It's Time to Reverse the Crisis for American Workers

American workers are in the midst of the most rapid transformation of our economy in history - a transformation that without a major change in direction will continue to bring hard times instead of prosperity and opportunity for working people.

The American Dream that brought so many people to our shores -- work hard and your work will be valued and rewarded -- is fading away. Hard-working families today face health care costs they cannot afford, college tuition so high that their children cannot fulfill their dreams, jobs without wages that support a family, retirement without security and dignity, cutbacks in vital public services, rising taxes because corporations and the rich don't pay their share, trade policies that encourage moving jobs to exploit workers overseas, and longer working hours that don't leave time to spend with their families.

Underlying this crisis is workers' loss of unions which for decades have been an essential vehicle for valuing and rewarding work.  Fifty years ago when the AFL-CIO was founded, 1 in 3 American workers belonged to a union. Today, with only 1 in 12 private sector workers in a union, and fewer every year, workers are not sharing fairly in the success of their employers. While all working people are being hurt, people of color and working women are being hit the hardest as good union jobs disappear.

Without dramatic changes, the loss of workers' strength is likely to get even worse as the remaining union members are concentrated in industries losing employment while the rapidly growing service sector is almost entirely nonunion.  Already, much of the country is almost entirely nonunion, as 84 percent of union members are concentrated in just 12 northern states. 
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Unions Must Change What's Under Our Control

Since 1996, SEIU members have made difficult choices to do our part to start reversing the crisis working people face, with the result that more than 900,000 workers -- a majority of them low-wage women and people of color -- have formed unions and united their strength with us to win real improvements in living standards:

• Members chose to enact major increases and shifts in resources to unite more workers with us so we could grow stronger, not smaller.
  
• We agreed on national and even international strategies for dealing with each industry -- instead of the members of each local union having to fend for themselves.
  
• Our local unions became accountable to each other for meeting high standards.
  
• Members in dozens of local unions voted to restructure to unite their strength by industry, instead of being divided into many different locals in the same geographical area.
  
• We reoriented our political work to focus not on parties or candidates but on issues such as reestablishing the freedom of workers to join unions,
  
• We consciously promoted diversity in our leadership, so that 40 percent of our executive board is now female, 34 percent is people of color, and more than half our members are in locals headed by women or people of color.

These changes have helped members win stronger contracts with improved pay, benefits, and staffing, and made SEIU the largest and fastest growing union in North America.

Although each union needs a strategy matched to its employers and industry, our experience is that these are crucial changes that are within unions' control and can be accomplished now.

For years, SEIU and others have proposed changes in the AFL-CIO and the union movement as a whole based on the guiding principle that all American workers should have an opportunity to join a union with the focus, strategy, and resources to unite workers in their particular industry or occupation. We have prepared proposals for AFL-CIO Executive Council meetings, AFL-CIO conventions, and specific meetings involving organizing strategy and priorities.  We have argued that

• The union movement must focus on uniting with us the 9 out of 10 workers who have no union. Without doing so, we not only cannot build a broad movement for social and economic justice but we can't even win consistently at the bargaining table or in the legislative arena for the small minority of workers who still have a union.
  
• Uniting more workers with us requires lead unions in each industry or occupation that have the focus, strategy, and resources to win. We cannot help workers make major advances in each industry as long as the AFL-CIO structure and rules condone and reward union strategies that divide workers' strength in each industry -- 15 separate organizations in the transportation industry, 15 in construction, 13 in public employment, 9 in manufacturing, and so on -- while allowing even more unions to start organizing in those sectors and make a bad situation even worse. 
  
• We must empower those hit hardest in today's economy, including low-wage women and people of color.  That requires two changes. First, we must make it our top priority to help millions in today's diverse workforce to join unions.  Second, we must adopt standards and timetables to ensure that our organizations reflect that diversity at every level of leadership and member participation.

The local union delegates to the SEIU International Convention in 2004 adopted a strategic program based on these principles that reaffirmed that for working people to win, we must

• Unite workers' strength in each industry.
• Help workers unite in the South and Southwest.
• Build global alliances that can negotiate with today's giant corporations.
• Work with community allies to build a broad progressive movement.
• Strengthen local unions through leadership development and expanded member involvement.
• Work to strengthen the labor movement as a whole. 
• Hold politicians of all parties accountable to working people. 

As part of that program, the delegates directed the SEIU International Executive Board to reexamine all of the union's affiliations with national and international labor federations based on whether they contribute to building strength for working people.

In November, 2004, SEIU proposed to the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions a program for change. Since then, unions representing more than 5 million workers or about 40 percent of the AFL-CIO -- including the Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Laborers, UNITE HERE, and SEIU - have adopted a proposal called "Restoring the American Dream" that is based on similar principles.

Fundamental Differences Have Become Clear

Unfortunately, the debates of the past ten years, and especially of the past seven months, have made clear that there is a fundamental and apparently irreconcilable disagreement about how to rebuild workers' strength.

