What I Believe...

It is my belief that SEIU is, as a whole, a fundamentally flawed organization that no longer works to the benefit of the people that pay it to represent them, and is instead far more interersted in amassing more and more power for itself - and this is usually achieved at the expense of those very people SEIU is supposed to represent.

It is my belief that the organizational flaws within SEIU arise from the top of the SEIU food chain, in the person of Andrew L. Stern, and percolate down through his entirely hand-selected International Executive Board and down to the multitudes of locals who have had their locally-elected leadership yanked out from under them by Stern and his compatriots on the IEB through trusteeships and jurisdictional changes.

It is my belief that the reason why the constitutional revisions were pushed through with such fervor by SEIU's E-boards and the various appointed representatives in the 2008 San Juan convention was that the IEB needed to consolidate its "legal" power prior to commencing efforts to consolidate IEB power in locals which had proven to be troublesome in the past - chief among them being UHW.

It is my belief that efforts to reform SEIU from within are to be encouraged and applauded. People like Bruce Boccardy at SEIU 888 in Metro Boston deserve most deep congratulations for overthrowing a Stern-appointed E-board. Monty Kroopkin at SEIU 221 in San Diego also deserves support and good wishes as his group goes against Stern crony (and self-admitted union n00b and former speed dating organizer) Sharon-Frances Moore in a leadership vote.

It is my belief, notwithstanding the efforts of the individuals named in the above paragraph along with everyone else at SMART who are trying desperately to reform SEIU from within, that those efforts are ultimately doomed to failure, as they will be unable to fix the true nature of the problem at SEIU, that being the basic culture of the organization.

It is my belief that SEIU in general, and Andy Stern in particular, will never let EFCA come to vote in the Congress, because they know that to do so would mean the effective end of SEIU's power over people who can think and act and reason for themselves.

It is my belief that the corruption and ineptitude that exists at SEIU 6434, SEIU 721, SEIU 221, and SEIU 1021 are the norm, rather than the exception, and that Zombie UHW is already well on its way down the road that those four misbegotten California mega-locals have paved with the dues dollars of thousands of members held hostage for up to three years at a time by SEIU rules regarding trusteeships and jurisdictional changes.

It is my belief that the corruption and ineptitude that exists at SEIU 6434, SEIU 721, SEIU 221, and SEIU 1021 do, however, serve as excellent examples of what happens when the current SEIU culture and ethos - that being "absolute power by any means necessary" - is fully and completely applied.

It is my belief that any current SEIU locals who currently have local election and local control of their individual destinies are destined to be realigned, trusteed, or otherwise merged into a SEIU mega-local with appointed leadership - usually for three years at a time before the local electorate gets even the merest say in the matter.

It is my belief that local control, local decision, and local member service are antithetical to the SEIU model, which craves centralized decision making, centralized negotiation, centralized member service, all of which inevitably result in centralized corruption and lack of service to its dues-paying members.

It is my belief that in the current authoritarian SEIU culture, it is no longer a matter of "if" corruption, poor member service, suppression of independent thought in favor of the SEIU hive mind, or true union democracy comes to your local, it is now a matter of "when" it does, because in the current SEIU culture, that evolution is as inevitable as day following night.

For the above reasons, I believe it is imperative that those of us who believe in locally-directed union democracy must strive and fight to get out of SEIU. Doing so will require fortitude, patience, and a little bit of luck mixed in with great heaps of hard work. Fortunately, the attributes of fortitude, patience and hard work come naturally to NUHW supporters, and are in quite short supply on the SEIU side of the ledger. This concept is not just limited to those of us who are stuck in Zombie UHW, this applies to anyone and everyone who is currently in a SEIU local, because while efforts to correct SEIU from within are laudable, and maybe even worthwhile, the plain and sorry truth is that all efforts to reform SEIU will only result in a temporarily prettier face being placed on an eternally corrupt and putrefying body.