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SEIU Condemnation of Dissidents Has Long History In Labor
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Traven
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May 27, 2008 16:34 PDT
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SEIU Condemnation of Dissidents Has Long History In Labor
By Steve Early
From Labor Notes, June, 2008 (subscription info at
www.labornotes.org)
As history has repeatedly shown, the rulers of "one
party states" rarely concede power gracefully or
quietly. When organized opposition emerges,such regimes
often resort to a strategy of disinformation and
intimidation to maintain their grip on power over a
nation state or--in a context closer to home--a national
union.
After the Landrum-Griffin Act was passed in 1959, union
reform groups--the equivalent of an opposition political
party--gained more legal protection for their electoral
challenges and issue-oriented campaigning. Yet, in the
last forty years, entrenched leaders of major unions
have displayed a similar pattern of undemocratic
behavior and heavy-handed treatment of internal dissent.
In each instance, the incumbent administration focused
its most intense attacks on an independent-minded
official from its own ranks who "defected" to the cause
of reform.
The latest case in point is United Healthcare
Workers-West (UHW) and its president Sal Rosselli. Along
with a new rank-and-file group called SMART (SEIU Member
Activists For Reform Today), UHW has called for direct
election of top officers of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and other changes that would
give members a greater voice in bargaining. Rosselli's
very principled, even reluctant, break with SEIU
President Andy Stern has, nevertheless, elicited a
coordinated International Union counter-campaign,
replete with personal vilification, legal harassment,
threats of trusteeship, and/or dismemberment of
140,000-member UHW, SEIU's third-largest affiliate.
In February, for example, Rosselli appeared on Democracy
Now to debate union reform with Ohio SEIU leader Dave
Regan. (Regan is now in line to become a national EVP of
SEIU, after backing its failed attempt to disrupt the
Labor Notes conference in Michigan in April.) On the Amy
Goodman/Juan Gonzales show, Regan described Rosselli's
substantive criticism of Stern administration policies
as "shameful," "dishonest,"
"despicable,"
"contemptible," and "illegitimate."
"What's ironic to
me, "said Regan (and apparently evidence of alleged UHW
hypocrisy as well), is that "Sal has been...involved in
every major leadership discussion for twelve years [and]
participated in all the important decision-making."
Past union reformers--like Jock Yablonski in the United
Mine Workers (UMW), Ed Sadlowski in the United
Steelworkers (USWA), Jerry Tucker in the United Auto
Workers (UAW), and Ron Carey in the Teamsters (IBT)--all
attracted similar, or worse, attacks when they broke
with their respective union establishments. Well-funded
and much better-staffed foes in the labor bureaucracy
did their best to discredit them--but each of the four
played an important role in struggles for union
democracy and reform (just as Rosselli, UHW, and SMART
are doing today).
UMW Defector Paid With His Life In The Sixties
As Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reporter Paul Nyden points
out in a forthcoming Verso collection on labor
insurgency in the 1970s, Yablonski "had not been an
active miner for twenty-five years when he challenged
W.A. (Tony) Boyle" for the UMW presidency in 1969. He
turned against Boyle after serving eight years as an
International Executive Board member--the same position
Rosselli holds today in SEIU. Skeptics questioned how a
bureaucratic insider-- "a careerist" in a corrupt and
violent union--could give effective voice to the
complaints of long-suffering rank-and-filers.
Yablonski proved his mettle on the campaign trail by
reaching out to the union's numerous wildcat strikers,
black lung activists, and mine safety advocates. He even
opposed the Vietnam War, calling for immediate troop
withdrawal at a student anti-war rally held on May Day.
Amidst massive vote fraud (that later led to the
election being overturned), Yablonski lost to Boyle in
December, 1969. Three weeks later, union assassins
killed him in his home, along with his wife and
daughter. In a federally-supervised re-run election held
in 1972, the Miners for Democracy, a rank-and-file slate
formed by Yablonski supporters after his death, finally
ousted the murderous Tony Boyle. They succeeded in
democratizing the structure of the UMW, while providing
inspiration for reformers in many other unions.
