The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: Stern Pushes the Button

The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: The SEIU Takes the Lead and Divides the House of Labor (full series)
“Big” Labor in1990 | Justice for Janitors | Sweeney Ascends
Sweeney’s Understudy Becomes a Rival | Stern Pushes the Button

Stern Pushes the Button

By mid-2005, Stern, his New Unity Partnership allies, and some new allies (most prominent among them the Teamsters) had had enough with the Sweeney regime. Shortly before the 50th anniversary of the union of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations into the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, Teamsters, and a handful of other unions quit the AFL-CIO and formed their own union federation, known as Change to Win. The new federation vowed to focus on organizing non-union workers, planning to spend nine figures on corporate campaigns and traditional shopfloor efforts.

The new group criticized the AFL-CIO for focusing on politics, at least publicly. But Change to Win was not about organizing workers over politics; it was, like the SEIU had been throughout the Stern era, about organizing workers through politics. Even a labor writer for socialist publication In These Times characterized the idea Stern’s outfit was going to focus on organizing to the exclusion of politics “a myth that somehow found a life among news reporters and union leaders.”

Stern’s political timing seemed exceptionally auspicious in mid-2005. The Iraq War was going badly for the Bush administration, and the widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, combined with a disaster response seen as completely feckless, further set back the Republicans.

As the 2006 elections approached, Stern’s audacious bet—a Washington Post profile of the SEIU boss suggested he would be remembered either “as the impetuous, power-hungry man who accelerated the decline of the American union movement” or “the courageous, visionary leader who charted a bold new course for American unionism just in time”—looked like it might pay off. Both Change to Win and the AFL-CIO it had left had a legislative program, known as the Employee Free Choice Act, that would essentially codify the “corporate campaign” into federal law by compelling union recognition based on publicly signed union cards rather than secret-ballot elections.

In 2007, following Democrats retaking control of the Congress in the midterm elections, Stern vowed, “If we pass the Employee Free Choice Act, these unions will grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.” With the potential for 15 years of million-member growth for his new labor federation on offer, Stern, whom observers had claimed split the AFL-CIO to focus on things other than politics, went all-in on the political campaign of a freshman U.S. Senator from Illinois who had begun his political career as a street organizer—Barack Obama. Stern would brag to the Las Vegas Sun following President Obama’s election that his union had spent “a fortune to elect Barack Obama—$60.7 million to be exact—and we’re proud of it.”

Taking advantage of then-incumbent President George W. Bush’s atrocious approval ratings following the 2008 financial crisis, Obama easily dispatched his rival, then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), by the largest electoral margin of the 21st century to date. Democrats swept to 257 seats in the House of Representatives, the largest caucus for either party since the 1992 elections. Senate Democrats sat within a whisker of 60 seats, which would give them the ability to pass legislation by breaking a filibuster on a party-line vote.

Stern was ready to claim his prize. But the Obama years would prove a disappointment to Big Labor, both politically and in terms of member growth, and Stern would see his bet fail to pay off.