Here is a pretty good summation of the current fight between SEIU president Andy Stern and insurgent union local chief Sal Rosselli. It’s in the L.A. Times today.

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A nasty rift in a powerful union

-By Paul Pringle

OAKLAND — Sal Rosselli had been hardened by nearly three decades of front-line unionism. Time and again he staged insurgent organizing drives and do-or-die strikes, staring down major corporations.

Now he blinked away tears as he huddled with supporters in his Oakland headquarters, a sooty-windowed, bunker-like building strewn with leaflets and picket signs, a place suddenly under siege.

Rosselli was describing his latest battle, his toughest ever: a face-off against a comrade in struggle, Andrew Stern, whom many view as the most powerful labor leader in America.

The two are locked in a nasty, often personal fight over how to make the nation’s fastest-growing union — 1.9 million members — even bigger. Stern, its president, has sought more common ground with employers as a means to unionize entire industries. Rosselli believes building membership first requires getting the best deal for workers already under labor’s tent.

“If you stick your head up, if you question what he’s doing, you’ll get whacked,” said Rosselli, 58, head of the second-largest California chapter of Stern’s union.

Wiping his eyes, he insisted that Stern, through a trusteeship, is determined to oust him from his elected post as part of a long push to centralize authority….

See the rest at the L.A. Times

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