Online progressives need to understand that at the core of the disagreement between the healthcare workers choosing to join NUHW and Andy Stern's SEIU International is a fundamental difference of opinion about exactly the kind of member-driven organizing that California's healthcare workers have just powerfully demonstrated to the world. Andy Stern has a top-down approach to labor organizing. In fact, Andy's top-down philosophy is part of why he felt he could trustee California's UHW, one of the most progressive and successful locals in the nation, without consequence. Undoubtedly, when Stern trusteed UHW and stripped its staff and elected leaders, he did not anticipate this dramatic grassroots response from its members. Stern's choice to trustee SEIU-UHW West was premised on the idea that California's healthcare workers would not choose to rise up, en masse, reject the removal of their elected leaders and advocate for an election to choose a new union.
Clearly, Stern miscalculated. Stern was not only in error in his strategic choice to trustee SEIU-UHW, he was even more gravely mistaken in underestimating the organizing power and determination of California's healthcare workers to choose to build their own democratic, member-led union.
Progressivist buzzwords aside, the author of the above section is spot-on when he states that Nice Scarf severely underestimated the local strength that existed in the former UHW. Stern thought that he could just set up Zombie UHW and everything would continue on peaceably (after a few rough patches were gotten past).
As regards to Our Glorious Maximum Leader, Dr. Cox from Scrubs says it best:
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