(reprinted from ILC International Newsletter No. 196 - Aug. 15, 2006)
ANDY STERN & "CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS":
FROM IMMIGRATION REFORM TO SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE
By ALAN BENJAMIN
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), has been spending a lot of time lately hanging out with the
CEOs of some of the largest U.S. multinational corporations in his quest
to work out a "much-needed partnership" to the big problems
facing our country.
In February, Stern addressed a gathering of corporate lawyers in Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico, where he told them that "SEIU's goal for 2006
is to bring unions and corporations together as partners, not enemies."
He continued: "Employers need to recognize that the world has changed
and there are people who would like to help them provide solutions in
ways that are new, modern and that add value to companies. ... A partnership
between labor and corporations would be a step towards the intended
goal."
Then, addressing himself directly to the trade union movement, Stern
stated:
"On the other side of the coin, union members have to understand
that companies are not their enemy, but must think about increasing
shareholders' wealth. ... Labor should ask itself, 'how can I contribute
to meeting those [shareholders'] expectations in a way that also meets
mine'?" (Epoch Times, February 27, 2006)
For Andy Stern this is not just rhetoric. Stern's first project was
to build a "partnership" with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart known as the Essential Workers Immigrant Coalition
(EWIC). Together with these "partners," Stern and SEIU drafted
the outlines of what would become the McCain-Kennedy "immigration
reform" bill - an essentially anti-immigration bill that was approved
earlier this year by the Senate in a slightly amended form.
The SEIU-sponsored bill calls for futher militarizing the U.S.-Mexico
border, expanding the second-class "guestworker" (or "essential
worker") program, increasing employer sanctions, and expediting
deportations. These measures have been advocated for many years by the
corporate CEOs.
What was the tradeoff for labor and the immigrant rights movement?
It was the inclusion in the Senate "compromise" bill of a
"path to citizenship" -- after 11 years or so, and after clearing
major hurdles -- for some of the 12 million undocumented immigrants
living in the United States.
Most immigrant rights advocates have called this tradeoff unacceptable.
Nativo López, president of the Mexican American Political Association
(MAPA), calls it a "Corona-Lite" version of the widely despised
Sensenbrenner bill adopted by the House of Representatives last December.
"If they thought that compromising on the enforcement measures
to obtain some form of legalization would satisfy the immigrant community
or the immigrant rights movement," López said, "they're
absolutely wrong." (Democracy Now radio program, June 26, 2006)
Speaking at a July 24 Educational Forum sponsored by the San Francisco
Labor Council, Olga Miranda, president of SEIU Local 87, said openly
it was not the role of a union to seek out "common ground"
that would compromise the interests of union members. Such "joint
solutions," Miranda noted, are inevitably detrimental to immigrant
workers and to the labor movement as a whole.
Miranda insisted that her union must return to its traditional role
of fighting for the rights of its members -- and for the rights of all
working people -- against the bosses' agenda.
Miranda said her statement was not an "act of defiance" against
her union. Rather, she insisted, it was an act of defense of her union
against the attacks on the labor movement by the bosses and the Bush
administration -- attacks that have been relayed, "misguidedly,"
by the leadership of her union.
Comments such as these by Sister Miranda are becoming more and more
commonplace within SEIU and some of the other unions that are part of
the newly formed Change to Win coalition.
Perhaps what most shocked SEIU members -- particularly those within
the union's Latino caucus -- was when SEIU Executive Vice President
Eliseo Medina publicly praised Bush's May 16 speech in which Bush briefly
mentioned the so-called "path to legalization" while announcing
he was sending 6,000 National Guard troops to beef up border enforcement
along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Medina said, "We are encouraged that the president understands
it will take a comprehensive solution to address the complex immigration
crisis our country now faces."
SEIU members across the country were outraged that Medina ignored all
the repressive aspects of Bush's proposals. Many pointed out that Bush's
directive will lead inevitably to more deaths of undocumented immigrants
seeking to cross the Arizona desert.
