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In an "open letter" addressed to Andy Stern, president of the 1.9 million member Service Employees International Union, dozens of U.S. authors, academics and several journalists on Thursday took Stern to task for an ongoing feud with United Healthcare Workers West, an SEIU local based in Oakland.

Among the signatories: famed radical and iconoclast Noam Chomsky, emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; authors Howard Zinn and Mike Davis; and a host of professors from institutions like UC Santa Barbara, Harvard Law School, Yale, City University of New York, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, New York University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, University of Washington, UCLA, and a number of other universities across the country.

"We are writing to express our deep concerns about SEIU's threatened trusteeship over its third largest local (UHW)," the open letter stated. "We believe that there must always be room within organized labor for legitimate and principled dissent, if our movement is to survive and grow."

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ETA: Here is the text of the letter and the signatories. The website is also informative in disclosing the reform that UHW is trying to achieve within SEIU.

[ 03 May 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]

Dissent in the Ranks
SEIU Is the Nation’s Fastest Growing Union — But at What Cost?
By David Moberg
Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU United healthcare Workers-West, has come under fire from the international union's leadership.
Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, has come under fire from the international union's leadership. Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine No American union today exercises more influence than the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a leader in both organizing and political action. And no union leader gets more — or more favorable — press coverage than its president, Andy Stern.

As a result, a political fight now developing within SEIU has broad implications for the labor movement and progressive politics. And the decisions the union makes at its June convention in Puerto Rico are likely to intensify debate over how the labor movement can grow on a grand scale — both in numbers and power.

The in-fighting pits United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) — a 150,000-member California healthcare local union — and its president, Sal Rosselli, against the international union’s leadership. Simmering for several years, the disagreements boiled over in February when Rosselli resigned from the international union executive committee. Then, in late March, Stern took the first step toward implementing a trusteeship that would allow him to oust UHW leaders and take control of the local.

A complex web of grievances caused the dispute. But Rosselli charges that Stern has pursued growth in numbers by centralizing power and resources, and by granting concessions to corporations. SEIU’s growth, he claims, has come at the expense of workers’ power. Rosselli believes the union needs to rely more on comprehensive pressure campaigns involving workers to neutralize employer opposition to unionization.

“I want a movement of workers governed by workers for workers,” who are fully empowered, Rosselli says, “to be in control of their relationship with their employer, to be in control of the political direction of their union.”

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TURNS OUT that the man hailed as the savior of the U.S. labor movement for the 21st century is an old-school labor bureaucrat after all.

As the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) convention began May 31 in Puerto Rico, union President Andrew Stern faced opposition for his methods, including making secret deals with employers that curtail union rights, forcing mergers of union locals to create huge and unaccountable bureaucratic entities, and intimidating critics inside and outside the union--even resorting to physical force to do so.

All this may come as a shock to liberals who greeted Stern and SEIU's success in organizing new members--the union now claims 1.9 million members--as a sign of labor's renewal after decades of decline. Stern's leadership of the Change to Win coalition, a 2005 breakaway from the AFL-CIO, was often seen as the kind of bold move necessary to turn the movement around.

Three years later, there's mounting evidence of sweetheart deals with employers and heavy handed treatment of critics, including threats to take over opposition union locals and a physical assault by SEIU members on the recent Labor Notes conference that was to have featured a speaker from the California Nurses Association, which competes with SEIU in organizing RNs.

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Union, charity paid thousands to firms owned by official's relatives. Video production and day care companies are owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the head of the SEIU local, which represents low-wage home healthcare workers.

Don't know what the relation is between this LA based union/local within the SEIU, and the Oakland based UHW discussed in the article posted earlier.

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Originally posted by huberman:
Thanks. The question is why are Canadian unions/Canadians allowing this foreign union to grow and operate in Canada? Corporate and union imperialism is equally repugnant (the latter worse, because it is supposed to represent ideals).

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Originally posted by huberman:
Thanks. The question is why are Canadian unions/Canadians allowing this foreign union to grow and operate in Canada? Corporate and union imperialism is equally repugnant (the latter worse, because it is supposed to represent ideals).

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So the Oakland based local gets threatened with trusteeship and/or taking away half its members, without any substantive issues.

But the favoured LA local gets a cover-up for real problems.

[ 17 August 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

- UHW and Roselli claim that Stern was planning to trustee their local but SEIU has always denied this.

And the allegations against Freeman are just that, but they were not just coming from anonymous sources.

At any rate, events have moved on past the speculation.

The charges are serious enough that the SEIU itself felt compelled to get trusteeship of the LA local. Bizarrely, they using that as cover to seek trusteeship of the Oakland UHW local.

when they talk about the LA case- in trusteeship- they use neutral 'we will see' language, while with the Oakland local where there no public charges and are only seeking trusteeship they make blatant threats.