Today's Stories

April 3-5, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

March 27-29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Fall Guy

Arno J. Mayer
Too Big to Fail?

Michael Hudson
How the Scam Works

José Pertierra
Gesture for Gesture: How to Free the Cuban Five

Andy Worthington
A Letter to Obama From a Guantánamo Uighur

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Hog Wallow

Winslow T. Wheeler
What Does an F-22 Cost?

Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Iraq: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves

Dave Lindorff
A Financial History Lesson

Ian Masters
The Zombie Presidency

Barbara Rose Johnston
Water Culture Wars

Jami Tarn
Smearing Tristan Anderson

Diane Farsetta
The Nuclear Industry Targets Wisconsin

David Ker Thomson Against Democracy

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu and the Future of the Peace Process

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Shiites' One-Word Demand

Wajahat Ali
Writer as Fighter: the Genius of Ishmael Reed

Nick Egnatz
Whatever Happened to the Fierce Urgency of Now?

Gregory A. Burris
The Insolents Abroad: a Defense of Iceland

Missy Beattie
This Land

Stephen Martin
The Broken Stone of Corporatism

Charles R. Larson
Obama, Smoking and Me

David Yearsley
How They Built Bach's Face (Is the Bard Next?)

Ben Sonnenberg
Won't You Please Get Thee Behind Me? Buñuel's Simon of the Desert

Kim Nicolini
The Mafia Without Moralizing: Garrone's Gomorrah

Lorenzo Wolff
Pat Boone Syndrome

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Paulann Petersen

Website of the Weekend
Ann Coulter: a Portrait by Ben Tripp

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

Sharon Smith
Another Blow to Labor ... from the Democrats

Neve Gordon
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Shame

Patrick Madden
Why the Geithner Plan Will Fail

Gareth Porter
The Big Con on Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Why Do We Need a Health Insurance Industry?

Hannah Safran
The Israeli Resistance: "Ready to be Traitors"

Keith Newell
Will the Cellphone Please Take the Stand?

Todd Chretien
Behind the Green Collar

Nelson P. Valdés
When It Comes to Cuba and the Media Anything Goes

Website of the Day
G20 Meltdown

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

Weekend Edition
April 3-5, 2009

An April Fools Joke on Labor

An Evening with Andy Stern

By STEVE EARLY

Cambridge, Mass.

It’s April Fool’s day, plus one, in what Bob Dylan once called “the green pastures of Harvard University.” We’re at the Kennedy School of Government, to be exact, and the guest speaker tonight is not the kind of Washington pol who ends up at the Institute of Politics for a “mid-career” make-over. (One such “Fellow” at the moment is George Bush’s former secretary of labor, the rabidly anti-union Elaine Chao.)  Instead, the IOP is hosting Andy Stern.

 Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, is nobody’s April fool. Yet he had, I’m sure, planned to expound upon his  “vision” before a much larger group than the 75 to 100 folks who actually showed up to hear him. After all, even John Sweeney, the aging CEO of the AFL-CIO, packed the same venue a year ago, drawing an audience twice as large as Stern’s. Unfortunately for Andy, there’s a competing attraction for undergraduates this Thursday evening on the other side of the Charles, where some local guy named Chomsky is speaking at a “student labor week of action” forum at Northeastern.

Meanwhile, some of Stern’s own members seem to have opted for the “Labor Seder” now underway at the local janitors hall in downtown Boston. So his crowd is small and composed of local SEIU functionaries (including one just back from trusteeship duty in California), Change To Win staffers, students, professors, and a smattering of Boston labor activists (including this correspondent).  Stern’s talk is titled “A Country That Works,” drawn from his 2006 book which celebrated Change To Win (CTW), the breakaway labor federation.  CTW was promoted, at the time, as an exciting progressive alternative to the dreary internal dysfunction of Sweeney’s AFL-CIO.

But that was then and this is now.  In the run-up to Stern’s Harvard visit, there’s been a major falling out among CTW founding fathers. Once known as the “Three Ivy League Amigos,” this trio included Stern himself (Penn, ’71), needle trades leader Bruce Raynor, a graduate of Cornell, and Yale man John Wilhelm, head of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees (HERE), who launched his career on campus in New Haven.  When they forged their “New Unity Partnership” in 2004,” as a prelude to the multi-union defection from the AFL one year later, it was an article of faith among the Amigos that “size matters.” So, to demonstrate to the rest of labor how two “organizing unions” could super-size themselves to grow faster, Raynor and Wilhelm formed 440,000-member UNITE-HERE, amid much joyous rice-throwing by labor-oriented intellectuals. 

A mere four years later, the Raynor-Wilhelm nuptials have become the labor marriage from hell; the two “co-presidents” are a real-life version of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in “War of The Roses.” Since January, when the two weren’t suing each other in preparation for the UNITE-HERE convention in June, they’ve engaged in public dissing, the likes of which should make any future union merger partners think twice before saying their own vows too quickly.