Dissident USWA Director Aided "Fight Back" in the '70s
Ed Sadlowski was a new USWA Int. Rep and former local
union president in his early 30s when he first ran for
director of USWA District 31, covering 130,000 workers
in the Chicago-Gary area. Like Rosselli and SMART now,
Sadlowski's goal then was to "return the union to the
members" who had, in secretive negotiations with the
steel industry, been deprived of the right to strike
even when their contract expired. Like Yablonski,
Sadlowski had his first election stolen from him by what
was called, in those days, the "official family"--an army
of 600 appointed staffers all answerable to USWA
headquarters in Pittsburgh.
Unlike Jock, "Oil Can Eddie" survived to win a
DOL-supervised re-run by a 2 to 1 margin (thanks to
legal work by Yablonski's son, Chip). This mid-1970s
electoral upheaval threw USWA officials into a panic.
They continued to red-bait Sadlowski--even after he
joined the international executive board--and starve his
district of resources and staff in an effort to turn the
rank-and-file against him. Meanwhile, among restive
members in mines, mills, and smaller manufacturing shops
around the country, Sadlowski's post-election formation
of a multi-district reform group called "Steelworkers
Fight Back" helped legitimize organized dissent
everywhere.
As Phil Nyden writes in his 1984 book, "Steelworkers
Rank-and-File," Sadlowki's defection from USWA's "old
guard" bolstered longtimecritics of the union in
established left-wing and minority caucuses; it also
"transformed other latent rank-and-file activists--those
who were sympathetic but never felt their involvement
would make any difference--into active supporters of the
broader reform movement." Sadlowski went on to lose a
hotly-contested bid for the USWA presidency in 1977, but
his backers retained control over District 31 and
remained a force in the union elsewhere as well. Over
time, as Nyden notes, the USWA moved away from
"leadership centralization to better control dissidence'
because it didn't help "maintain union strength."
UAW Regional Leader Challenged "Jointness" in the '80s
Before running afoul of the "administration caucus" that
has dominated the UAW since the days of Walter Reuther,
Jerry Tucker was--like Sadlowski--a former local officer
in the Midwest, with even more experience as a respected
International staffer. Tucker had pioneered efforts to
win good contracts via militant "in-plant campaigns" in
manufacturing units where the effectiveness of striking
had been much diminished, post-PATCO. A one-time
supporter of Walter Reuther himself, Tucker became
deeply concerned about the state of the union under
Reuther's successors. He decided that the UAW needed
"New Directions" and, together with a network of
rank-and-filer supporters and local officers, he
organized an opposition caucus under that name.
Tucker's 1986 attempt to move up from assistant regional
director to the top job in 90,000-member UAW Region 5
was thwarted illegally by UAW headquarters, which
favored the incumbent. As soon as Tucker declared his
district director candidacy, he was fired from the
staff. Despite a systematic national union effort to
squelch "New Directions," Tucker was denied office by
only fraction of the vote. A successful two-year legal
fight ensued. After winning a DOL-supervised re-run,
Tucker was finally able to serve eight months of his
3-year term--but faced constant undermining and
interference from "Solidarity House" in Detroit.
While in office, Tucker--like Rosselli today--continued
to criticize the union for being too "top-down" and cozy
with management. As a result, Tucker was barred from the
largest GM plant in his district when he campaigned for
re-election. Tucker's opponent, meanwhile, was welcomed
there and UAW staffers throughout the country were each
dunned $500 to finance Tucker's defeat. Then-UAW
Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens traveled to Region 5
to inform members that Tucker was a "communist." The
union even pressured the Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA) to dis-invite Tucker from speaking at
Oberlin College (a tactic recently revived by SEIU to
make sure California Nurses Director Rose Ann DeMoro
didn't address a DSA dinner in Chicago.) Tucker's
inter-racial marriage was the subject of a racist
whispering campaign. UAW retirees were mobilized to
protest his appearance at a Labor Notes conference and,
later, formed the administration-backed voting bloc that
deprived him of re-election in 1989. Nevertheless,
Tucker's New Direction movement continued to contest UAW
policies--including the lack of a referendum vote on top
officers--well into the 1990s.