Opposition to Stern's new course, in fact, has expanded throughout
the labor movement.
Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO and director
of the labor federation's immigrant worker program, called the Senate
"compromise" bill "punitive and inhuman." And she
added, "The fact that some national Latino organizations and some
unions have signed on to it is very offensive." (interview with
labor journalist Lee Sustar on May 19)
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association,
was asked to comment on Stern's policies during a 15-minute segment
of CBS TV's "60 Minutes" that was devoted to Stern's "new
course for labor." DeMoro told Lesly Stahl of "60 Minutes"
that Stern's "partnerships with giant corporations [would] result
in undermining a union's prime mission to defend and advance the interests
of its members."
"Unions," DeMoro said, "would have to make enormous
concessions to get corporations to accept them as junior partners, to
the detriment of their members." (CBS TV, May 14, 2006)
Trade unionists understand instinctively that what DeMoro said on "60
Minutes" is right on the mark. The corporations' only interest
in seeking a "partnership" with the unions is to co-opt the
unions into accepting -- and co-administering -- their anti-labor agenda.
Stern and Single-Payer Healthcare
But Stern has not been content to deal only with the issue of immigration
reform.
As trade unionists and healthcare activists around the country are
fully aware, the fight for single-payer healthcare is back on the front
burner. Nationally, there is growing support for HR 676, the single-payer
resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman
John Conyers of Michigan. HR 676 now has 72 congressional co-sponsors.
Unions across the country are coming on board.
In California, the fight for single-payer is heating up as unions and
activists are increasing their outreach and lobbying in support of SB
840, the single-payer healthcare bill introduced by State Senator Sheila
Kuehl. A vote in the State Assembly on this bill is expected in the
coming weeks. SB 840 supporters believe they are on the verge of securing
the votes of the 41 State Assembly members needed for the passage of
the Kuehl bill.
A big boost to this effort occurred on July 25-26, 2006 when the biennial
convention of the California Labor Federation endorsed SB 840.
It is precisely at this moment -- when momentum is beginning to shift
toward single-payer -- that Andy Stern has chosen to reach out to his
wannabe corporate "partners" to implore them to do the "right
thing" by addressing the healthcare crisis. But what single-payer
activists find scandalous is that in all Stern's recent statements and
invocations to the corporations, Stern has openly and forcefully dismissed
single-payer as a viable option.
This Part Two of Stern's "corporate partnership agenda" began
with an op-ed article by Stern published June 17 in the Wall Street
Journal in which he begs corporate leaders to do something, anything
-- except single-payer. Stern writes, "Today I sent a letter to
every CEO in the Fortune 500 asking them to make healthcare their national
priority. I urge corporate leaders to come forward."
Stern's letter to the business leaders concludes as follows:
"Our union members -- your employees -- will work with you. The
old idea that business and labor can't work together for the common
good is as outdated as lifetime jobs. The Service Employees International
Union is the largest healthcare union in the country. Our membership
includes nearly one million nurses, doctors, hospital staff, nursing
home and home care workers. We know health care. You know business.
Together, let's build a new 21st-century American economy."
Stern's letter is explicit in stating that "single-payer is not
viable," as it will not be supported by corporate America. This,
of course, is true. Countless corporate CEOs and politicians talk about
the need for "universal healthcare" -- but they are adamant
about keeping all the health insurance companies, which are reaping
mega-profits, in the mix.
Single-payer would eliminate the healthcare insurance companies from
the healthcare system. These companies are the middlemen who contribute
nothing of value to the system. The savings realized by getting rid
of them would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars annually and
would be enough to provide coverage for all who are currently uninsured.
Stern's proposals -- in the name of "universal healthcare coverage"
-- call for tinkering with the current healthcare system; nothing with
which the bosses could disagree. In fact, the very same day Stern published
his article in the Wall Street Journal, GM CEO Richard Wagoner came
out with a plan similar to the one proposed by Stern.
