Jerome Brown Reviews Two Reviews of Jane McAlevey’s Rising Expectations

by Jerome Brown

                                                                                         

Talking Union previously featured Sarah Jaffe’s interview with Jane McAlevey. Joe Burns’ review of McAlevey’s book can be found here. Steve Early’s review of McAlevey’s book can be found here. McAlevey’s response to Early can be found here. We encourage further discussion.–TU

I am submitting this as a review of Joe Burns’ review of Rising Expectations and of Steve Early’s critique of McAlevey which in many ways is parroted by Burns.

I am writing as someone who was directly involved in the unusually effective changes led by Jane McAlevey in Local 1107, SEIU Las Vegas and as someone who watched with real sadness the subsequent undermining and failure of that Local. I am the retired president of 1199 New England, a union with a proud history of militant rank and file activity and high standards in the public and private sector. The growth of Local 1199 in Connecticut from 900 members when I assumed staff leadership in 1973 to 23,000 members when I retired required the dedicated efforts of many leaders and members. McAlevey identifies me as one of her mentors in the labor movement and I am happy to wear that description.

I disagree with some of the examples of SEIU skullduggery recited by McAlevey–most particularly her description and demonization of Sal Roselli and UHW under Sal’s leadership. But on most of the facts supporting her narrative, McAlevey is right on target. Yes, SEIU made private deals with national hospital chains, deals that gave away worker rights to strike and even rally. And these deals were never explained to or ratified by the members. Yes SEIU undermined and then disrupted member activism,threatening Jane and the Local with trusteeship if it dared engage in job actions against these employers. And yes, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO failed in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and failed in any number of other crises because they did not motivate, support or really believe in militant membership activity.

But Joe Burns-and Steve Early-think that somehow it is important to engage in ad hominem (I do not know the Latin for attacks on women) attacks on McAlevey rather than understanding and appreciating the unusual value added by her style of leadership.McAlevey went to Vegas to try to invigorate a moribund union in a very important growing market. She, and her staff and rank and file leaders were immensely successful in doing that. In an open shop state they took the dues paying membership from 25% to over 75% in hospitals with thousands of employees. They organized numerous new units and reorganized all of the existing units. They led successful strikes and job actions,demonstrations and political campaigns. They elected hundreds of new stewards and began an intensive training program. They won a rank and file vote to increase the dues by a substantial amount to finance these programs and they were well on their way to consolidating and improving on these victories when they were undermined and derailed by SEIU collusion with bosses and an internal election campaign pitting holdover old guard leadership from the public sector against new,mainly Registered nurse leadership from the private sector. The final chapter of the McAlevey’s work in Vegas brings no credit to her or to her opponents and the decline of the Local since then is a tragedy. But I challenge anyone to show another model of such growth and resuscitation in such a challenging open shop environment. To my knowledge such an example does not exist.

Burns and Early continually paint McAlevey as an elite stranger acting as a missionary to the working class with no real trust or belief in workers intelligence, initiative or courage. I observed her in Stamford, Connecticut where she led a program that organized more than a thousand workers and developed deep and lasting ties with community leaders. Then I saw her lead a truth squad that chased Governor John Rowland all over Connecticut when we had 5000 nursing home workers on strike and Rowland spent $30 million dollars of public money to finance scabs to try to bust our union. Then I traveled to Vegas on numerous occasions to consult with McAlevey and coach her in bargaining. I met those rank and file members. I saw their enthusiasm and drive. I saw how McAlevey and her staff treated them with profound respect. This was not top down. It was bottom up at its best. Maybe Early and Burns can’t get past the fact that McAlevey was sent to Vegas during the term of Andy Stern and therefore, in keeping with Early’s mostly correct narrative of the Stern presidency, this has to be a top down deal. The facts in this case just do not fit that narrative and if Burns and Early had approached it with an open mind they would have figured that out for themselves.

McAlevey’s book has its flaws,as most memoirs do. I have heard some critics say that the book is “all about Jane” as if a memoir should be all about someone else. I think the book is a provocative window on the labor movement and is worth a good read and a good discussion. What it does not deserve is small minded personal attacks that are not in any way grounded in reality.

Jerome Brown served as President of 1199 New England from 1979 to November 2005. He also served as Secretary Treasurer of the National Union and then as a Vice President and Executive Board member of SEIU. He was deeply involved in reform movements within SEIU and lost his Vice Presidency as a result.  As a leader in the National Union of Healthcare Workers 1199 and in SEIU Brown helped build strong healthcare unions in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Seattle, Ohio and other places around the country.

Response to Steve Early’s Review of Raising Expectations

Talking Union recently featured Sarah Jaffe’s interview with Jane McAlevey. We followed with Steve Early’s review of McAlevey’s book.  Here is McAlevey’s response to Early. We encourage further discussion.–TU

 By Jane McAlevey

The editors have graciously offered me the opportunity to respond to Steve Early’s review of Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell). I want to respond to Early’s review, which focuses primarily on about ten percent of the book, but also to give people some idea of what the other ninety percent is about.

