Though he heads one of the most powerful unions in the country, Andy Stern hardly talks like a typical union leader. The president of the Service Employees International Union, Stern is a controversial figure in union circles for certain moderate positions. Nevertheless, Stern and the union he leads have proven to be formidable adversaries for business interests in the L.A. area, including downtown building owners who have fought the organization of security guards. In the midst of a swing through Southern California, Stern stopped by the Business Journal last week for a talk.
Question: Why has the SEIU shifted in recent years from a union antagonistic toward companies to one that’s now formed partnerships with employers?
Answer:
The question is how do organizations like unions actually add value for companies rather than create difficulties? What can the union do to help the company grow? For a union like ours with locals all over the country, this means taking the best practices by employers in one market and seeing if they can work in another market. This is quite a shift for those in the union movement that grew up with the class struggle orientation of the 1930s where the boss was bad and the workers were good.
Q: You talk about the need for companies to be more competitive, but one way companies compete is by cutting labor costs. How do you reconcile this?
A:
Our goal is that the competition should not be based on the level of wages paid. That should be the same all across the board. Rather, the competition should be based on management style, technology and service or product delivery. The more we as unions can focus discussions on these issues, the more everyone benefits, including the companies. This really involves rethinking entire industries.
Q: Why have you called for health care reform?
A:
Employers should not bear the entire cost of health care on their shoulders, especially when employers in other countries don’t do so. That doesn’t mean I’m arguing for a single-payer, government run system. We need a blending of government funding, employer funding and yes, individual funding. We simply cannot continue to burden our employers with all these legacy costs like health care.
Q: What is your reaction to the recent National Labor Relations Board ruling that allows hospitals to declare many nurses supervisors not protected by union agreements?
A:
That ruling is based on a relic of the industrial age, where there were foremen on the factory floor who were very clearly supervisors. Today’s workplaces are much more complex. Nurses may spend most of their time caring for patients, but if there’s a shortage of personnel or someone is away on vacation, they’ll step in for a few days as a supervisor. It’s a much more fluid situation where the old cut-and-dried rules no longer apply. That’s why this ruling is going to be litigated to death.
Q: Last year, the national SEIU and the national AFL-CIO split off but the L.A. arms of each worked very closely to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election initiatives. Is that level of cooperation going to continue?
A:
We had a solidarity agreement between many of the SEIU locals and the local affiliates of the AFL-CIO. That agreement expires at the end of this year. We have not told our folks to pull out of the local chapter of the AFL-CIO; in fact we worked very closely together on the security guards at downtown office buildings. We would like to continue this agreement.