Stern Reneges on 'New Deal Answers'
Stern presented his case to the employers more fully in a talk he gave
at the pro-business Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on June
16. He was one of many panelists asked to address the healthcare crisis.
Other panelists included the senior vice president of Costco Corp.,
the president of the National Small Business Association, and the director
of the Health Policy Program of the New America Foundation.
The transcription of Stern's talk, published on the website of the
Brookings Institution, reveals Stern's all-out effort to find "common
ground" with corporate America -- that is, with the very people
who have been cutting workers' wages, reneging on paying healthcare
to their employees, dropping pension plans ... and just simply attacking
all the gains and rights won by working people through bitter struggles
for close to one century.
Stern's starting point, as usual, is his desire to help the corporations
find solutions to their growing woes. He states:
"Obviously, we have a huge problem for American business because
it is pretty hard to compete in a global economy when the price of your
healthcare is put on the cost of goods, while in other countries, it
is shared amongst society....
"We live in a new century, and we need a new healthcare paradigm
because we have a new economy. ... We can't drive into the future in
America, looking in the rearview mirror. We are as far today from the
New Deal as the New Deal was from Abraham Lincoln. ... I don't think
we can simply look back to the answers in 1935 and imagine them working
today."
But what are the "answers of 1935" if not the recognition
of trade unions by the Wagner Act, or the understanding that the State
has a fundamental responsibility to all its citizens to provide Social
Security, healthcare, public education, and other vital social services?
Isn't single-payer healthcare one such 1935-type answer?
Stern's rejection of single-payer becomes more explicit later in his
presentation. He continues:
"I think we need to find a new system that is not built on the
back of the government. I am here to also say I don't think we need
to import Canada or any other system. We are going to build an American
system because we are Americans and we don't like anybody else's system."
Of course, the Canadian model that Stern does not wish to import is
the highly vaunted Canadian single-payer system. And not building a
system "on the back of the government" is the language of
the corporations, not of the labor movement.
Stern Joins Schwarzenegger at Healthcare Summit
To make things even more explicit, Stern and other Change to Win top
officials agreed to participate in a July 25 Heathcare Summit in Los
Angeles organized by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that featured corporate
executives, doctors, and medical administrators.
This forum was viewed widely by single-payer activists across California
as an event aimed at undercutting support statewide for the Kuehl bill.
It also was seen by most healthcare advocates as a photo opportunity
for Schwarzenegger's re-election bid. What came out of the event was
the illusion that Schwarzenegger cares, when in effect his record proves
otherwise.
An article in the July 25 Los Angeles Times highlights the divisions
within the trade union movement over this healthcare summit. It states,
in part:
"As some organizations picket the talks at UCLA, others thank
Schwarzenegger for convening the session on funding medical coverage.
.....
"The divide was apparent in the differing tones inside UCLA's
air-conditioned Covel Commons, where Schwarzenegger held his 'Summit
on Health Care Affordability,' and outside in the sweltering courtyard.
"Outside, the California Nurses Association ran a picket line
of 40 people. 'Any union leader that crosses is a scab,' said Rose Ann
DeMoro, the union's executive director.
"The head of the California Labor Federation, Art Pulaski, recalled
last year's fight with Schwarzenegger over his special election and
denounced the governor for not doing more to provide health coverage
to Californians.
"Inside, the national presidents of three prominent unions --
the Service Employees International Union, the United Farm Workers and
the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America -- took
seats around a long table with the 50 summit participants, and thanked
the governor for convening the session. ...
"DeMoro, the executive director of the nurses' union, which voted
last year to join the AFL-CIO, said union leaders who participated in
the summit were betraying their labor brethren.
"'It's really shocking frankly, because working people have been
hit the hardest by the governor's healthcare policy,' she said. 'The
right wing has been extremely effective in dividing the labor movement.'
"Doug McCarron, the carpenters union president, called the criticism
'ridiculous. I want to see bipartisan programs and solutions for American
workers'."
