SEIU Funds New Book to Rewrite History

By Steve Early

June 30, 2010. BeyondChron 

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8274#more

In the last five years, the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) has gone from being a media darling to
generating more bad press for itself than any other labor
organization. Some of SEIU's negative publicity is a product
of right-wing union bashing. But a huge amount is self-
inflicted - the result of conflicts with other unions,
internal corruption scandals, and unseemly battles with its
own members in California. To bolster its fading progressive
brand, SEIU commissioned a documentary film in 2008 called
Labor Day. Several million dollars worth of membership dues
money later, Labor Day was dead on arrival. Now, SEIU has
produced a slick $25 dollar coffee table book called Stronger
Together: The Story of SEIU. Among its questionable claims is
that Andy Stern's meddling in the UNITE HERE divorce led to
attacks on SEIU by other unions, a unique perspective on that
dispute, to say the least.

Among true believers at SEIU headquarters in Washington, hope
springs eternal in the self-promotion department, just as it
does in Hollywood. The fact that one narcissistic project has
crashed and burned doesn't mean the next one will be a dog
too. If people don't want to watch a movie about SEIU, maybe
they'll buy book a book about it - like a 276-page, largely
wart-free organizational portrait penned by the husband of
the union's general counsel?

Thanks to a further expenditure of dues money (the full scale
of which won't be revealed until SEIU files its financial
disclosure form with the Labor Department next year) and a
Vermont publisher not previously known as a vanity press, we
now have a fitting sequel to Labor Day. Cobbled together,
with lots of headquarters help, the book takes Labor Day
Director Glenn Silber's heroic narrative (about how SEIU
single-handedly elected Barack Obama 'to change the direction
of the economy and the country') and adds thirty-four more
chapters to round out the union's history.

Unfortunately, a lot of the new material is equally self-
congratulatory or factually challenged.

If Stronger Together were your only source of information
about SEIU, reading this book would surely make any union-
minded person a big fan of what Andy Stern once called his
'Purple Army.' There has been, in the past, much to admire
about SEIU and, in some areas of organizing strategy, for
others to emulate. (My own alma mater, CWA, certainly did, in
at least one major campaign that I assisted.)

Author Don Stillman highlights the kind of creative
organizing, bargaining, political action, and community
coalition-building that most distinguished SEIU, in a
positive way, from the rest of the pack. Justice for
Janitors, child-care and home care worker campaigns, support
for immigrant rights, green jobs, jousting with Wal-Mart,
protecting hospital workers from needle-stick injuries -it's
all there, along with a whole chapter on how SEIU came to
embrace the color purple. (Not just any old shade, mind you,
but Pantone 268c exclusively.)

Stillman argues that the union's corporate-style branding
campaign was critical to raising its public profile and
creating a common union identity for a disparate membership
composed of nearly 2 million health care workers, public
employees, janitors, security guards, and others. It's when
his book deals with crucial matters of substance, rather than
form - like the thorny controversies of today, not SEIU's
past glory - that Stronger Together begins to lose
credibility fast.

The author once aspired to a higher calling in the field of
labor journalism - and greater candor about union-related
topics - than his current 'work for hire' would indicate. As
editor of the rank-and-file paper, The Miner's Voice, Don
Stillman helped union dissidents in Miners for Democracy
(MFD) topple the murderous dictatorship of Tony Boyle in the
United Mine Workers (UMW) four decades ago. After the MFD's
election victory in 1972, he headed an editorial team at the
United Mine Workers Journal (that I was privileged to be part
of and that, more prominently, included the renowned photo-
journalist Earl Dotter and future SEIU and Teamsters
communications director Matt Witt).

In 1975, the Journal managed to win a National Magazine Award
for our investigative reporting on coal industry issues - a
rare honor for a union rag (and a testament to Don's close
ties to the Columbia School of Journalism, which doles out
those prestigious NMAs.) We tried, wherever possible, to
cover internal controversies, member complaints, and union
setbacks, instead of just touting what everyone knew, in real
life, was not an endless stream of UMW 'victories' (in an era
when the union even had a few.)

The fact that coal miners could find, in their Journal, more
than just front-to-back pictures of the top officialdom,
along with flattering transcriptions of their every word and
deed, gave us some street cred and a more engaged readership
than most labor publications enjoy. The always-looming gap
between union rhetoric and workplace reality was actually
narrowed a bit, at least for a while.

