One example involves a deal brokered between the AFL-CIO (which included the SEIU at the time) and the health care giant Kaiser Permanente. The accord allowed several federation unions, including the SEIU, to organize Kaiser workers on the condition that they encourage their own members to get their benefits through Kaiser.

Out of this deal also came a labor-management body that involved the union in making decisions on changes such as closures and expansions. However, the union was forbidden to talk about these discussions, and any decisions made jointly were not binding anyway.

Yolanda Rios, a member of SEIU Local 399, criticized the agreement, saying it "takes things out of our hands." She explained, "Our problem here has been that while the union organizes [new workers], it doesn't represent us well. We want to fight the company more effectively and win better conditions at work."

You won't find the criticism in Stern's book, but he does give a flowery description of how the deal with Kaiser was "an amazing experience." He continued, "As hard as I tried, I could not distinguish the union representatives from the management representatives."

Rios and her progressive rank-and-file caucus went on to win all but one of the leadership positions in the next election. However, in true management fashion, when a power struggle broke out between old leaders and new ones after the election, the SEIU international office stepped in to put in one of their own, placing the local under "trusteeship."

SEIU is known for its use of tactics like this and others to impose decisions made at the top levels of the union. After all, if Andy Stern is going to be doing the wheeling and dealing for you, why do you need a voice?

We didn't have a voice two years ago when Stern's secret meetings with other select union presidents led to the formation of the Change to Win coalition, which broke away from the AFL-CIO in labor's largest split since the 1930s--all without a vote.

And we certainly don't have it now as massive mergers create monster locals so removed from the workplace that members often don't know they're in a union, or its name.

Stern's attitude about these changes is summed up by what he said about SEIU staff workers who lost their jobs in a consolidation at the international office: "There are winners and losers."

Meanwhile, some of the losers in one of Stern's new alliances will be immigrant workers.

The SEIU has been integral to a labor-business alliance that is trying to pass the largest guest-worker program our country has had since the bracero program of the last century. The history of past and current guest-worker programs shows that they are rife with abuse, difficult to organize and actually drive the wages of all workers down.

The SEIU says it is willing to hand businesses a reliable source of cheap labor for the legalization of some of the 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. But none of the legalization plans offered are actually workable for most immigrants, and they all include stricter enforcement measures. Still, the SEIU supports the passage of these bills, while whispering some criticisms.

This is the logical conclusion of business unionism. The SEIU is working with Corporate America and hoping for something in return. Perhaps it expects a shot at organizing some of the immigrant workers whose rights they will have already bargained away if it passes.

The ideas presented by Stern in his book are ones we need to challenge.

There are already campaigns within the SEIU to challenge some of these specific alliances, and they deserve our support. But these are also steps toward building a broader movement for union democracy, which is important if we want the decisions of unions to represent the interests of workers instead of bosses.

The unions we need won't be built around a cult of personality, but by members organizing to win the kind of contracts they want through their own struggles, and learning from those experiences.

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