Here you have it all: Stern and his CTW colleagues were inside the
convention center around the same table with Schwarzenegger (who has
opposed one union-sponsored healthcare bill after another) and with
the heads of major corporations, while outside, picketing this anti-labor
and anti-healthcare summit were the head of the California Labor Federation
and leaders of unions, such as the CNA, that have been the most vocal
supporters of healthcare rights and single-payer.
For DeMoro and the CNA, Stern's participation at the governor's summit
was tantamount to scabbing.
California CTW Unions Not Following Stern's Course
But in California at least, SEIU and the other Change to Win unions
don't seem to be going along with Stern's new pro-corporate course.
At the California Labor Federation convention in late July, the SEIU
and Change to Win delegates voted to support SB 840, the Sheila Kuehl
single-payer bill. They also approved a policy statement on immigration
that lambastes "guestworker" programs and opposes the further
militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Across the state, SEIU delegates to central labor councils have endorsed
the statement by the National Network For Immigrant and Refugee Rights,
which takes issue on every major question with the positions put forward
by Stern.
Stern's new policies have little support among the rank and file --
and even among many top leaders -- of SEIU and the other Change to Win
unions. This is a very good thing. But there is still an urgent need
to organize the discussion in these unions, and more generally in the
labor movement as a whole, about the dangers of Stern's new course.
This pro-partnership orientation must be rejected explicitly by the
ranks of the CTW unions and by the entire labor movement.
Don Bechler, who chairs Health Care for All in San Francisco and who
has been a leader in the Machinists union for 17 years, explained why
the unions must reject Stern's new so-called "strategy." He
said:
"Union leaders have been elected to lead. Leaders should put forward
what they think is sound health policy for working people. Universal
healthcare with single-payer financing has been shown over and over
again to be great health policy. It saves money and delivers one great
class of care to all classes of people.
"What we have with the private insurance companies is delivery
of different classes of care for different classes of people, wasteful
spending, and most important a hideous system where insurance companies
try to avoid the sick and only insure the healthy. That is good business
for them, but bad health policy for America. The insurance companies
are the ones who brought us the term 'pre-existing condition.' It is
a term used solely by the insurance industry to deny care to those who
need it.
"Again, the role of union leaders is to advocate what is best
for working people. Keeping private insurance companies in the healthcare
loop is not in the best interests of workers. You always enter contract
negotiations with a clear idea of your objective. When it comes to healthcare,
it's not that corporations don't know what single-payer is; the problem
is that they have chosen other anti-worker solutions to cut healthcare
costs.
"On the issue of healthcare, Andy Stern seems to have steered
away from this responsibility to lead."
True, indeed. The unions should not be groveling at the feet of the
corporations, pleading with them to change their ways. They can't change;
all they care about is the need to make more profits. The unions should
not be seeking a place at their table. Labor's interests and those of
corporate America are diametrically opposed. Labor should stick to its
guns, fighting for its own interests in opposition to the employers
and the government.
The only table labor should be seated at is the negotiating table,
where labor is across the table from management, fighting for its demands,
based on a mobilized membership to give their bargaining team the best
relationship of forces possible to wrest concessions from the bosses.
This is what independent trade unionism is all about.
**********************
ONCE AGAIN, WHERE DOES SEIU'S ANDY STERN
HOPE TO TAKE THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT?
[Note: The following article is reprinted from the November-December
2006 issue of Unity & Independence, the regular supplement to The
Organizer newspaper. To subscribe to Unity and Independence, please
contact us at <ilcinfo@earthlink.net>.]
By ALAN BENJAMIN
If you pick up a copy of a newspaper these days, you're bound to find
in the business section an article about SEIU President Andy Stern and
his frenetic drive to convince corporate America to forge a new "partnership"
with the unions.
On Oct. 5, for example, Bloomberg News Service ran an article titled,
"Stern's Group Shows Slow Growth a Year After Split With AFL-CIO."
