The Service Employees International Union is growing at a time when most other unions are not. It now has 1.9 million dues-paying members, a near doubling from early 1996 when current President Andrew Stern took over the helm. Things, in other words, have worked out according to plan. Stern’s grow-or-die gospel is central to the way his union organizes and negotiates. It’s also the main reason for the eventual split that occurred between him and his predecessor, John Sweeney, who ascended to the AFL-CIO leadership. That split became formalized in the summer of 2005, when the SEIU and a half-dozen other AFL-CIO affiliates formed their own federation, Change to Win. But Stern has opponents within his own union, too, most of all in the form of Sal Rosselli, head of a 140,000-member, Oakland, Calif.-based affiliate, United Healthcare Workers-West. Union Corruption Update reported last year that Rosselli was highly dissatisfied with the way SEIU leaders from Washington, D.C. headquarters apparently strong-armed into being a substandard contract between UHW-West and California nursing home operators. Relations since have deteriorated further.
Is Andrew Stern, the retired president of the Service Employees International Union, a born-again capitalist? That's the emerging view at SEIU headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. and various points beyond. For months, Stern, who stepped down last spring after 14 years at the helm, has been championing a proposal to grant a limited-period tax break for U.S. corporations on investment income earned abroad and transferred to here. Stern's allies in the labor movement are shaking their heads in disbelief. His union enemies are saying, "I told you so." Many in the business world are welcoming him like an old friend. Yet the real story may be that Stern is being his old self: a believer in a large-scale government-corporate-union partnership to generate jobs - preferably union ones.
The successor to Andrew Stern as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had come down to his two top aides. Now it's down to one. Late last week, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer 
The ongoing battle between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and a major California health care workers affiliate for the last several months has been in its special-ops phase. And the parent union, not happy over its sudden bad publicity, may owe a substantial sum to the security firm it hired to keep the peace. On May 1, the OSO Group, Ltd. 
If growth in numbers were all that mattered, the Service Employees International Union’s Andrew Stern would be America’s most successful labor leader, hands down.