With its glossy paper, nice color photos, clean lay-out and
many true-to-life SEIU war stories to retell, Stronger
Together is not a 'crappy infomercial,' by any means, and is
a cut above Labor Day, which the Village Voice called, a
crappy infomercial. But given who's footing the bill for this
official history, the author's own lucrative past consulting
work for Andy Stern, and his close personal ties to SEIU (his
wife Judy Scott, is the union's top lawyer), it's not
surprising that Stronger Together so often substitutes the
ideal for the real, and reads like an extended SEIU press
release.

Producing a book, for internal union consumption, with the
look and feel of a labor 'family album,' fully-airbrushed and
leadership friendly, is no heavy lifting for a writer and
editor of Stillman's ability. Overcoming the skepticism,
anger and concern that has been aroused, among so many SEIU
members and friends, by its multi-faceted misbehavior in
recent years, is quite another journalistic challenge.

And the Don Stillman of today - now a comfortable Washington,
D.C. labor insider and well-paid SEIU consultant - doesn't
even try to meet it.

Instead, he makes sure that the beatific visage of Mary Kay
Henry, the union's new President, appears more often than any
other in the book, by far. Stillman also helps burnish her
resume for the job she was held since May by providing Mary
Kay-centric accounts of campaigns like the 'Breakthrough At
Catholic Healthcare West' (Chapter 15).

At CHW, a lot of the real work on the ground to win a 'fair
elections deal' and thousands of new members was done by
folks now in the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers
(NUHW). But since Stern seized control over United Healthcare
Workers (UHW) - an action taken to 'expand accountability,'
according to Stillman - these ex-UHW activists have been
consigned to SEIU's version of what George Orwell, in 1984,
called 'the memory hole.'

Some of Stronger Together's shortcomings in the area of truth
and memory are on display in chapters dealing with fellow
unions, not just its own former organizers. Who knew, for
example, that Change To Win was still doing so well as a
robust alternative to the larger federation headed by Rich
Trumka? Stillman's chapter on SEIU's bid to 'reform the AFL-
CIO or build something stronger' reads like it was written
right after the 2005 labor movement split.

The author doesn't even note that two of the seven Change To
Win founding unions have quit since then, with one (UNITE
HERE) returning to the AFL-CIO. Nor does his account
acknowledge the general consensus that, despite all its PR
sound and fury at the time, the split really hasn't changed
much - other than reducing the dues income of the national
AFL-CIO and the per capita dues burden of the five unions
still paying less to CTW.

In Stronger Together, we get no sense of the scale of the
rank-and-file backlash against SEIU's own 'transformative '
restructuring - imposed via forced mergers of local unions,
dysfunctional trusteeships, and related suppression of
membership rights. If any group of workers ever tries to flee
SEIU, it's not because they're unhappy about such things;
they've just been misled, by either external or internal
evildoers engaged in a 'brazen raid.'

For example, Stillman informs us that the Canadian Auto
Workers tried to distract SEIU from its 'growth course' north
of the border with a 'fracas' that left it 'with fewer
members.' 14,000 fewer members, to be exact. And they only
turned to a new union when Stern, against their wishes, tried
to merge multiple locals in Ontario and imposed an unpopular
trusteeship to achieve his goal.

Elsewhere in Stronger Together, we learn that the current and
much larger potential exodus from SEIU - in California health
care - is basically the work of an equally pernicious pied
piper named Sal Rosselli. After Rosselli's 'secret' anti-SEIU
plotting was exposed and he was ousted from UHW through
another Stern trusteeship in 2009, 'the local quickly shifted
to a member-focused union that was winning major gains for
its members.'

SEIU better ship copies of Stronger Together out to Kaiser
Permanente right away, in bulk, because thousands of UHW
members there have apparently decided that the way to make
'major gains' is by calling for the largest NLRB election in
seven decades and switching to NUHW.

Among Stillman's more glaring omissions is any mention of
SEIU's own widespread and much-condemned 'raiding.' There's a
whole chapter on its 'successful organizing' in Puerto Rico,
but nothing about its failed attempt to replace the 40,000-
member FMPR, the island's largest union.

This squalid 2008 adventure featured SEIU collusion with the
Governor, who was trying to crush the left-led FMPR after a
militant strike; it ended up costing members on the mainland
many millions of dollars (to no avail) and further tarnished
the union's reputation, here and there.