The article reports that, "Stern has started talking to Wall Street
firms, including New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Boston-based
Thomas H. Lee Partners LP. The talks, Stern says, are devoted to building
new relationships and changing old perceptions.
"We are trying to say to them that we aren't here to make you
uncompetitive," Stern said. "Let's at least have a conversation
as opposed to us just showing up when you are trying to buy a company
and beating the hell out of you and having you think we are a bunch
of traditional union people who want to slow down progress."
But could it be, as Stern writes, that these Wall Street speculators
and merger sharks are promoting "progress?" Who in the labor
movement could ever accept this absurd claim -- a claim belied by the
past 25 years of Wall Street-driven corporate downsizing, union-busting,
job destruction, and offshoring?
What Wall Street has done is to fuel the corporate cannibalizing of
our country's industrial base, because that's what happens when they
"buy" company after company. These Wall Street tycoons are
the enemy of all working people. Any worker can tell you this. There
is no common ground with them.
And since when is it the job of the union to help make Wall Street
"competitive"?
"The new face of labor"
On Oct. 15, the Chicago Tribune noted that, "Andy Stern is a union
leader who talks like a management strategist. Some labor stalwarts
call him a sell-out. A recent profile in Fortune labeled him 'the new
face of labor'."
One Fortune 500 CEO, Steve Burd from Safeway Corp., has in fact become
a big fan of Stern's new-age "unionism." This is the same
Burd who only a few years ago waged a multi-million-dollar effort to
defeat a protracted grocery workers' strike in Southern California.
An article published in the Nov. 4 San Francisco Chronicle describes
Stern's full-court press to find a "solution" to the national
healthcare crisis in the United States "that serves working people
and American business alike," as Stern writes in a recent open
letter to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. After Stern's open
letter was published, Burd told an audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
"I could have written that!"
What is Stern's proposal for healthcare?
Don Bechler, coordinator of the Health Care For All-San Francisco coalition,
sums it up: "Andy Stern wants Americans to switch to something
like the Federal Employee Benefit Health Plan. This keeps the insurance
companies and HMOs, the real swindlers, in the healthcare loop. This
is unacceptable for all of us who advocate a single-payer system. But
it's the reason someone like Burd is so supportive of Stern."
Stern's "broad agenda"
The San Francisco Chronicle article puts this discussion on healthcare
in the larger context of Stern's strategic orientation.
"Today," the Chronice reports, "the 55-year-old Stern
has a broad agenda, laid out in a new book, 'A Country That Works: Getting
American Back On Track.' Š Stern says that unions for too long sought
confrontation rather than common ground. This has been Stern's mantra
since July 2005 when he pulled his union out of the AFL-CIO to form
a new labor federation, Change to Win.
"We led with, 'The employer is the problem'," Stern told
the Chronicle. "When you lead with, 'We understand you are in a
competitive environment and there are things we can do,' you make workers
partners rather than adversaries," he said.
The Chronicle article continues:
"Stern learned about organized labor from people who had come
before him -- union men from an industrial era 'when they were fighting
for their lives, in many cases.' Class conflict permeated his world.
"The thinking was, 'The employer is the problem, whatever he is
doing is not truthful,' Stern said."
Stern on the AFL-CIO split
Stern's book is, indeed, very revealing. For one thing, it explains
the real reasons behind the split in the AFL-CIO.
Stern writes that the split was necessary to "organize new members
into our unions" and to "build greater union density."
It was precisely for this reason that many progressive-minded unionists
gave Stern the benefit of the doubt when Stern organized the split in
the trade union movement 18 months ago. But the overriding reason for
the split -- the one that overshadows all others and that has nothing
whatsoever progressive about it -- comes through loud and clear in Stern's
book.
This is how Stern puts it:
"The break [in the AFL-CIO] was necessary Š because of the failure
on the part of the AFL-CIO to modernize its strategic approaches to
employers in order to take into account their competitive business needs.