TDU-Backed Reformer Helped Re-Make Teamsters in the 90s
When longtime UPS local president Ron Carey bravely
agreed to run for president of the Teamsters in its
first-ever "one-member/one-vote" election in 1991, he
was dismissed by the press, union insiders, and even
some radicals in his own hometown. Despite his local's
history of UPS strike activity and aggressive contract
enforcement, Carey was accused of being a "Queens
Republican" because of his aloofness from New York
City's left-liberal political circles. Carey's refusal
to attend Teamster joint council meetings or the union's
last mob-dominated convention in 1986 was cited as
further evidence of his parochialism. His effective
defense of the working conditions of his own UPS members
would, in SEIU today, be criticized as "Just Us"
unionism. In campaign literature sent to 1.4 million
Teamsters, Carey--a life-long union militant--was even
called a "scab."
In office from 1992-7, however, Carey immediately
discontinued the past Teamster practice of endorsing GOP
presidential candidates (including Nixon and Reagan
twice, and George Bush in 1988). He ended IBT
isolationism vis-a-vis community-labor coalitions like
Jobs With Justice and the national AFL-CIO, playing a
key role in the 1995 rebellion that made "New Voice"
candidate John Sweeney federation president. Carey's
administration also embraced a "Justice For All"--not
"Just Us"--approach to cross-border labor solidarity
efforts. He sponsored widespread membership education
about the dangers of "company unionism" in the form of
management-dominated "team concept" programs. And, with
strong grassroots backing from Teamsters for a
Democratic Union (TDU), Carey launched member-based
organizing and bargaining initiatives that culminated in
the IBT's much-heralded 1997 strike victory over UPS.
Although Carey was forced out of office in an election
fund-raising scandal in 2007 (and later acquitted in
court on related charges), TDU continues to promote
reform activity in Teamster locals around the country
and challenge the current IBT leadership at the highest
levels.
Relevance Of All This To SEIU Today
Many observers of the Change To Win union challenge to
the AFL-CIO in 2004-5 lamented that the accompanying
political discussion--not to mention the resulting
organizational split--didn't seem to be over very
substantive issues. Ironically, the much-needed debate
about union structure and functioning that didn't occur
then is happening now, albeit within just one union,
SEIU. Given SEIU's size and much-applauded vanguard role
in labor, the tough questions that Rosselli and his
local have raised about the downside of some SEIU
organizing and bargaining strategies are much too
important to be dismissed as the product of an
intra-union "turf battle" or personality clash. (See
www.seiuvoice.org
or
www.reformseiu.org for further
details.)
Regardless of how SEIU reformers fare in the difficult
arena of a leadership-controlled convention in Puerto
Rico June 1-4, Rosselli and his allies have already had
a positive impact. Inside SEIU, they have--like UMW,
USWA, UAW and IBT reformers before them--created greater
political space for other concerned members around the
country. More SEIU activists will now dare to speak out
and participate in "the vigorous debate within SEIU and
the broader labor community" that Stern says he welcomes
(even as Stern loyalists, like Regan, behave in far less
welcoming fashion).
In addition, many outsiders have been forced to rethink
the meaning of "progressive unionism"--based on
UHW's
programmatic critique and SEIU's own retaliatory actions
(like the attempted Labor Notes conference invasion in
April that sent a threatening message to SEIU dissidents
in attendance, not just the handful of CNAers there).
SEIU nationally has won numerous plaudits for its
organizing success, while simultaneously moving in
political directions that no longer fit the label
"progressive." Friends of the union in
academia--both
students and professors--have begun to take notice and
some have publicly taken Stern to task in recent weeks.
A group of more than 100 labor-oriented intellectuals
sent the SEIU president a May Day letter opposing his
threatened trusteeship of UHW; meanwhile, undergraduates
involved in anti-sweatshop activity and campus-based
labor solidarity at four colleges criticized SEIU for
treating "students and campus workers as little more
than pawns" in its "corporate campaigns." Key UHW and
SMART demands--such as the right of workers to have a
real voice in major decisions about local mergers and
membership transfers--are now in the media spotlight. It
will take a strong coalition of reformers inside
SEIU--aided by friends of labor outside it--to help bring
about much-needed institutional change in America's
second-largest union.
(In the 1970s, Steve Early worked with union reformers
in the Mine Workers, Steelworkers, and Teamsters. In the
1980s, he was a supporter of UAW New Directions. In
1992--while on loan from his job as a CWA
organizer--Early was part of the headquarters transition
team of Ron Carey, the first membership-elected
president of the Teamsters.)
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