SEIU Head Urges Unions
"Join Today’s Economic Revolution"
April 2009
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — The leader of North America's largest labor union came to the Graduate School of Business April 21 to talk about a revolution. Not one he plans to start, but one we're already in.
"Our country, joined by the rest of the world, is living through the most profound, the most significant, the most transformative economic revolution in world history," Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern told the student-sponsored View from the Top event.
"When you think about it, there have only been three economic revolutions in world history. … The agricultural revolution—it took 3,000 years. The industrial revolution—it took 300 years. This revolution—and we should be clear—this is the third economic revolution, as we transform ourselves from a national to an international economy, from an America [economy] in manufacturing to a service/knowledge/finance/green economy. This revolution will only take 30 years. … No single generation has ever witnessed so much change in a lifetime."
He said labor unions need to change as part of the revolution, pointing out that although unions used to comprise one-third of U.S. workers, now only 1 in 12 private-sector employees belongs to a union. He looked around at what had been happening at his own union, and how it had become "rather male and pale and stale."
That's among the reasons SEIU, which today has some 2 million members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, the Teamsters, and several smaller unions bolted from the AFL-CIO in 2005, forming the Change to Win Coalition, hoping to have a message more relevant to today's employees who often can't count on employers to manage such key benefits as retirement and health care.
Stern said his union now has the largest political action committee in the United States, and members made 16 million phone calls as part of the 2008 election campaign. Early in his speech, Stern showed a five-minute video about how the union had changed, prominently mentioning its early support for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.
"I spent my entire adult life working with SEIU," Obama says in the video. Later, speaking more generally, he tells supporters, "Together, we are going to change this country, and we are going to change the world."
One major reason the world needs changing, Stern said, is that a common economic philosophy—which President John F. Kennedy once described as a rising tide lifting all boats—no longer applies. "I think it's fair to say," Stern said, "that right now it's only raising the luxury liners."
Slightly tongue in cheek, he said that many economic problems could have been avoided through one simple move in 1990. "If we had indexed the minimum wage to CEO salaries, the minimum wage would be $23.83 right now."
The 21st century needs to be about partnership, so that workers can share in the success of businesses instead of seeing their bosses' salaries soar while theirs fail to keep up with the cost of living. Stern said he is amazed, for example, that business leaders don't push for universal health care, which would allow them to compete more effectively with overseas companies.
When a student asked about the woes of U.S. automakers, Stern said that although poor management was certainly part of the problem, members of the United Auto Workers should have done more to help. "If your employer is making a bad product," Stern said, "it doesn't serve any purpose to keep your mouth shut."
He said the union worked well when all automakers had essentially the same labor costs, but didn't adjust quickly enough to organize global competition—allowing non-U.S. auto companies to produce vehicles far less expensively.
"We cannot be anchors to our employers," he said.
Stern said America has lacked an economic plan—although he said he believes Obama is drafting an effective one—adding that people who are nostalgic for something like President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s are not appreciating the global reality of the 21st century. "We’re as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War."
The union leader finished his speech by talking about two things on his desk: A plaque that says, "The best way to predict the future is to create it," and a quote from cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
"May we all have the courage," Stern said, "to be part of that small group of people who change the world, because this world desperately needs to change."
—Dave Murphy