Described by The Times as “hyperarticulate heavyweights,” Raynor and Wilhelm have been acting more like kids in a sandbox not big enough for both. From John, we’ve learned that Bruce is a “dictator” out to “destroy the union”--which he treats as his “personal property”--by “creating chaos and strife.”  Bruce, meanwhile, refuses to “be held captive by a bunch of thugs,” “jerks,” and “hijackers” led by John. He charges the latter with spending too much of their joint money on organizing, with “few recent successes” to show for it. Wilhelm countered with an email blast about Raynor’s own high maintenance costs; for example, Bruce’s car service and other perks added nearly $100,000 to his 2006 salary of $254, 000. (Of course, Wilhelm’s “total compensation” for that same year—a mere $344,000—didn’t lag far behind Raynor’s in a union with many workers, who earn, on average, less than one tenth what the co-presidents do.)

By mid-February, the Bruce-and-John gong show got so embarrassing that one of their colleagues, United Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hanson, attempted some marriage counseling. Meanwhile, two former colleagues, still serving on the AFL-CIO executive council, tried peer intervention from outside Change To Win. In a letter to Wilhelm and Raynor, Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger and Steel Workers president Leo Girard warned that “the continuing public escalation of your internal battle…threatens members’ interests and reforms that would benefit the entire labor community”—a reference to labor’s already troubled Employee Free Choice Act campaign.

In any crisis, there is opportunity, however. Where there’s a divorce, a marriage “on the rebound” may be just around the corner (although it’s not usually recommended). With family jewels up for grabs (in the form of UNITE-HERE’s $4.5 billion Amalgamated Bank), guess which Purple Knight stood ready to unite with either or both of the estranged partners, as long the bank was part of the deal.

Rejected by Wilhelm (who is still litigating Amalgamated ownership issues), Andy rushed Bruce back to the altar instead. First, he spent heavily to help “liberate” a claimed 140,000 members from UNITE-HERE, mainly from its garment worker side so they could join SEIU instead. Then, at a hastily-convened meeting in Philadelphia on March 21, a new Raynor-led, SEIU-affiliated entity called “Workers United” (WU) was unveiled.
 
A divorcee himself in his much-publicized personal life, Stern waxed philosophical at WU’s founding convention of 450 people. He noted that,  “like most bad marriages, the disagreements” between John and Bruce developed gradually “over the last two or three years.” In retrospect, Stern suggested, UNITE and HERE might not have been right for each other from the very beginning (although that’s not what he said at the time they merged). But then, Stern was not in Philly to dwell on the unpleasantness of the past or the unpredictability of the future.  “I’m here, “ he said, “to talk about how we can build a partnership to organize more workers.”

Of no small concern to Brother Wilhelm is just who some of those additional workers might be. He says Stern is now planning is to compete with HERE in hotels, casinos, and cafeterias, where any union recruiter faces stiff management resistance.  Wilhelm’s executive board majority rightly fears that Stern will seek to represent culinary and hospitality workers through “partnerships” with their employers. The resulting “sweetheart deals” would undercut gains made by HERE through years of strikes, boycotts, and patient workplace committee-building by its tightly-disciplined cadre of organizers, some of whom also hail from Yale.

The latest Wilhelm press releases are thus directed at the “messianic mindset” of “Czar Stern.” Andy now stands accused by his one-time “New Unity Partner” of “brazen interference” and “breathtaking  imperialism.” According to Wilhelm, the Stern-backed “Raynor splinter group” exited without taking any kind of valid membership vote and is now attempting a “hostile take-over of UNITE-HERE jurisdiction,” using millions of dollars from SEIU. “This is not democracy,” Wilhelm declared. “This is electoral fraud. We’re not going to let this happen.” (He’s also not going to stay in Change to Win any longer, having applied for readmission to the AFL.)

All of which brings us back to Stern’s talk at Harvard, an event ripe with duplicitous declamation. The show begins at the JFK School with exciting, big-screen video footage of SEIU’s convention last June in Puerto Rico, Not surprisingly, it’s all interior shots of the delegates listening to Stern speak—we don’t get to see the San Juan riot squad outside, holding back angry, picketing PR teachers, who accused Andy of “labor imperialism” seven months before Wilhelm did. Having been jostled by a few Puerto Rican cops on that occasion, I start to look around and wonder, why are there so many campus police stationed here in this hall? Does it really take five, plus an even larger retinue of hovering Harvard civilians, to maintain order at the Institute of Politics?

Apparently, the organizers feared a sudden influx of local Wilhelmites. Sadly, this intervention failed to materialize, despite the fact that Boston HERE Local 26 is among those opposed to WU’s defection, and the New England Joint Board of UNITE is the only one in the country not following Raynor’s lead. In retaliation for spurning Stern, reports one Joint Board advisor, “SEIU is pouring money and people into causing trouble in the N.E. Joint Council’s shops, particularly at the TJX warehouses—Marshall’s, T.J. Maxx, and A.J. Wright—where there are thousands of workers.” According to this Boston source, “ Some employers are more or less aiding and colluding with Raynor and SEIU by giving them access.”

