I'm back from Puerto Rico and continuing to process the SEIU convention. Wanted to get you all up to date with the other things that went on down in San Juan.

• SEIU was kind enough to hook us bloggers up with a meeting with Donna Edwards. Dave Johnson posted it over at his blog Seeing The Forest. It was great to be able to sit down with Donna. She is just as smart and savvy as you'd expect and it was very interesting to hear her take on both her 2006 and 2008 runs. On 2006, she said she entered the race as late as she did only because she had calculated how much time she could afford to be out of work. She was running in 2006 to win and believes she did win, but she also feels that having run in 2006 made her a better candidate in 2008. Also, she feels it makes her even more prepared to actually enter congress. Donna is the first of many second-time challengers we're hoping finish the job in 2008 and listening to her talk about it got me even more pumped for the 08 successes of Darcy Burner and Charlie Brown to name just two.

  Dave's takeaway from our meeting:

  She says the wind of change is out there, a demand for change is building. She says regular people have to run for office to start building a farm team for change. Regular people have a story to tell, and the more we run regular folks, the more opportunity there is to tell the public where we have to go. The power of the moneyed interests that want to keep us where we are is incredible so we have to empower regular people to tell their stories.

  She said she talked to a number of people, telling them they should run, and finally decided to run herself. "But why didn't I say that first?" She wants all of us to say that first. (Not that Donna should run, but that YOU should run.) Progressives need to create a farm team to run for office.

  Indeed.

• Watertiger NYC has an excellent post up at FireDogLake about the dissent from the reform SEIU faction within the SEIU that I referenced in my post on Monday.

  The "Reform SEIU" coalition of locals, however, believes that Andy Stern is concerned more with consolidating power than in protecting workers' interests, and that Stern and the SEIU's Executive Board have taken credit where credit ought not to be due. Paul Kumar, Director of Government Affairs with the UHW West is one of Stern's detractors. The UHW-W is not opposed to coordinating locals and utilizing the power of the SEIU to obtain better working conditions and benefits for its members. The UHW-W wants a unified health care industry.

  What the UHW is opposed to is, according to Kumar, "workers being robbed of their own power by a philosophy of accommodation" to corporate interests. Kumar sees Stern's "results-oriented" style as antithetical to the democratic process. Having witnessed a series of incidents in which members have lost control and a voice in the decision-making process, Kumar is dubious, at best, about SEIU's intentions. To the UHW, their self-interest has been sacrificed in the name of affiliation.

  To address this rift in the union, Stern has put forth a "Unity' resolution at this Convention, which he asserts is intended to "keep us honest about the union's mission." [Note: as of this writing, the Resolution passed without amendment.]

  As you can imagine, the UHW saw the unity resolution as a political ploy. Sal Rosselli, president of California local United Healthcare Workers-West, spoke on the floor of the convention to address the unity resolution and urged abstention but also spoke passionately about where there is real unity -- among the members, their brothers and sisters, and when it comes to making progressive political change. It's worth watching:

• Andy Stern blogs over at HuffPo about SEIU's plans for Obama's first 100 days:

  We now have a historic opportunity. When we elect a pro-worker president and win a pro-worker majority in Congress in November, we'll have an incredible opportunity to change the direction of this country. We'll finally have a progressive majority. And that will mean real change in working people's lives.

  But we're not leaving anything to chance. At our convention this week in Puerto Rico, rank-and-file SEIU leaders made an incredibly important decision. During the first 100 days of the 111th Congress, we're going to dedicate 50 percent of our staff and resources to passing priorities for working families like the Employee Free Choice Act and health care for all. That also means making more than 10 million phone calls to members of Congress, engaging 50 percent of our members, and raising $10 million dollars to hold Congress accountable in 2009.

More in the coming days as I catch up with all that I saw and heard.

(disclaimer: SEIU paid for me to travel to San Juan to cover the convention)

There's more...

Earlier this morning, Anna Burger, the Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU, spoke to the convention and I wanted to highlight her comments about The Employee Free Choice Act in particular. There is a fairly effective ad campaign on the air right now that is framing the The Employee Free Choice Act as "anti-worker privacy" and uses a Sopranos character to fear-monger about what passing The Employee Free Choice Act would mean for workers. So where's the pro-Employee Free Choice Act ad campaign? Hmm, good question. They simply haven't found the right message yet but there is an acknowledgment that there needs to be one and fast. It is a complex issue, one that's not easily broken down into a one line concept or sound byte and it's hard to explain to people why they should care. Anna Burger today made as good a case as I've ever heard for why we should all care about its passage.

