Palin Not Alone in Bashing Community Organizers

by Randy Shaw, 2008-09-11

After Sarah Palin used her acceptance speech to belittle community organizers, activists responded with newspaper editorials, mass emails, and even a button saying, “Jesus was a Community Organizer, Pontius Pilate was a Governor.” But Palin’s attack on activists working for economic and social justice is part of a broader conservative strategy, one currently being used by California’s giant St. Joseph's Health System (St. Joseph’s) in trying to thwart a union organizing drive by SEIU-UHW. Like Palin, who cites her husband’s United Steelworkers membership to obscure her anti-union agenda, St Joseph’s claims to support workers rights while attacking SEIU-UHW’s union organizing drive. St. Joseph’s argues that there is one “moral” way to do community organizing, and that taking on an entire hospital system, rather than one hospital at a time, is not “principled” organizing. As onetime advocates for the United Farmworkers with connections in the progressive community, St. Joseph’s is pioneering a new “message” for anti-union conduct, one that deserves far greater scrutiny in light of Palin’s high-profile remarks.

SEIU-UHW is currently involved in the nation’s largest union organizing drive, with over 9000 St. Joseph’s workers at stake. As I previously discussed, although St Joseph’s is headed by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, a religious order that once backed California farm workers, the order is taking an increasingly aggressive anti-union stance in this dispute.

“Ethical” Organizing

St. Joseph’s latest tactic is to decry SEIU-UHW’s organizing methods. According to a recent email message widely disseminated by Sister Marie Jean Gaillac, SEIU’s behavior is “unethical” because the union seeks to organize the entire system rather than a single hospital.

That’s a moral distinction worthy of Sarah Palin.

Sister Gaillac specifically highlights her support for the farmworker cause, and cites that struggle as reflecting the principles of community organizing that she believes SEIU-UHW has abandoned. Yet Cesar Chavez and the UFW found that securing table grape contracts could not be done on a farm by farm basis, but had to be won industry-wide.

How can the Sisters find it moral for the UFW to bypass individual farms and launch a North American grape boycott, and yet immoral and unethical for SEIU-UHW to organize workers throughout the St. Joseph’s system rather than by individual facilities?

The only difference between the two disputes is that in the latter, the Sisters own the target of the union organizing drive.

To confirm that my own sense of moral relativism was correct, I checked with Sister Bernie Galvin to get her take on the issue. Sister Galvin has been doing labor and community organizing for nearly forty years, and is well aware of how employers use moral appeals to defeat unions.

She was mystified by Sister Gaillac’s analysis.

Sister Galvin told me, “in today’s climate, going after the entire system is a more effective strategy, and is necessary to give workers the leverage they need.”
That’s certainly what Cesar Chavez and the UFW learned when it failed to unionize the grape industry through boycotts of individual farms. And it was only when they boycotted the entire industry that they forced growers to the bargaining table.

To be clear, some in the religious community did attack the UFW over its industrywide focus, accusing them of the same “unprincipled” tactics that Sister Gaillac and St. Joseph’s now ascribes to SEIU-UHW. In fact, Sister Gaillac’s criticism of SEIU for allegedly using “heavy Alinsky tactics” is the same charge frequently lodged against Cesar Chavez, who got his organizer training from Fred Ross at the Alinsky-affiliated Community Services Organization.

But there is a critical difference between those accusing Chavez of “Alinskyism” and St. Joseph’s critics of SEIU: the UFW’s accusers did not identify themselves as union and/or social justice advocates. That’s what makes St. Joseph’s attack on SEIU so deserving of greater scrutiny, as the hospital is cloaking its anti-union campaign in moral terms and redefining “principled community organizing” to exclude tactics necessary for its adversary to prevail.

“Community Organizing” vs “Corporate Campaigns”

St. Joseph’s distinguishes “community organizing,” which they endorse, from a “corporate campaign,” which they view as unprincipled. Trying to figure out their distinction is not easy (though clearly the systemwide organizing approach fits the latter), but it seems to be based on the belief that corporate campaigns do not involve workers.

SEIU’s campaign does not involve workers? Then whom are they organizing?

Ironically, as with the “Alinskyism” charge, St.Joseph’s is again echoing grower charges against Cesar Chavez and the UFW. The UFW was regularly accused of being an activist cadre that did not involve workers in the fields. Some growers even believed this, and were shocked when farmworkers overwhelmingly showed support for the union.

The Sisters criticizing SEIU-UHW are in a similar state of denial. Rather than simply let the organizing process take its course, St. Joseph’s is attacking the very community organizing tactics that religious communities have long joined and supported, and that the Sisters themselves supported on behalf of the farmworkers movement.

When a group that defines itself as backing social justice and the “common good” starts echoing Sarah Palin in criticizing organizers, something is clearly amiss.

Sister Gaillac ended her email appeal for support by stating that “information is useful but a debate is not.” This unwillingness to debate may explain why St. Joseph’s continues to go away from its best traditions in this dispute.

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the author of the forthcoming, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.