Joe Kenehan Center

What Is To Be Done?

If you have the time, it’s worth taking the time to watch (or read) Andy Stern’s keynote address from the SEIU convention in San Francisco last week.

Harold Meyerson put this year’s convention in historic perspective in his Washington Post column that week.

The really intriguing parts of the speech come about twenty minutes in.

Discussion at the convention was framed about a “circle of strength” metaphor—a somewhat clunky slogan for the 2004-2008 platform.

Stern explained that to help build a meaningful voice for working people, SEIU and the rest of the union movement need to rebuild several strengths. The most interesting include . . .

* National strength. Like most unions, SEIU is strong in a few areas but weak or non-existent in other areas of the country. There was a lot of discussion about sending members, staff, and resources to the South and Southwest to help nonunion workers join SEIU--maybe the first time anyone has seriously talked about this since the CIO's Operation Dixie in the late 1940s.

* Labor strength. In the speech, Stern gave a short version of SEIU's argument that the existing AFL-CIO can’t meet the challenge of restoring an independent voice for working Americans. He called on SEIU to either “change the AFL-CIO or build something stronger,” probably indicating an interesting time is coming up during the next AFL-CIO convention in July 2005.

* Global strength. Large multinational subcontractors like ARAMARK and Sodexho are gobbling up jobs in hospitals, retail, and hospitality, driving down wages and reducing benefits in the process. Stern called on SEIU members to support efforts to build a global union, expanding on the experience of working with European unions to confront European-based companies that are buying up U.S. security companies.

Warm Feelings for Unions

Things have pretty quiet on this site, obviously.

It’s been a busy summer, with 12,000 health care workers from my local union bargaining new contracts and getting ready to work to help elect a health care governor in Washington and a health care president in the other Washington.

The issues at stake for this bargaining are spelled out here.

At the same time, UFCW grocery store workers in Puget Sound area are fighting to hold on to their affordable health care. Their campaign has a blog here.

Until I have time to post again, here’s some big picture good news for the union movement: people like unions.

That’s the upshot of a national poll in Mother Jones. The public has strikingly “warm” feelings about the labor movement. (Prompting polling guru Ruy Texiera to joke that perhaps Sweeney-McCain would be a dream ticket.)

And as much as they don’t like it, that was also the result of a poll conducted by an anti-union group called the Public Service Research Foundation. If you read this article on the poll here, their director is forced to spend a lot of time wondering why Americans still think unions are a good idea.