Stillman's account of the implosion of SEIU's alliance with
UNITE HERE in the 'multiservices sector' makes you wonder why
he didn't just give John Wilhelm's union the FMPR treatment.
Clearly, pouring millions of dues dollars down the drain, in
an inter-union battle that wreaked havoc within the
progressive wing of labor, is better explained not at all.
But here's Don's take on the UNITE HERE divorce and SEIU's
completely innocent role in it:

'The merger of UNITE HERE collapsed in 2009. About 100,000
members largely, from the former UNITE, then joined SEIU as
‘Workers United.' The break-up UNITE HERE came about because
of difficulties within that union. The move of Workers United
to SEIU proved very contentious and led to attacks on SEIU by
other unions.

SEIU repeatedly sought a negotiated settlement - but no
agreement had been reached as this book went to press.'
(underlining added)

Attacks on SEIU by other unions? Perhaps Don is losing track
of his time frame here and describing (what SEIU used to
call, in 2007-8) 'attacks' by the always-menacing California
Nurses Association, a union 25 times smaller than SEIU?

(Of course, those that couple kissed and made up a year ago,
and began coordinating their organizing at HCA in Texas and
other states, a so-far successful venture never mentioned in
the book -perhaps because their truce is fraying or an
equally torturous re-writing of CNA-SEIU history would be
required to explain it?)

One thing that is impressive about Stronger Together is its
solicitation of feedback from readers who 'spot an inaccuracy
or other problem.' In the book's preface, they are urged to
send any comments or corrections to [log in to unmask] My
query, already sent to that address but with no reply yet,
raises the question of money - as in how much the author was
paid for SEIU's latest publishing venture?

Thanks to L.A. Times reporter Paul Pringle, we know that SEIU
or an associated non-profit paid Stillman $210,000 (over four
years) to help Stern write his own 2006 memoir-cum-policy
tract, A Country That Works, and knock out another SEIU-
subsidized collection called Since Sliced Bread: Common Sense
Ideas From America's Working Families in 2007. Stronger
Together draws heavily on 'Organizational Change at SEIU:
1996-2009,' a yet unpublished report by three Rutgers
University academics and a Washington, D.C. labor consultant
that cost about $650,000 in all.

Yet no defenders of the union have received as much total
union funding as Don and Judy Scott, his always cheerful
spouse. Judy was a key legal architect of the UHW take-over,
and related litigation, that Don describes so dispassionately
in Stronger Together. (In footnote #168, we are assured that
'Scott recused herself' from any involvement with the book
and had attorneys who report to her conduct an arms length
'legal review' of it.)

As a Washington, D.C. power couple (in labor circles at
least), their joint journalistic and legal endeavors on
behalf of SEIU leaders are a marvel of inside-the-Beltway
synergy. Once the salaried head of the union's legal
department, she now works far more lucratively as an
'outside' general counsel for SEIU and partner in the
Washington, D.C. firm of 'super lawyers' known as James &
Hoffman.

Scott's firm was one of four involved in the controversial
lawsuit against NUHW and its founders, which has cost SEIU
members nearly $10 million so far but produced a damage award
of only $1.5 million (now being appealed). For its invaluable
work on that case and other SEIU matters, James & Hoffman
received more than $2 million last year (and, as of December
31, was still owed another half million); Scott's personal
salary and benefits in 2009, for her SEIU work alone, was
more than $240,000.

Her share of the firm's profits added nearly $90,000 to that.
And then we also have a more cryptic SEIU LM-2 report entry
for 2009 indicating that the author in the Scott-Stillman
household was paid more than $90,000 by SEIU for 'Support for
Organizing.'

In other words, Don and Judy are definitely among those who,
as the back cover of Standing Together proclaims, 'have won a
better future for themselves and their family through SEIU.'
The economic condition of many SEIU dues-payers in California
is far more precarious, which is why putting a convincing
shine on all things Pantone 268c is not easy here - on screen
or in the pages of a book.

[Steve Early got his start in labor journalism as a staff
member of the United Mine Workers Journal. He later worked
for 27 years as an organizer for the Communications Workers
of America. He is the author of two books--Embedded with
Organized Labor (Monthly Review Press, 2009) and the The
Civil Wars in U.S. Labor (forthcoming from Haymarket Books
next year)]

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