Facing Movement for Democracy, SEIU Gives UMass Members to Teachers Union

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Facing Movement for Democracy, SEIU Gives Massachusetts Members to Teachers Union

by Ferd Wulkan

LaborNotes Feb. 2006

More than 2,000 SEIU members who work for the University of Massachusetts (UMass) left SEIU in late 2005, just as SEIU was leaving the AFL-CIO. What’s most surprising is that SEIU preferred to lose these workers, rather than let them have a democratic local.

Members on four UMass campuses, in 10 bargaining units, were represented by four different SEIU locals until 2003. Through a top-down reorganization of locals under SEIU’s New Strength Unity Plan, all these units were placed in the newly created Local 888.

While new and unknown, two discouraging things were known about the local: the bulk of its members would be spread over 200 small-sized municipal units, and the appointed interim president of Local 888 was to be Susana Segat, a long-time SEIU official, with no track record running a local.

<snip>

SEIU was apparently not ready to be dragged through a messy decert battle. SEIU President Andy Stern and Anna Burger each signed letters on May 6, 2005 confirming that “SEIU supports the desire of our UMass members currently represented by SEIU Local 888 to join the Massachusetts Teachers Association.” After six months of legal hurdles and negotiations, all but two of the higher education units (with 2,200 workers) voted overwhelmingly to join the MTA.

SEIU’s public explanation for letting these workers go was that higher education is not one of the union’s core industries. But the story of Local 888 illustrates what happens when different visions of unionism clash.

SEIU leaders would not allow Local 888 to be led by its members, and Local 888’s UMass members could not exist in an undemocratic local. Once a decert seemed inevitable to SEIU, a quiet uncontested transfer to another union was the only option.

http://labornotes.org/archives/2006/02/articles/c.shtml

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1. I hope that y'all at UMass are okay.

Good luck with this new union.