It will be no surprise to knowledgeable readers that Steve Early’s review is heavily focused on the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).  In Early’s The Civil Wars in US Labor, he declares himself as not only a partisan, but as among the biggest cheerleaders of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
However, in his review of my book, Early keeps his sympathies under the table. This does a disservice to readers who try to make sense of all this. Readers of his review of Raising Expectations might get the impression that my book is all about his interest, NUHW. Not at all. My book is about organizing, and how to rebuild the US labor movement in a time of tremendous difficulty and multiple setbacks.

In my book, I clearly identified myself as someone who tried to steer an independent course amidst complicated turf wars–the issues that matter most to Early.  That’s apparently enough for Early to direct a lot of criticism at me, some of it directly on NUHW matters, some of it spillover about somewhat related points.  (I am not, it might be noted, alone as an object of Early’s criticisms.)

Bread & Roses STRIKE Centennial “Double Feature!”

The Lawrence History Center will be hosting what is calls “an academic symposium on the Bread & Roses Strike of 1912” on April 27-28, 2012 in Lawrence, MA. But it should be of great interest to more than academics.  Union activists, 99 percenters, and occupiers should check out  two exciting panels.  One on “Labor Today” and another on  “The Importance of Strikes in Building New Unions.”

The symposium will feature a concert on Friday night April 27th at the Everett Mill (15 Union St.) on the 6th floor in the exhibit space. Saturday the 28th will be a full day of panel presentations, music, artwork, and walking tours. Click here for a schedule of Saturday’s programs, events, and registration information.

Back to the Future: Union Survival Strategies in Open Shop America

by Steve Early and Rand Wilson

 

The rupture of labor-management relationships that may have been “comfortable” in the past, plus the accompanying loss of legal rights in a growing number of states, have triggered membership-mobilization activity reminiscent of the original struggles for collective bargaining. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, labor’s recent defensive battles demonstrate that a new model of union functioning is not only possible but necessary for survival. As a first step in this process of union transformation under duress, workers must definitely shed their past role as “clients” or passive consumers of union services. In workplaces without a union or agency shop and collective bargaining as practiced for many decades, they must take ownership of their own organizations and return them to their workplace roots, drawing on the experiences of public workers in the South whose practice of public-sector unionism has, by necessity, been very different for the last half century.

 

When the history of mid-western de-unionization is written, its sad chroniclers will begin their story in Indiana. That is where Governor Mitch Daniels paved the way, in 2005, for copycat attacks on public-sector bargaining in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan — and for a successful assault on privatesector union security in his own state earlier this year.

Trampling Out The Vintage?

Cesar Chavez and Duane Campbell -1972

Trampling Out the Vintage ?

by Duane Campbell

A  dissident’s view of the rise and the fall of the United Farm Workers union.

Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011, Verso). is the view of a well- informed observer  who  worked in the lettuce fields near Salinas for six seasons,  then spent  another 25 years  teaching English to  farm workers  in the Watsonville, Cal.  area. His views on the growth and decline of the United Farm Workers union – some of which I do not share–  offer  important points of history and reflection  for unionists today, particularly those working with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Trampling Out the Vintage, provides several insights not previously developed in well informed books on the UFW  including  important  differences between grape workers and  workers in row crops such as lettuce; the length of time workers were in the UFW,  the more settled family nature of grape workers, the strength of each  type of ranch committees,  the leadership of ranch crews  ( and thus the potential differences in creating democratic accountability), and the differing histories of worker militancy in  different  crops.  The author correctly argues that each of these led to somewhat different organizing environment in building the  union. He also details problems of administrative mismanagement in the hiring halls in the grape areas and alleged  mismanagement of organizing within the union sponsored health care insurance and clinic systems .

Based upon his own experiences and the histories of workers   in the Salinas valley, Bardacke  makes the case  that farm workers- not Cesar Chavez – created the union.  They built their union on a long history of previous collective work stoppages and strikes.  The union was created on the ground in Delano,  Salinas, Watsonville, and surrounding towns- not in the union headquarters of  La Paz.  The author reveals his strong viewpoint in the  title apparently referring  to Chavez “Trampling out the Vintage” where a union had  been created. 

A Lesson for Labor From Occupy Wall Street

 by Steve Early

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has given our timorous, unimaginative, and  politically ambivalent unions a much-needed ideological dope slap. Some might describe this, more diplomatically, as a second injection of “outside-the-box” thinking and new organizational blood.

Top AFL-CIO officials first sought an infusion of those scarce commodities in labor when they jetted into Wisconsin last winter.  Without their planning or direction, the spontaneous community-labor uprising in Wisconsin was in the process of recasting the debate about public sector bargaining throughout the U.S. So they were eager to join the protest even though it was launched from the bottom up, rather than in response to union headquarters directives from Washington, D.C.

