Union Chief: Labor, Democrats might be better off if Kerry Loses

[dolstein]

Well, you have to admit, Andrew Stern, leader of the SEIU and traitor of the hour, has impeccable timing. Read it and weep:

Union Chief Voices Frustration
Stern Says Labor, Democrats Might Be Better Off If Kerry Loses
By David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 26, 2004; 9:15 PM


BOSTON, July 26 -- Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.

Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.

Stern argued that another four years of Bush policies might be less damaging than the stifling of needed reform within the party and the labor movement that he said would occur if Kerry becomes president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16387-2004Jul26.html

Stern and Nader appear to have much in common.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. How much did this SOB get to say this???

:puke:

[roguevalley]

2. Dim wit. Getting ride of Bush will allow reform. Without it, we're screwed

[k in IA]

3. Run from this guy's endorsement - he did it to Dean and now he does it

to Kerry.

[kikiek]

4. You wonder who is paying him off. Unions won't survive another Bush term.

[havocmom]

6. Unions are just about dead.

Anybody earning over $20,000 a year is in for a rude awakening next month if they work overtime and are used to overtime pay.

And if you really wanna get depressed, ask any high school student if they ever heard of Samuel Gompers.

[Zidane]

23. What unions?

The repubs already killed most of them off.

[Krupskaya]

5. Bad timing, but...

...he's right. And from the SEIU, no less! :shock:

ETA: He's right, as in, right that unions are operating with their heads in the sand. Not that they'll be better off if Kerry loses.

[Gyre]

7. Don't sweat it.

The unions are the mouse roaring in the corner these days. They've been hemmorhaging members for 20 years and the membership they've got is just as likely to vote against their leadership's recommendations as for. Not like the good ole days of yore.

Gyre

[Zorra]

8. Really? Stern wants Bu$h to win?

Union members might want to seriously consider not re-electing Stern if they want to keep their jobs. If Bu$h gets four more years, there may not even be any more labor unions.

Job Losses Erode Union Membership

Ongoing layoffs and the anti-union posture of the Bush administration are slicing union membership. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released new data on union membership for 2003, documenting the ongoing decline in private sector unionization. The number of workers who are union members fell by 369,000 to 15.8 million.

The AFL-CIO reports that its unions added 142,000 new members in 2003, but the BLS data indicate that it lost substantially more in the ongoing round of layoffs. The number of initial representation elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board also fell last year, from 2,871 in FY 2002 to 2,659 in FY 2003.

The overall percentage of wage and salary workers who are union members dropped to 12.9 percent last year, down from 13.3 percent in 2002 and 20.1 percent 20 years ago. The portion of workers represented by unions fell from 14.5 percent to 14.3 percent, with almost all of this decline occurring in the private sector.

http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/bushwatch/2005budget.cfm#againstunions

Bush Administration’s Proposed 2005 Budget

Programs to Audit, Investigate and Prosecute Unions

As it has since fiscal year (FY) 2002, the Bush Labor Department is seeking additional funding and staff increases in FY 2005 to audit, investigate and prosecute unions. These increases are for the department’s Office of Labor–Management Standards (OLMS), which has union oversight and investigation authority, receives and publishes statutorily required union reports, sets standards governing union elections and finances and conducts both civil and criminal investigations into unions’ finances and elections. The department also seeks increased funding and staff for its Office of Inspector General (OIG), in large part to support additional union investigative activities.

http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/bushwatch/2005budget.cfm#againstunions

Who got to Andrew Stern?

[MichiganVote]

13. Democratic party is the among the last union standing

The Democratic party IS the people's union. Aneone who can't see that is blind and determined to stay that way.

[cprise]

26. Kool-Aid time already?

[banana republican]

9. When my dad was president of a union they called them scabs... n/t

[donco6]

10. He's the head of the union and is bemoaning

the fact that the labor movement is "devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures"?

What the hell are they paying him for? Isn't it his job to come up with new ideas?

Worthless.

[kodi]

14. notice that conundrum did ya'?

my dad was a UAW organizer in the 50's. he would kick that guy's ass from here to sunday for such stupid remarks.

[cprise]

27. But mention democratic reforms

...even in a place like DU, and you will scarely get more than resistence and crickets chirping. If you're lucky a 10-message exchange will ensue that mostly accuses the idea people of pushing "ideological purity".

Just look at the discussions of media reform in the Media forum. Pa-the-tic. "Oooo! Let's get us a big-daddy billionaire to buy us a TV network! Yeeeaaaah!!!"

Nooooo!

I give DUers and Democrats credit for being acutely aware of, well, at least the symptoms of what's wrong in this country today. But outside of Clinton's PR boondoggle of universal healthcare, Democrats can no longer imagine solutions outside the control of private corporations and rich benefactors and are themselves too conditioned to individualism and selfishness.

I live in Mass. and all but TWO of the Dem voters I know are willing to see Fahrenheit 911. They turn their noses up at Moore because they don't want to hear him say they are addicted to profiteering fear-mongers. More than anything, like the all-day whiners in GD, they are scared sh!tless of what they will start thinking if they take their eyes off FNC for a month.

