I realized after my last post that many of my readers may not be privy to what is going on within the SEIU, so I found a bit of info to assist all in seeing what is at stake.

As history has repeatedly shown, the rulers of “one party states” rarely concede power gracefully or quietly. When organized opposition emerges, such regimes often resort to a strategy of disinformation and intimidation to maintain their grip on power over a nation state or—in a context closer to home–a national union.

After the Landrum-Griffin Act was passed in 1959, union reform groups—the equivalent of an opposition political party–gained more legal protection for their electoral challenges and issue-oriented campaigning. Yet, in the last forty years, entrenched leaders of major unions have displayed a similar pattern of undemocratic behavior and heavy-handed treatment of internal dissent. In each instance, the incumbent administration focused its most intense attacks on an independent-minded official from its own ranks who “defected” to the cause of reform.

The latest case in point is United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) and its president Sal Rosselli. Along with a new rank-and-file group called SMART (SEIU Member Activists For Reform Today), UHW has called for direct election of top officers of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other changes that would give members a greater voice in bargaining. Rosselli’s very principled, even reluctant, break with SEIU President Andy Stern has, nevertheless, elicited a coordinated International Union counter-campaign, replete with personal vilification, legal harassment, threats of trusteeship, and/or dismemberment of 140,000-member UHW, SEIU’s third-largest affiliate.

If you have personal stories or info, please feel free to share with others, we all want to know what is the “real” story.