Labor's Civil War in California: The NUHW Healthcare Workers' Rebellion by Cal Winslow

Author:Cal Winslow [Winslow, Cal]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Law, Labor & Employment
ISBN: 9781458775412
Google: d-cu1BO61AsC
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Published: 2010-07-15T10:33:09+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

“We Can Get Involved”

Perhaps more than any other union, SEIU has made a principle of centralized, top-down decision making. It has maligned membership rights and the election of representatives; it has belittled the idea of workers’ participation, in theory as well as practice. In its centralism, “one voice,” the SEIU leadership substitutes itself for the membership, in its “one strategy” it implicitly substitutes itself for the entire labor movement if not the working class. Oblivious to the history of the movement’s unpredictably, its spontaneity, SEIU’s perspectives are mechanical in the extreme.

Unfortunately, there are others in the labor movement who share these views, but few with the shamelessness of Stern and his regime. And SEIU, alas, has its supporters, including in the universities and amongst the “experts” who staff the country’s academic labor centers, a small chorus of academics who cheer SEIU on.[96]

In the years of Stern’s ascent, it has been common, in seminars and on the agendas of academic conferences, to see listed speakers and panels debating the topic “union democracy.” The 1999 Yale conference, hosted by Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice (SAWSJ), featured such a session; the question was debated, pro or con, “Are democratic unions the best way to mobilize militant workers?” This panel addressed this “ controversial question from the perspective of labor historians, union organizers and democratic theorists.” Stern, while not on this panel, was a keynote speaker at the conference.[97]

The debate, ten years on, still with SEIU at the center, has undermined fundamental beliefs, including what ought to be the self-evident notion of the indispensability of democracy within the workers’ movement. Historian Steve Fraser once cynically suggested that union democracy was a non-issue, a fetish of an insignificant Left, when not a weapon of the Right. He added, approvingly: “many labor leaders secretly believe and practice what one of them openly confessed back in the 1920s: ‘As a democracy no union would last six months.’”[98] This has taken its toll on the movement—as has the SEIU checkbook; rare is the labor center, publication or project that is not in debt to Stern, one way or another. Nevertheless, this will change; it has already. This past summer, hundreds of academics, most still unwilling to support NUHW, signed a letter condemning SEIU raids on UNITE HERE. Stanley Aronowitz replied to Fraser in the ’90s debate and his answer still stands: “When unions deprive the rank-and-file of choice, when leaders favor mobilization but not participation, they succeed only in driving a deeper nail in labor’s coffin.”[99]

SEIU nationally was not the scene of ’60s and ’70s movements, but it moved center-stage in 1995; its President John Sweeney led the “New Voice” team that successfully forced Lane Kirkland, President of the AFL-CIO, to step down, then defeated his nominee, Secretary-Treasurer Thomas Donahue. Sweeney’s election was highly unusual in U.S. labor history: seldom are incumbent administrations replaced. This was an important achievement but one with few memorable results. But one should be acknowledged. Sweeney’s election was greatly helped

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