California got what had been denied to them in the Service Employees International Union, the right to choose which set of officers should run their local union.

On the eve of the election, these Kaiser workers were involuntarily imprisoned in the SEIU; their local had been trusteed by International President Stern; local leaders they had democratically elected were arbitrarily removed; a new set of officers was autocratically imposed upon them without election. The NLRB gave them a free choice. They had the chance to restore leaders they had once elected. The majority chose instead to submit to an officialdom selected for them.

The SEIU won with 18,290 votes. The National Union of Healthcare Workers lost with 11,364 votes. For neither: 365.

It was a big event but not your run-of-the-mill NLRB collective bargaining election. Voters were not deciding whether to have a union -- for many years they had already been unionized -- but whether those 43,500 Kaiser workers in California should accept continued representation by the Service Employees International Union or should shift to the National Union of Healthcare Workers, a new unaffiliated independent union. And that's part of a long and convoluted story.

In 2000, these 43,500 Kaiser workers were members of United Healthcare Workers-West, a strong SEIU local whose 150,000 members were distributed all over California. Its elected president, Sal Rosselli, like the union itself, was respected as an influential progressive force in the labor movement and in state politics. Rosselli first emerged as an important SEIU leader in 1988 when, running as a progressive insurgent, he was elected president of SEIU Local 250. In the years that followed, his influence rose; he worked in harmony with International President Andy Stern; his Local 250, merged with others, became the axis around which the UHW-W grew into the 150,000-member behemoth of workers in homecare, hospitals, and nursing homes -- public and private.

All went well until sometime in 2007 when Rosselli concluded that Stern was signing sweetheart agreements with nursing homes on terms that undermined the conditions of his UHW-W members. When Rosselli criticized Stern publicly and led a petition campaign that forced Stern into momentary retreat, that was the end of the happy relations between the two. But Rosselli was president only of a local, although a powerful one. Stern, however, as international president was armed with authoritarian powers. After a relentless campaign against Rosselli, Stern trusteed the local and removed Rosselli from office along with all the other top local officers. Usually when a union international president trustees a local, any recalcitrant local officer that stands in his way is fairly easily pulverized. But this time, Stern broke into a hornet's nest of unionists who would not submit supinely to autocratic rule.

In his 20 years of local leadership, a small army of devoted followers had gathered around Rosselli; and he had accumulated a treasure of respect from labor-oriented intellectuals around the country and community leaders in the state. Rosselli and his followers resigned from the SEIU, established the new National Healthcare Workers Union, and gathered the thousands of petitions necessary to challenge the SEIU in NLRB elections that would enable them to take back the members left behind, trapped under Stern's trusteeship.

The SEIU invested all it could in millions of dollars and an army of paid campaigners to induce workers to accept rule by usurpers imposed on them. It could dig into the treasury of its 2,000,000 members and tap the dues money paid by those 43,500 Kaiser workers to finance this campaign. How much did the SEIU pour into this election? The Rosselli camp says it was 40 million dollars. The SEIU claims it was "only" around one-tenth of that, an "only" that counts out to four million dollars.

In contrast, the NUHW pieced together what it could. It had to rely largely upon private donations and hundreds of unpaid volunteers, because its leaders, previously on the paid staff, were now jobless and without pay. With few resources or staff, the Rosselli/NUHW camp forced the rich, autocratic SEIU into a major battle whose outcome remained in doubt up to the last moment. From that standpoint it was a moral victory for the NUHW. But moral superiority alone wins no wars.

In one ironic aspect, this campaign shredded the facade of the SEIU's glittering image. In the years of SEIU President Stern's rise as a celebrity, the SEIU proclaimed that it was striving for "Justice for All." It claimed to seek great social changes, to change to win, to change the labor movement, to change America, to change the world. Rosselli, they charged, was concerned only with the 'narrow' interests of his members without regard for grand goals.

Now, to induce workers to accept a prefabricated officialdom, they appealed to their narrow, nervous, even unreasoning fears. If you abandon the SEIU, they warned, your union contract with Kaiser will be voided, and your union gains will disappear. The alarm was fright-inducing -- and false. Yes, if NUHW took over, the SEIU contract with Kaiser would be voided, but the company is required to maintain all previous working conditions while the new contract is negotiated. The SEIU counted not on the noble ideals of Justice for All, but on elemental fear. Meanwhile, the NUHW message was about the dignity of workers, the right to choose their own leaders, and the shame of bowing one's head to autocracy.

Kaiser workers were presented with a free choice. In dignity, they could have restored their own elected leaders, affirmed the principles of union democracy, and delivered a ringing rebuke to condescending saviors. Instead, for whatever reasons, a voting majority chose to submit to overseers that had been imposed upon them. It was a sad day for a free labor movement.

The NUHW charges that Kaiser management illegally backed the SEIU by giving its campaigners access to voters that was denied to the NUHW and by threatening to withhold wage increases if the SEIU lost. The NUHW will challenge the validity of the election and demand a recount.