Very soon the SEIU will be having their convention in Puerto Rico and some say it will be a fight for control of the union.

For the first time in a generation or more, SEIU is facing a substantial movement by internal dissidents seeking to push through democratic reforms. This push has a two-fold character.

One prong is the very public resignation by Sal Roselli, the head of United Healthcare Workers — West (UHW), the third largest local in SEIU, from his position on SEIU’s national Executive Committee. When he resigned, and since, he raised issues about the course that is being pursued by national SEIU. With the backing of the UHW executive board, the local has created a highly visible web site, paid for an ad in the New York Times and ads on prominent blogs, and is putting the issue of democracy on the agenda for the SEIU convention. The other prong is SMART (SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today), a rank-and-file movement with the potential to create an on-going TDU-like internal opposition in SEIU.

National SEIU leaders insist that they too “are committed to unity, strength, and respect for democracy in our union.” A letter, signed by 70 local leaders who together represent more than 80 percent of all SEIU members, insists:

Constructive discussion about how to strengthen our union is absolutely essential. But it also carries with it a very serious responsibility to respect decisions made by democratic majority, whether they have to do with strategy, resources, structure, or local union jurisdiction. No local union leader, no matter what their individual objectives may be, should try to jeopardize the strategies developed and democratically approved.

“Democracy,” however, can be a slippery concept. Employers insist that the only “democratic” way to bring in a union is through an NLRB election — one where union organizers are forbidden to set foot on the premises, employers force members to attend captive audience meetings, supervisors interrogate employees, and pro-union activists often get fired. Union activists regard these elections as a totally undemocratic sham, and SEIU has pioneered alternatives to the NLRB election.

Union democracy can be a similarly contested concept. It’s worth considering some of the national SEIU practices that trouble dissidents. Central to the debate is the many ways the national SEIU leadership can intervene in the activities of an existing local, together with the creation of mega-locals. Everyone agrees that if a local is outright corrupt, or mob dominated, the national union needs to intervene to clean up the mess and restore democracy.

However, national SEIU leaders intervene in union locals for many other reasons. If a local is ineffective, and fails to organize new members, it might be put into trusteeship. If nearby locals have overlapping jurisdictions, with each local containing both building service and hospital workers, new locals may be created to bring together all the hospital workers in one local and all the building service workers in another local. In practice, however, both the criteria for such actions and the ways they should be carried out are neither clear nor straightforward. What workers have a community of interest? When does it make sense to move workers from one local to another? Which locals are ineffective, and by what criteria? To what extent do the answers to those questions depend on an assessment of the local leadership — and in making that assessment, is it possible to separate out considerations of the extent to which the local leaders support national SEIU leaders’ policies?

There are a variety of ways in which elected local leaders can be replaced by “interim” leaders appointed by the national SEIU leadership. The most straightforward is if the local is placed into trusteeship. According to the provisions of the Landrum-Griffin Act, when a local is placed in trusteeship there must be an election within 18 months. However, if there is a more thoroughgoing reorganization, with substantially new locals created, then the appointed interim leader may stay in office for three years prior to holding an election. And if the local is simply merged out of existence, it may be that no new leadership election is necessary.

The convention should prove to be very interesting and I will attempt to keep all my readers informed on the  antics and positions of all the players.