There's no room in there for any new Leftist ideas. And you should see the expressions on their faces when I tell them I use renewable energy in my car; Not delight, or pleasant surprise... It's all the FNC programming coming right to the surface on their faces. Then after they force back the derision, disbelief, miscomprehension, etc. they politely change the subject. Sure, let's talk about the SUV you wanna buy Mr. Liberal.... it's soooooo interesting. A week later, the guilt has surfaced in them and they are asserting DENIAL to assuage it: There HAS to be something terribly wrong with my choice in fuel. Funny how facts are like water on a duck to them when they're in this situation.

I was just given "the facts" about the impending implosion of the Canadian healthcare system by a lifelong 'liberal' Democrat today. She would "love to be idealistic" but it just won't work.

The very fact that the status quo doesn't reflect the changes that 'strange/foreign' people make for themselves is all they need to stop thinking. It is the same for everything.

[Tempest]

11. Stern Gave $400 To RNC, Nothing To Democrats

http://tinyurl.com/3pt9e (opensecrets.org)

[w4rma]

17. Well that's pretty telling of his alliances, imho. (nt)

[MGKrebs]

22. Not defending Stern (God forbid!), but.

it appears that there is also a $400 credit. So the RNC sent the money back? That would be funny!

[Tempest]

24. Or did he ask for it back?

He might have caught hell from the rank and file once they found out about it.

[Coventina]

12. He might be right for the wrong reason

i.e. the class war will erupt from Bu$hco's arrogance and overreach.

Nothing like starvation homelessness to galvanize the masses.....

Kerry MUST win, to prevent that kind of suffering!!!

[Rose Siding]

15. Comments have already started at the SEIU blog

http://www.fightforthefuture.org/blog/index.cfm

[struggle4progress]

16. Whereas unions have made such progress under *? eom

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. The Union members will vote for Kerry-Edwards in overwhelming....

...numbers, and that's really what counts in November.

[salonghorn70]

19. There Was A Dialogue In The Party

It was called the Primaries. Democrats all over this country voted for Kerry. I think Stern knows that he is not going to have a whole lot of clout in the Kerry administration.

[autorank]

21. The prospect of winning...

...brings out all the people with personality disorders. Nader is the prime example, truly a paranoid personality. Now this clown. There will be more of this, not to worry.

[Egalitarian]

20. I think he raises some valuable points

worthy of discussion. The democratic party needs some balls. What I hear him saying is that he sees another four years of Bush as providing the necessary motivation to initiate real fundamental change, rather than a revision of the status quo which he sees as likely with Kerry. Not far off base in my opinion.

[drdtroit]

25. Oh right,

and Bush can kill off a few thousand members in immoral conflicts throughout the world, that will really fucking motivate them! :nuke:

[demoman123]

28. Valuable points indeed.

Kerry and Bush are identical on the Iraq war. At a news conference on June 16, Kerry endorsed the two most controversial elements of Bush's foreign policy: first-strike war and unilateralism. Kerry's so-called "health plan" is identical to the one proposed by the Republicans as an alternative to Hillary's plan. The list goes on. Something has to be done to move the Democratic Party to the left.

[IndianaGreen]

29. The AFL-CIO leadership as a whole is reactionary, corrupt, and anti-worker

One has to really be active in unions and labor issues to appreciate what Andrew Stern is saying, and where he is coming from.

One also has to understand the tension that exists between the AFL-CIO bureaucracy that comes from the old industrial unions and the new kids on the block, the service unions.

The problem is not in the candid comments that Stern made, the problem is that it was the prowar puke David Broder and the equally despicable Washington Post. Their portrayal of Stern's views are not intended to address the problems in labor, and their co-dependency with the corporatists in the Democratic establishment, but to create ill feelings among people that think that Bush has been a disaster for the country.

BTW, clumping Stern on the same sentence as Nader is unfair and inaccurate. Nader is as much of a corporatist as Terry McCauliff.

If the Democrats are so pro-labor, how come the 2004 Democratic platform does not call for outright repeal of Taft-Hartley?

[IndianaGreen]

30. The worst thing that ever happened was the merger of AFL with CIO

I think that must have been in the back of Stern's mind when he made his remarks to Broder. More:

He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.

<snip>

Stern is perhaps the most outspoken of the leaders of four or five unions that have been talking of breaking away from the AFL-CIO to form some kind of new workers' movement. In the struggle for the Democratic nomination last winter, Stern's union, along with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), delivered an early endorsement to former Vermont governor Howard H. Dean -- a step that solidified Dean's status as the early favorite for the nomination.

Later in the day, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney told The Post that Stern's attitude "is not justified." Sweeney, also a product of the SEIU, the largest and fastest growing union within the AFL-CIO, said the process of change is already under way within labor, adding that he is impressed with "the unity and solidarity" of Democratic support for Kerry. "I'm optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party," he said.

Stern made it clear that his complaints long preceded Kerry's nomination. He said that when Clinton was president, he demonstrated how little he cared for the Democratic Party. Calling the former president "the greatest fundraiser of his time," Stern asked, "If you think the Democratic Party is valuable, why would you leave it bankrupt?" Other elected officials are equally indifferent to the party, he said, adding that if Kerry is elected "he would smother" any effort to give it more intellectual heft and organizational muscle.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5521638/

[Moderator]

31. locking

headline and subject line do not match, per LBN rules.

Here's a corrected version.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x710869