SEIU rearranges 600,000 into mega locals

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In June 2006, the SEIU International Executive Board decided to merge its California membership of 600,000 into new mega locals.

After hearings where local officers could stake their claims, a two-person IEB subcommittee submitted detailed recommendations on how all those public service employees, public health employees, long term care workers, property service workers and private sector workers are to be reassigned into huge locals. Once the membership has digested this heavy dose, the report makes clear, there may be more to come.

Prior consolidations and mergers in California, which resulted in the creation of some locals with over 100,000 members, had been on a piecemeal basis. The changes this time were far more sweeping. A highlight was combination of all local government workers into four new regional sector locals which would also include virtually all public health care employees and some others.

Public sector registered nurses, all placed in the four new public sector locals, were singled out for favored treatment. They will have "dedicated staff," a designated position in each of the locals, and carefully spelled out representation in the leadership of SEIU's state and national Nurses Alliance. There could be a special motive in this case. The SEIU seeks an alliance or merger with the AFL-CIO's United American Nurses, the major union of RNs. The gingerly treatment of the SEIU's own nurses could be a sign that it is willing to sweeten the terms of any such alliance, a readiness to concede to nurses rights that are denied to others.

Prior to the adoption of the final restructuring scheme, oral and written proposals were solicited from administration officials and local officers. Considerations of geography, bargaining patterns and history, single and multi-employer contracts, and public and private employment status were weighed in the report to the IEB, but there was more than a whiff of union politics in the final determination. Something like the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when all Europe was divvied up after the fall of Napoleon -- borders redrawn, countries reconstituted with different populations and spheres of influence.

The SEIU constitution gives the IEB the power to act on its own, but it ordered a referendum anyway. The risk of losing was minimal or zero because the rules left nothing to chance. Anyone in a position of authority was required to support the IEB decision; none could oppose it. As international president Andy Stern's directive stated, "All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion...No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter." Apparently only rank and filers without office, using their limited individual resources to campaign against the plan on their free time to reach those 600,000 scattered over the whole state were free to oppose the referendum. The referendum carried, presumably by one of those "overwhelming" majorities in which only a tiny minority, here reportedly only 2%, voted.

Here now is another plan to stimulate union growth by reorganizing and centralizing. But it remains only a plan whose success is hardly guaranteed. Ironically, the justification for this move seems to lie in the failure of earlier moves to increase union strength by reorganizing and centralizing.

SEIU problems in California were bluntly laid out in the report to the IEB. Despite mandates to organize, organizing classes and other pressures, only "a relatively small percentage" of growth in the last decade has been due to organizing new workers. California public sector growth in 1998-2005, according to the report, was "anemic." And growth has not been in geographic areas with rapidly expanding populations; so employers could use lower wages and benefits in growing low union density areas to attack SEIU gains elsewhere. Some locals are small and underfinanced and "unable...to adhere to [SEIU's] organizing mandates." Further consolidation and less fragmentation, it is argued, will increase bargaining power. Perhaps. That remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the new structure will inevitably tend to diminish rank and file involvement and control. There will be the distance, the huge numbers, the diversity of employers that inhibit contact among members of any mega local.

The pressures of confronting highly organized groups of employers may genuinely require the organization of big strong locals centrally directed. That has always been the case in the mass production manufacturing industries dominated by the big corporations. Where that is the case, it is necessary to cultivate all the institutions and practices of internal union democracy to assure membership control of their own unions. But the SEIU seems to be moving in the opposite direction; its leadership has been forthright about its preference for tight top-down control. It is implanting the spirit of subservience into the new structures.

As permitted by law, all the officers of those big new locals are appointed by the international. To make sure that even those handpicked officers can be trusted to remain amenable, candidates for appointive office must sign a "code of conduct," a loyalty oath which signifies not loyalty to the union but to its ruling administration.

Local 521 with over 45,000 members, for example, is one of the new locals with an unelected leadership. In addition to various harmless declarations, those who aspire to appointive positions must sign a loyalty pledge code which in addition to various harmless declarations includes the following: "2. I will not...engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at union meetings, in the press, or other literature or venues. I will be mindful that emails could become public, and will not disparage other leaders, staff, or members in any such way that could become public either intentionally or not... 3. ...Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others. I am not giving up my right to speak and make my position clear, but as a member of the board or committee, I will support the decision once it has been made. 4. I will not ...take ...legal action against the union or its leaders and other committee members for actions they take in their legal role as leaders, as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee."

Objections from rank and file activists and local officers complaining of a "top down" management style by condescending leaders, often appointed from above, might be discounted as gripes from the usual suspects --- inveterate malcontents. But Jerry Brown was president of the SEIU's big New England Health Care Local 1199 and prominent in progressive causes. Now retired, he has mentioned some of what's been bothering him. In a generally favorable review of a recent book by Andy Stern he speaks about where he thinks Stern "goes off track." Included are observations regarding consolidations:

"Larger is often better...But how do we do this and still have workers make the crucial decisions in their own workplaces...How do we make sure there is real democracy in choosing and electing union officials? Andy continues to stress the importance of consolidation...He does not address the necessity of preserving effective democratic processes..."

What Brown wrote months ago, is even more to the point after the great consolidation in California.
An exchange on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees (building services, public employees).