What would the Employee Free Choice Act accomplish?

The Employee Free Choice Act is a simple law that does 3 profound things:

• It says a majority of workers can decide to have a union
• Imposes big penalties on employers who violate worker rights, and
• Gives newly-unionized workers guaranteed first contract through binding arbitration

No government interference. No corporate intimidation. No ridiculous rules and roadblocks set up to block your rights.

And the key reason it is so important:

It is the fuel -- the opening -- for SEIU to change our growth curve from 100,000 to a million or more workers a year.

That in itself, Burger argues, makes the Employee Free Choice Act larger than any one single issue, even more important than healthcare.

We are the leaders of the fight for healthcare. We are the biggest healthcare union in our three nations because we fight for it every single day. It's time that the United States and Perto Rico join our sisters and brothers in Canda and win quality, affordable healthcare for every man, woman and child in 2009!

Let's be straight: we need political leadership, not petty arguments.

We need fundamental change, not incremental thinking.

We demand action.

Healthcare is critical, but having the freedom to join a union -- that's transformational.

The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, Burger argues, will make the difference between incremental change and transformational change, because it will allow the creation of a movement that will not only demand that change, but enable it. So, the Employee Free Choice Act is more important than healthcare because without it, there is no healthcare reform, or at least not the real reform we want and need. Same goes for every other progressive legislation we hope to pass in the post-Bush era.

Imagine a world where five years after the Employee Free Choice Act is signed into law, SEIU is organizing a million or more workers a year and the labor movement has added 20 million members to its ranks. Through the Employee Free Choice Act we've built a principled, permanent workers movement that will redefine politics for the next century.

Then just imagine what our movement could do:

• A real living wage for every single worker
• Healthcare for every child, guaranteed from birth
• Guaranteed retirement security
• Quality child care everyone can afford
• A tax system that rewards work
• An immigration system that is fair to everyone, everywhere, always
• Environmental policy that puts our planet and our children first.

Forever.

She's sort of making a process argument here, one that works in a labor setting since it celebrates the power of workers as a movement. How to make the average voter understand how important it is is another question entirely and represents one of the challenges the progressive movement faces.

(disclosure: SEIU is paying for my travel expenses to be here to cover their convention)

There's more...

I'm not the only blogger down here in lovely Puerto Rico covering the SEIU convention.

• Dave Johnson, of Seeing The Forest, has his take on the Accountability project over at The Huffington Post.

  So SEIU will step up to the plate to with serious resources that does two things. First, it finally gives politicians whose hearts are with us a reason to vote with us. Second, it tells politicians who don't agree with a progressive agenda (of reducing corporate power over our lives and restoring democracy to the people) that their time is past, that we will run candidates against them in the primaries and these candidates will have strong support.

  While this is election activity, it begins to put an enforcement component onto our progressive movement's policy agenda.

• Also, Tim Tagaris is down here as well, doing some net outreach on behalf of SEIU. He's posting over at Open Left.

  All told, SEIU spent over $1 million dollars in an "unprecedented effort" to help elect Donna Edwards in Maryland's 4th Congressional District earlier this year.

  And as part of the "Justice for All" platform at SEIU's Convention -- you'll be seeing more primaries like this fought in the coming months and years. [...]

  The goal is not simply to run primaries and win, but to elect representatives who will work and vote for universal health care, freedom to form a union without employer interference, economic fairness, an end to the war, and more.

  Donna Edwards will be speaking in front of the convention tomorrow. Come back here for a livestream and some liveblogging of her speech.

• Now even with all this talk of "justice for all" and accountability, it's not all roses and butterflies. There's a deep-rooted conflict that's playing out here between the SEIU International and the United Healthcare Workers West local based in California. This is worth a far more extensive post than a bullet point in a round-up, which I intend to write tomorrow, but I recommend reading this NY Times article for an intro to the conflict:

  [SEIU President Andy] Stern...is facing considerable internal criticism that he is seeking to increase the union's size and the leadership's power at the expense of rank-and-file members.

