Andy Stern
Free Press, 224 pages

America seems like a worrying place to be a leftie, and SEIU President Andy Stern lays out a formidable list of obstacles to progressive politics in this book. Global forces have changed the American economy to the point where the American dream that hard work can be valued and rewarded just isn’t a possibility any more. Income inequality has rocketed, job security is a distant memory, pensions and healthcare are imploding. Stern believes that the natural way to tackling this breach lies in trade unions, but that they will need to change themselves dramatically too in order to seize the opportunity.

Stern is well placed to tell us about change in unions. He talks at length about the transformation of SEIU from 7^th placed “SEIwho?” to become the largest AFL-CIO affiliate – a process started by his own mentor John Sweeney, now President of the AFL. The union was reorganised to focus on clear industries – transferring members in illogical sectors (such as utilities workers) into other unions that could better represent them. Coherent branding was adopted across a very diverse organisation. Union dues were ramped up to double, and staffing numbers in services provided to locals cut dramatically, building Stern a huge war chest to spend on growth – organising new workplaces and new sectors. Stern doesn’t flinch from detailing some of the difficulty of this process – including the protests of the large numbers of SEIU office staff he laid off. In the end though, the numbers tell the story, and SEIU’s rise (albeit aided by sectoral mergers) makes for a compelling case.

There’s a lot of detail about the logical conclusions of this – the labour movement split of 2005, when SEIU led other unions to break from the AFL-CIO and form the Change to Win Coalition. Stern is understandably rather anxious to justify his role in the process, and he doesn’t go too far into critiques of his actions, which would have been very interesting – though arguably outside the scope of this fairly slim volume.

The core of Stern’s position seems to be a serious swing towards partnership in industrial relations, albeit a version of partnership with very large teeth (in the form of major and very innovative shaming campaigns for employers who won’t play). To enable SEIU to organise new sectors, they have signed deals, which on the face of it run counter to the traditional union approach. Recognising that most employers won’t sign with them if it means they will become uncompetitive, SEIU offer no-bargaining deals. The union agrees not to bargain for increased pay until they have also signed up a majority of the rest of that sector. SEIU are clear from the outset that the union is seeking to raise the employer’s costs, but this way no employer opens themselves up unilaterally to undercutting from others if they do up their pay rates. SEIU have managed to cover huge numbers of staff in building services and healthcare who might never otherwise have been organised, but those members have needed to sustain the fight for years before they’ve seen much of the benefits.

Unions, Stern believes, need to change their image, and renounce the traditional class-based rhetoric, transforming themselves from organisations that are seen to create problems into organisations are seen by members and employers to be in the business of solving problems. A union really focused on developing new personal services will be able to support members in all areas of their working lives – with employers even potentially outsourcing benefits provision to the union, so that members will be able to get continuity of service.

Stern’s political strategy is expounded in some detail – breaking away from straight partisanship to endorse both Democrat and Republican candidates, based on their individual records on labour issues. Surprisingly, SEIU chuck a lot of money at the Republicans, and so far don’t seem to have anything to show for it (and the section about inspiration from Newt Gingrich will make many of us shudder). Also controversial have been Stern’s plans to get the membership more politically engaged in choosing the candidates they want to support – hence SEIU’s powerful drive behind the ill-fated Dean campaign (the only time I saw Stern, he was sporting an almost parodically huge Dean booster badge), and several state races where SEIU have backed other candidates against traditional labour movement favourites.

Cynics might wonder throughout how much ‘the interests of working Americans’ really means ‘the opinions of Andy Stern’. Indeed, the space devoted to his own biography and the fact that the book’s co-writer isn’t mentioned until after the end notes would seem to further suggest that this may be as much about the man as about the movement. I’m convinced though that much of the megalomania jibes are unfair, and he’s on the level with this serious attempt at a manifesto for labour – tackling questions head on that others would rather not think too hard about. This is very challenging but ultimately inspiring stuff, with its call for the labour movement to cast off the habits which have put it into decline and to ante up for some really big ideas. Some of it is certainly just for the US politics nerds amongst us, but there are a lot of challenges here for the UK too – especially as we seem to be only a little behind the States with some of the problems we’re facing.

You can buy it online from Amazon, through the tigmoo book club, which is trying to siphon off the anti-union bookmongers’ profits into promoting unions on their own doorstep.

More from Andy at www.acountrythatworks.com