The AFL-CIO officers and other union leaders believe that the best way to rebuild workers' strength is to change the political climate, and that this can be accomplished by pursuing the current political strategy but with increased funding.

By contrast, we believe that the primary reason working people have less influence in the political arena as well as at the bargaining table is that a declining percentage of workers are organized in unions, and that reversing that decline must be our first priority.

They believe that whether unions choose to spend resources on uniting more workers in their core industry should be voluntary.  They are not willing to require changes in unions' autonomy and traditional structures, or reverse the trend of unions trying to maintain total membership by organizing workers outside their area of strength or expertise, even if that has the result of dividing workers' strength.

We know from our own experience within SEIU that if workers are given the democratic choice, they will choose to unite their strength by industry or occupation and will support increasing resources to accomplish that. We believe that unions should be held accountable to one another because what one wins or loses affects pay and benefit standards throughout the economy.

They address diversity by having more diverse representation than in the past on an AFL-CIO Executive Council that is too large to have a real decision-making role.  They do not have a strategic program that will help millions of workers in today's diverse workforce to join unions and improve their lives.

We believe that the first test on diversity is a program that will help millions of people of color and working women to join unions that can win real gains in their industry or occupation. At the leadership level, we believe that diversity seats should be assured on a smaller AFL Executive Committee that would be made up of the leaders of major unions and would have true constitutional decision-making authority.

We respect the opinion of all the people in and outside of the labor movement who have been involved in this discussion. We accept that there are huge differences on how best to build a modern, dynamic, changed, and growing union movement.  Many of those officials who disagree with us have devoted their lives to the union movement. We respect all that they have done.

But there comes a point where if we can't reach agreement on basic principles, we should each move on and devote our time and resources to a strategy we believe will help working people win - while still working together on political and community issues we share.

At this point, the honorable path is not for anyone to disrupt or obstruct others from their course. Instead, we should respectfully accept our differences and pursue the strategy we believe will work, much as other major worker organizations such as the National Education Association and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters do not choose to affiliate with the AFL-CIO but often cooperate with other unions at the local, state, and national levels.

All concerned have made a thorough and sincere effort to convince others that their strategy can rebuild workers' strength.

The debate has often been heated - not surprising among people on both sides who feel passionately about workers' future and who by nature are strong and outspoken leaders. But it obviously does not serve workers well for the fundamental disagreement on strategy to become bitter or personal. We must never forget that our opponents are not each other but those global corporations and politicians who attack social and economic justice. For our part, we intend to do everything we can from this point forward to rebuild a spirit of partnership.

Our Choice is to Build New Strength for Working People

SEIU local unions were asked to formally discuss these issues at meetings of their elected rank-and-file local union executive board and other meetings where members could ask questions and give their views.

Local unions representing 70 percent of SEIU members have adopted resolutions supporting our union's efforts to build new strength for working people and disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO if necessary - with additional locals still to meet.
 
In light of these resolutions, and in consideration of the fundamental disagreement that clearly exists, the SEIU International Executive Board has given full and final authorization for SEIU to end its affiliation with the AFL-CIO.

The Board also recognizes our responsibility once a decision on disaffiliation is implemented to be good partners with other organizations, including the AFL-CIO. This means:

1. We will seek agreements with other unions to cooperate on strategies to help workers form unions in their core industries or occupations and negotiate better living standards - regardless of whether the cooperating unions are in or out of the AFL-CIO.
2. We will offer to coordinate with the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions on political issues important to working families, as we do with the NEA, America Votes, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Mi Familia Vota, and many other organizations, and we would be prepared to contribute financially to the AFL-CIO political program.
3. We will work to build powerful and inclusive social movements in our communities through continued participation with Central Labor Councils (CLCs) and State Federations.  CLCs can be an essential vehicle for creating an environment of support from elected officials and the public for workers who want to join unions. 
4. We will seek agreements with other unions not to fight over the few workers who are already organized or make deals with employers to lower pay and benefit standards. Our focus will be on helping more workers in our core industries to join unions, and not on dividing workers' strength or wasting workers' precious resources by trying to persuade current union members to change unions.

In the coming years, we are committed to doing our part to build the broadest, strongest movement to win for working people, and to work with every union, community ally, elected official, and other organization - at home and abroad -- that is willing to work with us on behalf of working Americans.

We will work to unite millions of workers in health care, property services, and public service who do not now have unions, and we expect that soon we will bring to that effort the strength of the first 2 million member union in decades.

We will help build 21st century local unions by launching a major initiative with standards and timetables that will help locals train and involve at least 10 percent of our members as leaders at their worksites and in their communities.

We will work with unions around the world to build the first global union alliance capable of negotiating better living standards with global corporations.

We will continue to help build grassroots coalitions for progressive change and challenge political parties to stand up for working people and to value and reward work in America.

Winning social and economic justice and rewarding work are the most critical issues facing most Americans in the 21st century. We are prepared to do everything in our power to restore the American Dream so that American workers again have their work valued and rewarded.