This fall, OWS has become the new Lourdes for the old, lame, and blind of American labor. Union leaders have been making regular visits to Zuccotti Park and other high-profile encampments around the country. According to NYC retail store union leader Stuart Applebaum, “the Occupy movement has changed unions”—both in the area of membership mobilization and ”messaging.”

It would be a miraculous transformation indeed if organized labor suddenly embraced greater direct action, democratic decision-making, and rank-and-file militancy.  Since that’s unlikely to occur in the absence of internal upheavals, unions might want to focus instead on casting aside the crutch of their own flawed messaging. That means adopting the Occupation movement’s brilliant popular “framing” of the class divide and ditching labor’s own muddled conception of class in America.

The Fall of the House of Labor

by David Duhalde

David Duhalde

At a recent fundraising event for a city councilor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was drawn toward two UNITE-HERE staffers by their easily identifiable red and black shirts. I broke the ice by asking if they knew a friend of mine whom worked at UNITE-HERE, my former supervisor at 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This sparked a discussion about National Union of Healthcare Workers (formerly SEIU United Healthcare Workers West), SEIU, and UNITE-HERE, all of which have been involved in major internal struggles among major labor unions. One of the trade unionists gave an optimistic spin on the situation: UNITE-HERE came out stronger because of their battle with the purple giant, SEIU.

I pointed to Steve Early’s new book The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, to provide a counter-point. While his book focuses mainly on SEIU, Early also writes about Elvis Mendez, a fellow Massachusetts resident inspired to join the labor movement. At first attracted toward UNITE-HERE because it was more worker-led, Mr. Mendez found himself leafleting a workplace where SEIU was on the ballot, instead of mobilizing the unorganized. His union had no intention of running an election there, but merely wanted to punish SEIU for its transgressions against UNITE-HERE. Mendez said “I was essentially union-busting in a place where workers needed a union.” I brought this story to them and said “was all this union in-fighting really worth it?”

Its a long way from Delano to Salinas- a review

Cesar Chavez and Duane Campbell. circa 1972

by Duane Campbell- a review of a review.

The Steve Early review below  is an important  essay on  some of the books on  Cesar Chavez and the UFW.

I disagree with Early on using Miriam Pawley as a major source.  She came to California in about 2001.  She really knows little about the struggle in the UFW, except for having interviewed people. Her interviews are excellent resources.  Her listening to UFW executive committee  tapes began in about 1972. I have read her book and listened to her talks. She is a major conveyer of the Chavez as “crazy” thesis.  This is not a  plausible for much of the time of the UFW. Her own  research is on the current status of the farm worker support organizations conducted in Chavez’s name- not of the union. I will leave that debate up to others.

To me there is a major missing story in these books.  For those who worked with, in and around the UFW, we know that there was a major issue of the rise of Chicano/Mexicano self determination and  labor union activism.  When someone writes the story – as if Chicano self determination was not an important issue, they clearly missed that  point. 

What Kind of Workers’ Movement?

by Paul Garver

Carl Finamore already reviewed Steve Early’s The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor for Talking Union.  I’d like to comment further on this important book, focusing on the issue of the organizational structures needed to rebuild the workers’ movement in the current context.

Should we be reflecting on our own weaknesses and sources of disunity while an implacable external enemy is threatening our very existence?  We are in a war for the very survival of public sector unionism, as right wing ideologues financed by billionaire foes of all working people are assailing this bastion of any conceivable progressive revival in the USA. We are encouraged that private and public sector unions stand united, while communities and campuses are mobilizing in their support.  But even in a hot phase of the class war there are lulls in the battle that permit some reading and reflection.  Reading Early’s book help us understand that our own weaknesses and dysfunctional behavior contributed to our current crisis.

Labor’s Tangled Web: A Review of Civil Wars in U.S. Labor by Steve Early

by Carl Finamore

Steve Early, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor

“There are no shortcuts in politics,” bellowed a respected, much-older labor veteran as we young militants sat around hoping to pick up a few things. “No gimmicks, no tricks, you only end up fooling yourself.”

In his book, only working class people themselves could solve the enormous social problems of war, poverty and discrimination. He emphasized that no matter how difficult it is to achieve, politics should be measured by how it helps or hinders the direct involvement and political empowerment of working people. There was no getting around it.

That was some 40 years ago but I never forgot it.

This conversation from so many years past still resonated with me after reading Steve Early’s new book, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor. In fact, some pages seem taken straight from my mentor’s own voluminous book of experience, as when Early concludes that “instead of unions that are top down and top heavy, too employer friendly and detached from their base, we need more that are lean and mean at the top, plus strong, broad and deep at the base.”

But Civil Wars does not simply offer a radical critique of current union policies. It does much more. It vividly describes, analyzes and contrasts actual labor experiences of the difficult and tumultuous recent past.

All is presented through the practiced eyes of an experienced journalist who served as both a labor organizer and union staff person for over 30 years.