  "He's taking things in a bad direction because he's taking steps without involving any workers," said Sal Rosselli, president of United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 140,000 S.E.I.U. members in California.

  Mr. Stern insists that the changes will help rank-and-file workers and are vital not just to make his union stronger, but also to transform the nation's politics and policies. [...]

  Mr. Stern says it is important to push to unionize millions of workers both to lift wages and benefits for nonunion workers and to prevent union members' wages and benefits from being pulled down.

  This Nation article is a more in depth look at it:

  At the heart of Stern's vision is a drive toward growth, to organize the "90 percent of workers without a union." Without growth, he argues, any union gains are built on sand--"a higher compensation island in a growing nonunion sea." This singular focus is rooted in a realization that, given the long slide in union ranks since the 1950s, the labor movement must build a critical mass of members ("density") in key industries in order to wield power against ever larger and bolder multinational employers.

  On the other hand:

  In what Stern sees as a classic example of "Just Us" unionism, Rosselli worked out a deal with better terms for his members that only covered Tenet's California facilities. But Rosselli is vehement that he was serving national goals: his members accepted healthcare givebacks in order to win the right to criticize Tenet publicly and throw up solidarity pickets--exactly the tools needed to aid SEIU's organizing drives in Florida and beyond. Good contracts now, Rosselli wrote in a letter to Stern, "are the best examples we can use to organize the unorganized." SEIU, he says, has lost sight of that.

  For more on UHW-W's side of the story, check out SEIUVoice.org.

  You can find SEIU International online over at SEIU2008.org.

Watertiger NYC from Fire Dog Lake is here too, will have a link to her piece tomorrow.

There's more...

I'm not the only blogger down here in lovely Puerto Rico covering the SEIU convention.

• Dave Johnson, of Seeing The Forest, has his take on the Accountability project over at The Huffington Post.

  So SEIU will step up to the plate to with serious resources that does two things. First, it finally gives politicians whose hearts are with us a reason to vote with us. Second, it tells politicians who don't agree with a progressive agenda (of reducing corporate power over our lives and restoring democracy to the people) that their time is past, that we will run candidates against them in the primaries and these candidates will have strong support.

  While this is election activity, it begins to put an enforcement component onto our progressive movement's policy agenda.

• Also, Tim Tagaris is down here as well, doing some net outreach on behalf of SEIU. He's posting over at Open Left.

  All told, SEIU spent over $1 million dollars in an "unprecedented effort" to help elect Donna Edwards in Maryland's 4th Congressional District earlier this year.

  And as part of the "Justice for All" platform at SEIU's Convention -- you'll be seeing more primaries like this fought in the coming months and years. [...]

  The goal is not simply to run primaries and win, but to elect representatives who will work and vote for universal health care, freedom to form a union without employer interference, economic fairness, an end to the war, and more.

  Donna Edwards will be speaking in front of the convention tomorrow. Come back here for a livestream and some liveblogging of her speech.

• Now even with all this talk of "justice for all" and accountability, it's not all roses and butterflies. There's a deep-rooted conflict that's playing out here between the SEIU International and the United Healthcare Workers West local based in California. This is worth a far more extensive post than a bullet point in a round-up, which I intend to write tomorrow, but I recommend reading this NY Times article for an intro to the conflict:

  [SEIU President Andy] Stern...is facing considerable internal criticism that he is seeking to increase the union's size and the leadership's power at the expense of rank-and-file members.

  "He's taking things in a bad direction because he's taking steps without involving any workers," said Sal Rosselli, president of United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 140,000 S.E.I.U. members in California.

  Mr. Stern insists that the changes will help rank-and-file workers and are vital not just to make his union stronger, but also to transform the nation's politics and policies. [...]

  Mr. Stern says it is important to push to unionize millions of workers both to lift wages and benefits for nonunion workers and to prevent union members' wages and benefits from being pulled down.

  This Nation article is a more in depth look at it:

  At the heart of Stern's vision is a drive toward growth, to organize the "90 percent of workers without a union." Without growth, he argues, any union gains are built on sand--"a higher compensation island in a growing nonunion sea." This singular focus is rooted in a realization that, given the long slide in union ranks since the 1950s, the labor movement must build a critical mass of members ("density") in key industries in order to wield power against ever larger and bolder multinational employers.