With this unseemly Change To Win cannibalism in mind, not to mention so nearby, I patiently await the question period to ask Brother Stern what he thinks about it. But first, we must listen as ex-United Farm Worker staffer (and longtime organizing guru) Marshall Gans, a Kennedy School fixture, lauds our guest speaker for “leading the way in introducing young people to the labor movement.” The mustachioed Marshall gives way to Jake Waxman, a lanky young Emory graduate, now getting a masters at Harvard after taking time off to toil for SEIU.  Jake reports that he “will never forget” an inspiring hospital worker  named “Donna” whom he met during a southern California contract campaign in 2006-7. (What Jake neglects to mention is that Donna and her co-workers at Riverside Community Hospital are part of United Healthcare Workers-West, the SEIU affiliate where tens of thousands of members—perhaps Donna next?—are trying to flee SEIU because  Stern removed all their elected leaders in January and put the entire 150,000-member local under trusteeship.)

Not to be outdone in the flaunting of personal connections to the rank-and-file, Stern opens his talk by calling up to the stage a member of his “union family.” This turns out to be Shirley Cheeseboro, an African-American woman from the Bronx who works in Brooklyn. Shirley’s been a Crown Heights laundry worker for 28 years, she tells me later. She started out as a member of the Laundry & Dry Cleaning Workers Union, which then became part of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, which later became UNITE, which then became UNITE-HERE, which has now split into the UNITE-HERE majority faction, led by Wilhelm, and Workers United, led by Raynor, which just affiliated with SEIU. Shirley’s bargaining unit stuck with Raynor so she went to the Philadelphia meeting that created WU. Andy Stern has been her national union president for about 12 days.

That’s just fine with Andy because, in his introduction of Shirley, he omits the entire organizational history above. His new member testifies convincingly that “a union is important, it helps a lot, and takes you a long way”—leading many in the audience to think that she was just involved in  SEIU organizing, rather than the top-down acquisition of a group unionized for decades. This “victory” notwithstanding, it remains unclear where Shirley’s shop or WU overall fits into SEIU’s “core jurisdiction”--property services, health care, and government employment.

So, when it comes time for questions, I hit the mike with a gentle reminder that  Stern’s four-year old federation, Change To Win, seems to have forgotten one of its founding principles—namely, that unions should stick to their own “jurisdiction,” instead of poaching on the turf of others? Could Stern’s current designs on hotels, casinos, and other culinary work sites be the reason why his former partner is now calling him a brazen, imperialistic, messianic union czar?

Stern jokes that this is just what John “calls me on a good day.” He then explains, in unconvincing fashion, that a recent convergence in corporate ownership of hotels and other commercial real estate properties had created a jurisdictional overlap between Wilhelm’s organization and his own. With a look of total innocence and sincerity, Stern professes “no desire to compete in organizing hotels.” Instead, he envisions a bright future in which SEIU and what’s left of Wilhelm’s union will work together cooperatively, “just as we do with AFSCME in home care.” (Since there was only one question/statement per customer--and Stern seemed eager to change the subject—I don’t get the chance to point out that SEIU and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees –AFSCME--have, in fact, battled over home-based workers in California, Illinois, Iowa, and other states.)

In response to later queries from the floor, Stern does equally well in the unintended humor department. For example, a student asks him what makes for a good union.  First on Andy’s list: “If I was being hypothetical, I’d say democracy”—an answer that produced not a titter of laughter, although it should have elicited major guffawing, given how hypothetical democracy is in SEIU today. Several questions later, a Harvard worker, employed at the law school, hits the jackpot with a question about Stern’s stance on salary cuts for Harvard bosses, including its new president Drew Gilpin Faust. Like her predecessor Larry Summers, Faust earns nearly $600,000 a year—not as much as Raynor and Wilhelm combined, but close. Rather than laying off SEIU janitors, as Harvard is doing now, shouldn’t the university cut costs by paying its top brass less, the worker wants to know. Thinking perhaps of future Harvard invitations—or maybe just a longer stint, someday, at the Kennedy School-- Stern refuses to play populist with the president’s pay. “I really don’t like pitting people against each other, “ he asserts demurely, a statement that John Wilhelm and others may find hard to believe.

Steve Early, in his 27 years with the Communication Workers of America, worked on mergers and affiliations involving a dozen other labor organizations. None ended in divorce, although maybe some should have. He’s now the author of Embedded With Organized Labor (available from Monthly Review in May) and is working on a second book called, Purple Haze: Andy Stern, Anna Burger, and The Civil Wars in American Labor. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com

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