Š Unions are overdue for substantial change. They need to find ways
to persuade business leaders to work in partnership with them. Š
"Like most traditional labor leaders, I had been trained to be
distrustful of and antagonistic with 'the boss,' and I brought that
attitude toward the relationship. The distrust can be rightfully earned,
but this class-struggle mentality was a vestige of an earlier, rough
era of industrial unions, and our new service-sector union had adopted
it without much strategic examination. Š
"Understanding the many issues confronting our employers -- rising
benefit costs, outsourcing, globalization, decreased public funding
for their services, non-union competitors with lower costs and more
flexibility -- gave us insight into how to enhance each individual employer's
competitiveness. Š
"A working relationship that can add value to the business can
result in workers sharing fairly in the employers' success. Š Disappointingly,
only a few employers have shifted from their 'unions are the problem'
mentality. Asking our employers to make the choice of cooperation or
confrontation is a dramatic paradigm shift. We have reinvented ourselves,
but it takes two to tango."
Stern doesn't mince words. His clear intent is to "reinvent"
the entire trade union movement -- and not just in the United States.
As we will discuss more fully in a special section of our next issue
of Unity & Independence, Stern's book helps to explain the true
nature of the recent merger in Vienna on Nov. 1 between the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation
of Labor (WCL).
The new merged "union" federation is called the International
Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). It was founded on the basis of "partnership"
principles, bylaws and objectives that could have been taken straight
from Stern's book.
In defense of trade unionism
The unions were forged through bitter struggles with one purpose --
to defend workers' interests against the bosses and all those in their
service. They were not created to promote partnership "tangos"
with the employers. In fact, whenever such "partnership unions"
arose -- and they were called "company unions" -- sooner or
later the workers overcame these new obstacles and found their way back
to basic trade unionism.
Today, the bosses are no different than they were 100 years ago. If
anything, they are even more profit-thirsty and more rapacious. From
Wall Street to Main Street they are hell-bent on lowering their labor
costs. Wherever you look, corporate downsizing, privatization, sweatshop
labor, forced labor, child labor, and union-busting -- just to mention
a few of the scourges of this era of capitalist globalization -- are
more and more widespread.
This is not the time to throw in the trade union towel, as Stern proposes.
It's time to act with even greater determination and collective strength
as "a bunch of traditional union people."
******************
SEIU MEMBERS REGROUP TO DEFEND IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
SEIU members in San Francisco are not pleased with Andy Stern's wholesale
endorsement of the Kennedy-McCain "immigration reform" bill
and its provisions for "guestworker" programs. [See the July-August
2006 issue of Unity and Independence for a complete report on this bill
and on Stern's unacceptable compromise with the employers' Essential
Workers coalition.]
In mid-November, SEIU members were invited to a meeting of "SEIU
for Immigrant Rights" to "hear the latest in the struggle
to get SEIU to drop its support for 'guestworker/bracero' language that
hurts immigrants and other workers."
The call for this meeting reads, in part:
"Arnold Schwarzenegger, a friend of big-business, was just in
Mexico recently talking up a federal 'guestworker' program. It looks
like the man who last year attacked unions in California (and lost)
is now at it again!
"How? Guestworker programs are designed to take away the rights
of immigrant workers within them. Then they are used to erode the position
of all workers. That's why bosses love them! Our union can't support
this! Not only are many of our members immigrants, but we all as workers
have a stake in fighting for the rights of other working people.
"Our group will present a resolution for membership education
on immigrant rights and to change SEIU's support of guestworker legislation."
Groups such as this one are springing up in SEIU locals across the
country. SEIU members are among the most militant unionists you will
find anywhere. They are fighting to preserve their unions as fighting
instruments to defend and advance workers' rights -- against the bosses
and against Andy Stern's abandonment of trade union principles. These
SEIU members deserve our full support. -- A.B.
