Oh Say Can You SEIU

Following on my post below about the Service Employees International Union's attempts to drum up sponsors for Senator Clinton's snowball's-chance bill on minimum wage hikes, it occurred to me that the SEIU and its boss, Andy Stern, feature prominently in a recent Atlantic Monthly article on another pressing public-policy issue, health care:

A social service worker turned union organizer, Stern at fifty-five already has a full head of white hair. But he hardly resembles the stereotypical, cigar-chomping union boss. Fit and energetic, he speaks with the assuredness and big-picture worldview of a motivational speaker, an effect amplified by his bright purple shirt (purple is SEIU’s official color). The sleek purple chairs and frosted glass in the union’s Washington offices lend an air of Scandinavian minimalism and further the sense of calculated nonconformity. “Why go after Wal-Mart?” Stern replied. “Because Wal-Mart is the GM of our era. Whatever business practices they adopt have huge influence across other American businesses.”

Stern has something much grander in mind even than unionizing Wal-Mart. “Ford wasn’t created to be a health-care provider; it was created to produce cars,” Stern says. “My goal is to get Wal-Mart’s leadership out there in traffic and holler, ‘We can no longer compete in the global economy when health care is factored into the cost of our products.’ If Wal-Mart’s CEO, Lee Scott, were to come out and say, ‘We need a national health-care system that works for everyone,’ then it’s a whole new ball game.” [snip]

In Stern’s thinking, if the world’s largest company could be coaxed or bullied into publicly favoring a national health-care policy, here’s how things might play out: a rush of other companies already beset by health-care costs and accustomed to mimicking Wal-Mart would fall in line, putting business on the same side as labor. Governors burdened with soaring Medicaid costs might also join in. The pressure on the federal government would be overwhelming. Stern, in other words, is seeking to turn the Wal-Mart effect to his own ends, harnessing it to transform health-care policy just as it routinely transforms business policy. It’s an audacious plan.

Stern sounds like a bright guy, and an effective one: the article describes how, when pressed on the health-care issue at a meeting of state governors, Lee Scott blew his top. Low prices, but high blood pressure, apparently. Far from a wonkish assessment of health care policy in the U.S., the article is a beautifully written summary of the organizational and political jujitsu which the big unions are practicing against Wal-Mart and the "Wal-Mart effect." It's very much worth your time.