Fortune Profiles Andy Stern

For Immediate Release
Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Washington, D.C.  – The October 16th issue of Fortune magazine profiles Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president and Wal-Mart Watch board chair Andy Stern. The piece addresses Stern’s work with Wal-Mart Watch, discusses his bipartisan overtures, and examines his ideas about affordable health care in America. Excerpts from the story are below:

More broadly, you could argue that Stern is almost single-handedly reinvigorating a national labor movement. Maybe you’ve noticed California’s recent decision to raise its minimum wage? Or the grass-roots campaigns that have put Wal-Mart on the defensive over its pay and health benefits? Or this summer’s huge and noisy pro-immigration rallies in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.? Stern and the SEIU’s manpower and money were behind them all…

Stern also studies the Republicans because they know how to win. He raised eyebrows when he invited Steve Moore, co-founder of the Club for Growth--which often goes after Republican apostates from its anti-tax stand--to address his union. “I thought, The guy has a couple of things going for him,” says Stern. “One, he actually believes in something, and two, he scares the hell out of folks.” Despite spending $65 million trying to defeat George Bush in 2004, far outstripping any other union’s spending, Stern insists he has zero interest in perpetuating labor’s role as the loyal financier of the Democratic Party. Instead, he’s forming a new PAC, called They Work for Us. Modeled on the Club for Growth, it will target Democrats who get elected after 2006 pledging to support SEIU’s economic agenda and then fail to deliver. “If that happens, we’ll unelect them,” says Stern…

Now Stern is taking on his biggest challenge yet. In July he issued a manifesto on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal calling for an alternative to employer-based health coverage. Stern also sent a letter to every FORTUNE 500 CEO calling on them to join him in devising a new and better national system. “The old idea that business and labor can’t work together for the common good is as outdated as lifetime jobs,” he declared in a fine rhetorical flourish. Never mind that Washington handicappers give Stern’s assault about the same odds of success as Pickett’s charge up Cemetery Ridge. He just shrugs: “You have to stumble around --and hope you stumble forward.”…

A big wild card is China. In 2002, when Stern made his first trip there, most American union heads still considered it “heresy,” as he puts it, to meet with the government-controlled lapdog group, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). “But I believe that during historical moments of transition,” he says, “people transform themselves to represent the interests of their constituents.” Four years, four more visits, and billions of dollars of foreign investment later, he sees signs that change is on the way. Recently the ACFTU forced Wal-Mart to allow it to organize workers in its mainland stores, and Stern hopes to send observers soon to watch the process. How deep can such global alliances go? “There are no models,” he admits. “Still, it’s amazing how change happens sometimes. Like Newt Gingrich says, ‘You just have to plan back from victory.’“ Ah. There he goes again…

“How can America compete in a global economy when we’re the only country that puts the price of health care on the price of our products?” Jacket off, sleeves of his purple shirt rolled up--Stern declared purple the SEIU’s “brand” a few years back--he is shouting out to a largely black and Latino crowd at a pre--Labor Day rally at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. (“Mmm-huh.... That’s right,” mutter the women sitting beside me.) “That’s why I wrote to the FORTUNE 500 CEOs and said, ‘Wake up, guys! Where’s your leadership?’ “ (“Mmm-huh, yes.”) “And here’s the amazing thing. All these people started writing back. I even heard from my favorite friends at Wal-Mart.” (Laughter.) “You know, Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, was on that Charlie Rose interview show, and he said, ‘Business and labor have to work together on health care.’ I thought he couldn’t get those words out of his mouth!” (Big laughter.)…

Even so, Stern remains relentlessly upbeat. “There’s clearly a growing group of employers who think change in health care has to be fundamental and not incremental,” he says. But he can’t resist pointing out that folks who profess interest in his call “to reinvent the social contract” and “be more bipartisan”--and then cling to the sidelines--have to understand something he figured out long ago. “You can get rid of Uzis and still have handguns,” he says. “You can work with Big Pharma and still criticize Big Pharma. You can go to a meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger and still endorse Phil Angelides [the SEIU is backing the Governator’s Democratic opponent in the upcoming election]. Life is complicated. But making it simple isn’t dealing with reality.”