A Country That Works by Andy Stern

Author:Andy Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Effective Twenty-First-Century Unions

SEIU’s last ten years of experimentation with value-added employer relationships has evolved into a set of principles for successful workers’ organizations and a more responsible competitiveness for employers.

Employees and employers need organizations that solve problems, not create them. In a fast-paced, competitive world, unions need to facilitate competition by leveling the playing field for all employers, not by simply raising the costs of doing business for unionized ones alone. Unions must be experts in providing benefits and training, facilitating job mobility, and assisting employers in overcoming unnecessary legislative and political obstacles to their success.

Both employers and employees must begin with the presumption that all parties want a mutually beneficial relationship based on teamwork. Both parties should lead with the power of persuasion. Recently, we have begun to ask our employers to serve as our “reference” to other employers with whom we seek to partner; our current employers can vouch for our good-faith efforts to improve training or solve problems that are important for business success. We are appearing at trade association meetings and public forums to engage in direct exchanges with business leaders on future opportunities.

Improved quality, increased corporate revenue, and increased workers’ skills and opportunities should all lead to more equitably distributed financial rewards.

Unions must be responsive to market and competitive dynamics and the changing workplace. They should focus on entire industries and not individual work sites and employers.

Work is not monolithic and unions cannot be “one size fits all” organizations. Individual workers need a more personal relationship with their union—“a union of one.”

To maximize success, employee organizations need to be aligned with employers’ market and industry structures and flexible enough to respond to ever-changing employer dynamics, and competent enough to be good partners.

Effective unions in an international economy must be global.

Employees need to have a meaningful and independent voice in their workplaces on issues of quality, training, efficiency, and fairness.

New organizations are needed to assist American workers in self-managing their work lives.

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