SEIU's Andy Stern: Going Global
But workers in different parts of the world don't seem to have much in common.
I think we live with that every day. We have workers who work in hospitals in Tenet [Healthcare Corp.]. Within that group we have every classification, from nurses to cafeteria workers. We have workers in urban areas like L.A. and workers in rural areas. What the union has been able to do is come up with a process to have people democratically make decisions about their own life.
We just need to conceive of the fact that it shouldn't have to end at a national border. Employers get that. They don't see borders as obstacles to their future. They don't stop at the shoreline and say, "We're an American employer." They appreciate that their future is served by joining the global economy. Workers need to appreciate that we are not going to be successful being regional or national when our employers are international.
About 40 percent of SEIU workers are government employees. How are their interests being served by this movement?
They are seeing their jobs being transferred many times to private multinational employers. They appreciate that their salaries get paid by American companies' tax dollars. They have an interest in keeping good jobs in that state. We are trying to find ways to make sure that we don't demolish our tax base here.
Why are you now getting involved with private-equity groups?
Have you heard of a company called TPG? That company [indirectly] employs 500,000 workers. It's one of the 10 largest American employers, and it's a private-equity company.
Now we have some of the largest employers in our country, and no one knows their name. But they do own these companies–they don't rent them, they aren't shareholders. They are the owners, and the way they own them is that they raise capital from pension funds and governments and rich individuals and they buy all the shares up in the marketplace and take the companies private, in which case very few people know what goes on because they have no governmental requirements for transparency or corporate governance.
What piqued your interest?
We spent time with private-equity groups because they happened to buy the two largest employers that SEIU has, which are HCA, the hospital system, and Equity Office Properties. HCA was the largest deal in history of private equity. That kind of shocked us. If you read the business pages, which I now do a lot more every day, someone else is being bought. So we have our economies being reshaped by a new form of capitalism that very few people know much about.
What's the strategy?
You need to get their attention. Much of their money comes from public pension funds, so we ask those pension funds to set up meetings for us. If they want our members' money, we believe they should have some semblance of responsibility to workers. We raised issues that we're concerned about. I think this is the next bust in the economy. What it takes for me to buy a condo–the paperwork and responsibility–is far greater than what the banks require for private-equity companies to borrow $1 billion. People are just throwing money like they once did for high tech. I'm not sure whether it is good for America in the long run.
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