  On the other hand:

  In what Stern sees as a classic example of "Just Us" unionism, Rosselli worked out a deal with better terms for his members that only covered Tenet's California facilities. But Rosselli is vehement that he was serving national goals: his members accepted healthcare givebacks in order to win the right to criticize Tenet publicly and throw up solidarity pickets--exactly the tools needed to aid SEIU's organizing drives in Florida and beyond. Good contracts now, Rosselli wrote in a letter to Stern, "are the best examples we can use to organize the unorganized." SEIU, he says, has lost sight of that.

  For more on UHW-W's side of the story, check out SEIUVoice.org.

  You can find SEIU International online over at SEIU2008.org.

Watertiger NYC from Fire Dog Lake is here too, will have a link to her piece tomorrow.

There's more...

I'm not the only blogger down here in lovely Puerto Rico covering the SEIU convention.

• Dave Johnson, of Seeing The Forest, has his take on the Accountability project over at The Huffington Post.

  So SEIU will step up to the plate to with serious resources that does two things. First, it finally gives politicians whose hearts are with us a reason to vote with us. Second, it tells politicians who don't agree with a progressive agenda (of reducing corporate power over our lives and restoring democracy to the people) that their time is past, that we will run candidates against them in the primaries and these candidates will have strong support.

  While this is election activity, it begins to put an enforcement component onto our progressive movement's policy agenda.

• Tim Tagaris is down here as well, doing some net outreach on behalf of SEIU. He's posting over at Open Left.

  All told, SEIU spent over $1 million dollars in an "unprecedented effort" to help elect Donna Edwards in Maryland's 4th Congressional District earlier this year.

  And as part of the "Justice for All" platform at SEIU's Convention -- you'll be seeing more primaries like this fought in the coming months and years. [...]

  The goal is not simply to run primaries and win, but to elect representatives who will work and vote for universal health care, freedom to form a union without employer interference, economic fairness, an end to the war, and more.

  Donna Edwards will be speaking in front of the convention tomorrow. Come back here for a livestream and some liveblogging of her speech.

• Now even with all this talk of "justice for all" and accountability, it's not all roses and butterflies. There's a deep-rooted conflict that's playing out here between the SEIU International and the United Healthcare Workers West local based in California. This is worth a far more extensive post than a bullet point in a round-up -- a post I intend to write tomorrow -- but I recommend reading this NY Times article for an intro to the conflict:

  [SEIU President Andy] Stern...is facing considerable internal criticism that he is seeking to increase the union's size and the leadership's power at the expense of rank-and-file members.

  "He's taking things in a bad direction because he's taking steps without involving any workers," said Sal Rosselli, president of United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 140,000 S.E.I.U. members in California.

  Mr. Stern insists that the changes will help rank-and-file workers and are vital not just to make his union stronger, but also to transform the nation's politics and policies. [...]

  Mr. Stern says it is important to push to unionize millions of workers both to lift wages and benefits for nonunion workers and to prevent union members' wages and benefits from being pulled down.

  This Nation article is a more in depth look at it:

  At the heart of Stern's vision is a drive toward growth, to organize the "90 percent of workers without a union." Without growth, he argues, any union gains are built on sand--"a higher compensation island in a growing nonunion sea." This singular focus is rooted in a realization that, given the long slide in union ranks since the 1950s, the labor movement must build a critical mass of members ("density") in key industries in order to wield power against ever larger and bolder multinational employers.

  On the other hand:

  In what Stern sees as a classic example of "Just Us" unionism, Rosselli worked out a deal with better terms for his members that only covered Tenet's California facilities. But Rosselli is vehement that he was serving national goals: his members accepted healthcare givebacks in order to win the right to criticize Tenet publicly and throw up solidarity pickets--exactly the tools needed to aid SEIU's organizing drives in Florida and beyond. Good contracts now, Rosselli wrote in a letter to Stern, "are the best examples we can use to organize the unorganized." SEIU, he says, has lost sight of that.

  For more on UHW-W's side of the story, check out SEIUVoice.org.

  You can find SEIU International online over at SEIU2008.org.

Watertiger NYC from Fire Dog Lake is here too, will have a link to her piece tomorrow.

There's more...