UNITY & INDEPENDENCE
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217
email: ilcinfo@earthlink.net
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Dear Sisters and Brothers:

At a time when labor needs to be united to send a clear and unmistakable message to President Obama that we will not accept anything less than card check and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), at a time when all the main unions have regrouped to say to the Obama administration that we will not accept having EFCA taken off the table (as Dianne Feinstein, Arlen Specter and Larry Summers have argued vociferously) ... at this crucial juncture, Andy Stern of SEIU has jumped ship and dealt a body blow to labor's united stand by abandoning card check and saying that labor should "consider alternatives" to EFCA. (The article below from the Washington Post speaks for itself.)

This is more than a body blow. It is a stab in the back.

Labor put Obama in office. It has every right to tell the new president that he MUST carry forth on his promise, repeated time after time at labor rallies all across the country, that he would fight tooth and nail for EFCA -- not just sign it when it came before him. He promised to advocate for it and fight for it once in office. Labor must hold him and the new administration accountable!

Labor should be mobilizing in the streets to let the Obama administration know that we aren't backing off. We are going to fight to make EFCA the law of the land. It is a life-and-death question for millions of working people. It is a vital step in implementing a real stimulus of the economy -- and not one like we have at present, which just keeps bailing out the banks and the war profiteers.

Our labor council here in San Francisco condemned in no uncertain terms the raid organized by Andy Stern and the leadership of SEIU against UNITE HERE, one of its own Change to Win affiliates. Other central labor councils across the country have taken a similar stance.

But this kind of raiding isn't just one more case of an overzealous union leader impinging on another union's jurisdiction. This is raiding carried out on behalf of the employers, and with the employers' help, to weaken the labor movement by imposing sweatheart contracts, undermining standards, and destroying all rank-and-file democracy.

This is why Stern had to go after, and attempt to destroy, SEIU UHW in Northern California, something he has not been able to achieve -- and will not be able to achieve -- thanks to the stubborn resistance and combativity of Brother Sal Rosselli and the membership of that union, which has now launched the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

The politics of Andy Stern are a serious threat to the entire labor movement. No one in labor is immune from this offensive. It takes the form of attacking a major component of his own union, in the case of SEIU-UHW. It takes the form of raiding, brazenly on behalf of the employers, the UNITE HERE union. It takes the form of undermining labor's united front in support of EFCA, right when we have the real possibility of winning card check. The list goes on.

Defeating this threat from Stern, however, is inseparable from charting an independent fightback perspective to win passage of EFCA, to ensure that serious and fundamental NAFTA revisions are on the table, to ensure that we win single-payer healthcare, to ensure that our unions do not bail out corporations (as they are doing in Chrysler and GM), and the list goes on.

The November 4 election has placed the labor movement in a unique role to champion the fight for change that the majority of the American people want and expect from the new president.

Over a month ago, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis came to San Francisco and met with many of us on the executive committee of the San Francisco Labor Council. When asked by someone in the audience what it would take to win EFCA given all the resistance from the Chamber of Commerce and all the hesitation and backsliding from politicians who claim to be labor's friends, Ms. Solis responded, "For labor to win the Employee Free Choice Act, you are going to have to build a movement."

Simple and to the point!

Building a movement means not accepting so-called "alternatives" that are more accommodating to the employers. It means organizing labor-community coalitions to do what the San Francisco Labor Council is doing on May 6-7 with its 24-hour vigil at the Federal Building in San Francisco to demand that Dianne Feinstein get back on board with EFCA. It means taking on the openly "company union" orientation of Andy Stern, which is at the root of his drive to raid and destroy his own union and other unions.

And it means affirming that labor's role, its only role, is to defend the interests of its members by remaining entirely independent of the bosses and the government. This means saying that labor's role is not to use union funds to bail out corporations, as this makes the union a partner and accomplice in the bosses' decisions to lay off workers, impose speed-up, take away holiday pay and overtime pay, and ultimately to put the union's funds (and therefore the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of retirees) at great risk.

These are challenging times for the labor movement. They could be the best of times. People are full of hope and energy to take action. They have been emboldened by the results of the November 4th election. They want change and they expect to get it -- not in some distant future, but now. Any opening for united struggle is immediately seized upon to fight back.

But this could also be the worst of times, as unions are turning inward against each other, using funds to bail out corporations, fighting against each other for the crumbs from the table.

The only way out is for the labor movement to reclaim its independent voice, its backbone and its tradition of mobilizing its members to win its heartfelt demands -- which are the demands of the working class majority in this country.

In solidarity,

Alan Benjamin
Exec. Bd. member, SF Labor Council
(note written in a personal capacity)

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(reprinted from April 20 Washington Post)

Stern Considers Alternatives to EFCA
By Alec MacGillis

As key senators have announced that they are not planning to support the Employee Free Choice Act, labor leaders put on a brave face, saying they have every intention of finding the needed 60 votes and that it is premature to start talking about alternatives to the bill.

But in an interview today, Andy Stern, head of the influential Service Employees International Union, stepped gently away from that unified front, raising the prospect of reforms that would overhaul union elections without giving workers the option of organizing sans secret ballot elections.

The legislation now before Congress, dubbed "card check," would let workers organize if a majority in a workplace sign pro-union cards; as it stands, employers require secret ballot elections. Unions say elections are marred by employer intimidation; employers say going with card-check -- what the unions call "majority sign up" -- would expose workers to union pressure.

Speaking to The Post's editorial board, Stern noted that there are ways to try to level the playing field in union elections without giving workers a way around the secret ballot requirement, such as shortening the window before elections are held -- thus giving employers less time to pressure workers -- and stiffening penalties for employer violations.

"We are on the hunt for a solution," he said. "No matter what you do, you have to change the election process. Whether it's majority sign up or not, workers have to have a choice about having an election. The bill has to address ... fast elections, eliminating employer behavior and what happens if there are employer violations. Regardless, that needs to be done."

He even suggested that the card-check bill had been introduced as it is in the Senate only in order to have the same language as the bill that is in the House, and that this may not have been the right way to go. "We sort of have a bill that talks a lot about majority signup and nothing about the problems of the election system," he said. "That was probably a decision made in the House to have the same bill come up and potentially pass the same bill -- which is not going to be a logical way to follow through now that we know ... what the situation is."

Stern and SEIU secretary treasurer Anna Burger said they have not given up on getting 60 votes for card-check, saying that they still hold out hope that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the only Republican to support the bill in 2007, could yet reverse his declaration against the bill last month. "Oh sure," Burger said about the chances of Specter flipping back. "This is Arlen Specter we're talking about."

But they also acknowledged that, for now, they are having to search for their 60 votes without any help from President Obama, who has expressed support for card-check but not made it a priority.

"The President has said he has a series of things -- that we agree that he needs to get done -- which are major for every man woman and child, like health care, like the budget, like financial regulation," Stern said. "We respect that we have a job to do to line up enough votes without him. I don't think there's any question that he says there will be a vote, that this bill's time has arrived and he will do whatever is in his power to bring this home. We just aren't there yet."

Then Stern signaled one last time that if card-check does prove to be unrealistic, he believes that unions must get behind some other substantive reform, instead of waiting until 2011 in hopes of a bigger Democratic majority after the next election. "We need to get something that's significant done," he said.