********************
EXCERPTS from Interview Conducted by ILC International Newsletter with
Alan Benjamin on the ICFTU-WCL Merger
[Note: The following interview is reprinted from ILC International
Newsletter No. 214-215 of January 2, 2007. This issue contains a complete
dossier on the merger in Vienna on November 1, 2006 that gave rise to
the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Copies of this newsletter
can be obtained by writing to <ilcinfo@earthlink.net>.]
ILC: In August 2005, there was a major split in the U.S. trade union
movement. A large sector left the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win. Can
you tell us about this split ?
Alan Benjamin: Eighteen months ago, Andy Stern, president of the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), led a split that took six unions
out of the AFL-CIO. This split affected about 40% of the active trade
union movement in the United States.
At the time, many union activists thought this was a progressive development.
After all, Stern was talking about organizing new members and re-invigorating
the trade union movement. He even went so far as to criticize the AFL-CIO
for its reliance on the Democratic Party to advance workers' interests.
Many of us in the trade union movement, however, were far more suspicious
of Stern's real aims. Behind all the rhetoric about "increasing
union density" and organizing new members, Stern was putting forward
a new kind of trade unionism. The labor movement was slow to understand
exactly what Stern was up to. In fact, the business press was far more
astute and understood from the beginning that Stern's overall objective
was to transform the trade unions into docile instruments through new
"partnerships" with the employers.
ILC: What were the repercussions in the United States of the creation
in Vienna last November 1, 2006 of the International Trade Union Conference
(ITUC)?
AB: The fact is there was no information at all, at any level of the
U.S. trade union movement, about the merger between the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation
of Labor (WCL). The only information U.S. trade unionists were able
to obtain on this merger and therefore on the formation of the new International
Trade Union Confederation, was through the weekly newsletter of the
International Liaison Committee. But otherwise there was not a single
article in the labor press -- at least not that I know of -- about this
major development in the international trade union movement.
The only thing that appeared was after the ITUC's founding Congress
in Vienna. The AFL-CIO posted to its website a glowing article that
hailed the creation of this new federation, and they congratulated Australian
leader Sharon Burrows for becoming the new president of the ITUC. As
we speak [early December 2006 - Ed. note], I have not yet seen Change
to Win post anything on this founding congress, though it is quite clear
that the SEIU and Change to Win unions are equally, if not more, supportive
of the new ITUC. In fact, when you look at the bylaws and objectives
of the ITUC, you could almost say they were taken directly from Andy
Stern's new book.
So unfortunately, this merger went through without any real discussion
in our trade unions. It will now be the task of people who have worked
closely with the ILC to educate and open a discussion in our unions
about the dire consequences to our labor movement that are posed by
this new ITUC.
And I think we are bound to get a good hearing for our point of view.
Already there is widespread opposition within the SEIU and the Change
to Win unions to Andy Stern's new partnership course. Union members
are already seeing the ITUC in action when they see Stern promote his
partnership agenda in relation to immigration "reform" or
healtchare "reform."
ILC: What is the relationship between Global Unions and the new International
Trade Union Confederation?
AB: There is a direct relationship. In August 2005, just one month
after the split in the AFL-CIO, the largest "Global Union"
federation, Union Network International (UNI), met in Chicago for its
international Congress. Under the banner "Imagine a Global Union,"
UNI delegates voted to embrace the concept of partnership with the global
corporations that Andy Stern today is promoting so widely. In fact,
it is no surprise that Andy Stern in his new book is so full of praise
for UNI and the so-called "Global Unions."
These "Global Unions," in my opinion, are going to be called
upon to function as the pillars of the ITUC. They will be used to dismantle
existing unions and union federations. Their agenda is the same one:
They call for a "global corporate social responsibility" and
"responsible corporate competitiveness." So in my view you
may well have the top-down structures of the ITUC resting on the industry-sector
groupings known as the "Global Unions."
It is important, as I see it, that as we discuss the dangers inherent
in the ITUC, we continually pay attention to the "Global Unions"
and how they will be utilized by ITUC to undermine national trade unions.
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