I just sat in on a question and answer session with a relaxed Andy Stern, president of the SEIU. Stern surrounded himself with purple-clad workers from Texas and fielded questions — including some tricky ones — from journalists.
Stern was asked repeatedly about politics, and he confirmed that individual unions in the Change to Win federation would continue their political work. But he emphasized that workers in the USA did not have a party of their own.
He mentioned author Thomas Frank who had written that Democrats were perceived as being latte-drinking, Chardonnay-sipping owners of Volvos — and Stern said that this was not just a perception, but the reality. The Democrats may be supportive of the workers in their hearts, he said, but not in their heads.
When asked if the coalition/federation had set any goals for how many new members it would recruit, he said that it was too early to say — but we’d know more in the spring. But the SEIU, which now has 1.8 million members, would have 2 million in the near future, he promised.
One journalist commented that many of the things being said on the floor of this convention would have been welcomed at the AFL-CIO convention too. Was this causing him to have second thoughts? Stern replied that it would probably have the effect of making some AFL-CIO affiliates question why they weren’t here.
Asked why the construction unions were exempted from the new federation’s compulsory strategic sectoral efforts, he pointed out that those unions had a long history of working together — while unions like the SEIU, the UFCW and the Teamsters had not worked together in the same way.
He spoke about how the unions, including SEIU, were giving their very best people to the new federation, giving the example of Tom Woodruff, who he called the architect of the SEIU’s explosive growth. Tom would be organizing director for the new federation, he said.
Asked about whether the new federation would have a communications strategy, he talked about cellphones and the net, about his own experience as a blogger, and the SEIU’s innovative PurpleOcean.org website.