| This issue is basically a dispute about what a union is. For me and my co-workers, a union is a means by which working people can build our power and strength. Simple as that. That power and strength comes from our organization on the ground level, and from working together to accomplish our goals at our workplaces - for those of us who still have workplaces in today's economy. Our strength does not come from the members having the same ideology, or from sending our dues to union headquarters. It comes from real-life involvement through taking action.
I'm a steward at Kaiser Hospital, which means my co-workers have elected me to represent them in disputes with our employer, to make sure our employment contract is upheld, and to play a leadership role in other union activities. All of this happens at the ground level: I still work at the hospital, I¹m not paid anything extra by the union, and my co-workers know who I am and how to get in touch with me.
For me, rank-and-file leadership is not a theoretical issue, it was the central factor in correcting an ongoing pay equity problem at Kaiser. When I started as a Radiology Tech, women were often pigeon holed in the mammography department. Important work, I know, but unlike other modalities we didn't receive a pay differential that acknowledged the additional licensing and training that position required. After years of agitating and educating and finally activating representatives from mammography departments in all of Kaiser's Northern California facilities, we won equal recognition for our skills from Kaiser - and equal pay for our work too. Today I'm proud of the fact that there is equality for women in this field.
The reason this matters is that it goes to the heart of the direction SEIU is moving, and why we in UHW are trying to change it. What I just described is a situation where workers resolve their own issues, using the union as a tool to empower ourselves. What we object to is an ongoing series of actions by SEIU to consolidate power in the D.C. headquarters and reduce our strength at the work site. More and more, arrangements between this union and employers are being made at the top levels of SEIU¹s administration, and the actual members are treated like afterthoughts, if at all.
To take just one example, SEIU has proposed creating a system of "member resource centers" in the near future. These centers would be staffed 24/7, so that members of the union can receive "professional and responsive representation" on our issues. That sounds to me like a member hotline. Which is better than nothing, I guess, except that I don't see the union as an organization that I joined in order to access a call center. I see the union as a movement of working people who stand up for themselves, seeking things like living wages, political strength, and social justice.
I'm sure that SEIU will claim their call centers are really intended to help streamline administrative tasks so that stewards like me can focus on the real issues. That would be easier to believe, except that every move made by SEIU in recent years has been geared toward consolidating power away from members. Local unions have been merged without fair votes. Leadership development programs have been eliminated. Members have been kicked out of their own contract negotiation meetings.
All of these moves had a rationale behind them- expediency, usually, or the belief that union staff will make a better deal than selfish members. But what do you give up when you make that trade-off? For those of us who have been empowered through taking action at the ground level, it's questionable when we're told that building the "labor movement of the future" requires less member leadership and more centralized authority. Our ability to lead workers in a movement for social justice decreases to the same extent that our power at our workplace is stripped away.
I know this all looks like a pointless waste of time and resources, especially since both sides in the argument want the same thing: to build a stronger and better labor movement.
But the way that movement is built is just so important. When I've helped non-union workers organize their union, I've always told them that forming a union is a way for them to empower themselves. But if we don't change SEIU's direction, that might not still be true in the near future. |
