-By Warner Todd Huston
This internal brawl within the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) is getting uglier by the minute. Readers of the Union Label Blog will certainly know we’ve been watching the fisticuffs inside the union over the direction and policies of current president Andy Stern and we have to admit that there’s been no lack of smirks and guffaws over the union’s infighting among the denizens of the ULBlog offices! Some of us here have even been tempted to chortle openly at the union’s troubles.
Still, when serious reflection is directed at this incident it cannot escape notice that everything that is going on within the SEIU seems to violate every principle that unions are mythically assumed to hold dear. Under Andy Stern’s leadership, the “democratic process” has been steadily thwarted and union leadership has attempted to create a top-down, autocratic style of control belying the supposed principle of the rank and file “having their say” in how the union operates. Andy Stern has done his best to emulate Stalin instead of Ghandi. Stern seems the very picture of the elite instead of a man of the people.
And, isn’t it the common assumption that unions stand against “the man” telling them what to do? Yet, here is Andy Stern doing his level best to himself become the man!
Well now we can add delegate stacking and election rigging on top of his other tyrannical attempts to rule with an iron fist. According to a San Francisco Bay Guardian story by JB Powell, Andy Stern’s office has been exposed for efforts to make sure that SEIU dissidents don’t end up elected as delegates to the upcoming SEIU convention.
And the emails appear to show a concerted effort by Stern’s senior staff and local loyalists to ensure that the dissidents don’t dominate the convention delegation.
Critics charge that these activities violated Local 1021’s Election Rules and Procedures – specifically Rule 18, which states, “While in the performance of their duties, union staff shall remain uninvolved and neutral in relation to candidate endorsements and all election activities.”
It also seems that these same staffers were telling their office employees that the employees shouldn’t involve themselves in the delegate elections, even as the staff leaders were doing that very thing.
One Local 1021 official who asked not to be identified told us that Tamura’s memo appeared to be a clear message that staff should stay completely out of the election. “They made it perfectly clear to the lower staff that your employment doesn’t stop [after hours], you’re still staff. That means, you don’t get involved. But now it turns out they themselves were doing it. That’s a double standard … it’s certainly not right.”
The messages between Salsa Team members show them actively working to recruit potential delegates sympathetic to Stern’s vision for the SEIU and to aid Davis-Howard in her bid to represent the union at the June convention. One missive, dated February 18, which appears to come from the personal email account of Local 1021 employee Jano Oscherwitz and was sent to what appear to be the personal accounts of Tamura and Mooney, requests that a “message for Damita” be drafted.
Naturally, the Stern staffer whose email account was found to receive these “team salsa” messages urging SEIU members to turn against the dissidents claims she has no idea where these emails came from. But the time stamps of the emails show that the electioneering messages were sent during business hours and from union accounts.
The natives are restless, though.
But some union members think there’s a serious problem here. In a written statement, Roxanne Sanchez, who was the president of the San Francisco local before it was merged with other Northern California locals to create 1021, accused Davis-Howard and the Salsa Team of “rigging the outcome” of the delegate election.
“This type of breach in ethical conduct – at such a high level – threatens the foundation of trust and confidence in our Union and in President Damita Davis-Howard’s ability to hold fair elections,” she said.
One has to wonder how a union justifies a top-down model and stay true to the basic premise of a union in the first place? It seems like an awful lot of hypocrisy going on at SEIU HQ, anyway.
But, as I’ve done before, I want to disabuse anyone that these troubles necessarily denote the demise of the SEIU. Yes, they are having some little trouble here. But they are one of the most powerful unions in the country and they represent a challenge, even a danger, to good government all across the country. These internal troubles will not eliminate that threat.
Still, it is rather amusing to see them b eating each other up, isn’t it? And, is it wrong to enjoy the discomfort of the enemy?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston