State of the Union: SEIU Faces Dissent In the Ranks

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 infighting 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."

But SEIU international leaders say Rosselli is unwilling to support national union strategies because he is narrowly focused on the interests of his local. They maintain that the union needs more national coordination of resources and activity to better confront national and, increasingly, global employers.

"Fundamentally," says SEIU spokesman Andy McDonald, "the issue is that there's a disagreement about the fact that there are democratic decision-making procedures in SEIU that [Rosselli] has withdrawn from, and he disagrees with strategies he supported previously [when they benefited him] and that other local leaders support."

The fight has deep roots. In 1988, Rosselli, a former nursing home worker, won an insurgent campaign to lead what was then Local 250 in the Bay Area. He rebuilt the union by emphasizing democratic decision-making and worker militancy.

In 1996, Rosselli supported Stern's candidacy for SEIU president and his plan to strengthen local and national organizing. Rosselli implemented a highly successful organizing drive that used strikes and negotiations with employers to secure the right for workers to organize with little interference. He also cooperated with other locals and the international to win neutrality from hospitals, especially the big Catholic Health Care West chain. The local also organized nursing homes, and was the country's first union to organize homecare workers, which is now the main area of SEIU growth nationally.

In 2005, Local 250 merged with southern California healthcare workers (Local 399) to form UHW. From 2001 to 2006, UHW added 65,000 members -- more than any other SEIU local -- although recent gains have slowed as UHW builds several long-term hospital organizing campaigns. UHW also supplied organizers and funds to help hospital workers organize around the country.

Organizing nursing homes proved more difficult. In 2003, Local 250 and another local of long-term care workers signed on to an experimental organizing agreement that SEIU International had negotiated with the Nursing Home Alliance, a group of nursing home operators. Alliance companies agreed that if SEIU successfully lobbied for higher state reimbursements to operators, they would be neutral when the union organized selected facilities.