A friend sent along this little missive yesterday from out in Los Angeles and asked me to post it. The writer is Julie Butcher, general manager of SEIU Local 347, which represents 12,000 public employees in Southern California. The upshot: she wants the labor movement to change but isn’t sure that disaffiliation is the right course. Just a view from a Local out there…

“In 2001, when Los Angeles was voting on secession, I put together a music CD with songs about staying
together. Of course, the Union’s lawyer freaked out when he started to get calls from copyright lawyers after
Patt Morrison mentioned our CD in her political column in the LA Times. But it’s still a fun collection:
“Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” “Let’s Stay Together.” “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” “I Love LA. “
You get the idea.

However, the debate we’re hearing out of SEIU and other unions in the AFL-CIO sounds less like secession
and more like the discussions we had in LA in 2001 re: Bigger is better vs. smaller is better. It looked like
Bigger had won that argument, but now we’re talking about dividing ourselves from the AFL-CIO.
A member joked to me recently: She asked if we were going to change the “Stronger Together” stuff to
“Stronger Alone.”

At some point in every negotiation, the bargaining team comes up with a list of possible actions and tactics.
A strike is always the last thing on the list. Likewise, there are other tactics to consider. Seceding from the
fraternal organization of American unions should be the last resort.
After all, what could we do for an encore?

Andy Stern’s analysis is absolutely right on the merits. The American labor movement is in deep shit and if
there’s not drastic change, we’re toast. On a daily basis, we live the craziness of 13 international unions
organizing — and then struggling to represent — local government workers. Think how powerful one BIG
public workers union in LA could be.

So, I’m there, all the way up to the line, into the doorway — just not out the door.
Why would we want to make ourselves smaller? Without any perceptible gain? Then we’ll create a parallel
universe, reinventing every tactic and tool. That could end up costing us more than what we’ve got now.

And at a time when we’ve got so much to do?

And given the numbers and their implication? We’re at 13%, that’s 15.8 million American workers. Take out
the public sector and we’re down to, what now?, 8% of the workforce? It’s a wonder anyone — let alone
workers — listens to us at all. And when they do, will we be singing “Baby, Come Back” or “All By Myself”?
Stay tuned…”