Is Andy Stern’s SEIU Organizing Model
Good or Harmful for Workers and Unions?

Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, has won wide public acclaim, including plaudits from top corporate executives, for building the SEIU into the largest and fastest-growing union in the labor movement. But long-simmering criticism of his methods and behavior from his own members has finally surfaced and will be a source of acrimonious debate at the union’s international convention in June.

The issue that has evoked the debate is often expressed as “top down” vs. “bottom up” unionism, although the consequences of each position are far-reaching. Top down organizing is where you try to work out a deal with the employers as your main focus. Bottom up organizing is where you build a grass-roots campaign that becomes strong enough to force an employer to sign a contract. Both strategies have their vigorous adherents.

Let’s examine the top-down strategy as explained and practiced by its most successful practitioner, Andy Stern. He believes that employers and workers often have common interests, where they can each profit by working together. He sent a letter to each of the CEOs in the Fortune 500, suggesting the basis of a partnership; the union would be prepared to make certain concessions, provided the corporation would facilitate the organization of its employees into unions.

If a company refused to buy the partnership concept, Stern could then apply the high-pressure tactics that unions use to get an employer to sign a contact. From Stern’s point of view, it’s a good and easier way to build a union, while avoiding the difficult and frustrating task of recruiting new members.

To make sure that union members would not protest about an inferior contract or an undemocratic policy, Stern instituted a series of trusteeships and mergers of local unions, particularly dissident ones who were swallowed up in huge locals, where the rights of individual members became meaningless. He explained the mergers by saying that small locals have no power and are often an impediment in dealing with major corporations.

A former liberal, Stern now scorns union democracy, stating that talking about members’ rights was largely a waste of time. He publicly stated his belief that employers should be relieved of the burden of funding for health care and pension plans. He was able to build a coterie of union officers that assured his re-election in past years by convention delegates, not by a vote of the membership.

Here are some samples of what Stern and his subordinate officials were ready to give up, sometimes in secret agreement, in return for gaining new members:

• Limit patients’ ability to sue over neglect or abuse.

• Subcontractors would decide which, of a fraction of workers, would be allowed to join the union.

• Labor disputes would be handled by national headquarters rather than by the members.

• Curtailment of ability of workers to expose unsafe conditions in nursing homes.

• Block workers from striking and speaking out publicly.

What Explains the AFL-CIO’s Poor Organizing Record?

Stern answers his critics by saying that, while he was adding thousands of members to his union, the AFL-CIO was continuing its decline in numbers and bargaining power. Stern raises an interesting question: Is it no longer possible to organize workers in the traditional way? How hard have AFL-CIO unions tried? Or have they fully succumbed to the current idea of many leaders that organizing without the Employee Free Choice Act is virtually impossible?

It is worth noting that during the 1930s, rank-and-file groups organized tens of thousands of workers into unions. Is bottom up union organizing Labor’s dinosaur?

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