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from page 46
Some would argue that, through
his razor-sharp organizing talents and
key allies, Stern has also positioned
himself in the enviable line of succes-
sion for a plum spot atop the power-
ful AFL-CIO. After all, it was Stern
who directly followed in current
AFL-CIO head John Sweeney's foot-
steps when he took the reins of the
SEIU in 1996, and Stern remains a
member of Sweeney's influential
inner circle.
"He's super ambitious. A lot of
people think he has his eye on being
the next president of the AFL-CIO,"
said one AFL-CIO member, who
asked to remain anonymous. But the
AFL-CIO source also questioned
Stern's commitment to the "brother-
hood" of labor as it extends beyond
the SEIU.
The 52-year-old Stern is perhaps
best known as the architect of SEIU's
in-your-face Justice For
Janitors campaigns. By
blocking bridges and
clogging streets, these
controversial job actions
have helped janitors in
Los Angeles and other
major cities earn better
pay and fairer treatment
from their employers.
In October, he rolled
out Justice For Janitors
once again on the streets
of Boston, where striking
janitors handed out rolls
of toilet paper to the ten-
ants of the commercial
office buildings where they
sweep floors and swab toilets.
An aggressive organizer, Stern has
helped make the SEIU the fastest-
growing union in the country. Under
his leadership, the membership ros-
ters have swelled by 535,000, to 1.5
million members. This is good news
for the rank and file, when one con-
siders that the percentage of union-
ized workers in the United States
dipped to its lowest rate in 60 years
in 2000.
Early Activism
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If unionizing is Stern's life mission, it
wasn't always so clear.
An ambitious and idealistic Jewish
boy from the privileged suburb of
West Orange, N.J., Stern studied busi-
ness at the University of Pennsylvania's
Wharton School 30 years ago, before
abandoning those studies in favor of
an independent major in education
and urban planning.
He got his first taste of political
activism on the University of
Pennsylvania campus during the
Vietnam War. After organizing a food
co-op, he fought for years to keep the
school from turning it into a parking
garage.
He briefly flirted with social work
before joining the labor movement in
the early 1970s. "I found I could
only change things one person at a
time ... I wanted to make bigger
changes," he says.
While the legal profession interest-
ed him little — "everybody in my
family is a lawyer. I never wanted to
be a lawyer" — he did find inspira-
tion in his Jewish heritage.
As the of son of second- and third-
generation Americans whose parents
came over from Russia and Austria,
Stern paints his childhood as one of
privilege, but believes it was his own
family's pursuit of the fabled
'American Dream" that became a
ents lived, and they have the oppor-
tunity because they worked hard to
become citizens," Stern explains.
"Our struggle is the same struggle as
the hardworking, taxpaying immi-
grants of this era."
Reaching Out
Noting there are "a lot more Jewish
leaders at high levels than there were
1- 5 to 20 years ago," Stern insists he is
doing his part to reach out to the
Jewish community to support the
issues that matter to his union mem-
bers — most importantly, the liberal-
izing of immigration laws.
He describes his own attempts to
reach out to the community through
his annual "labor and the pulpits"
campaign. Every August, the AFL-
CIO hosts its Seminary Summer pro-
gram that brings a half dozen or so
"People come from
other countries to
live the American
Dream that my
grandparents lived.
3 )
— Andy Stern
guiding force in his own life.
"I come from a family who had a
moral sense of right and wrong, of
justice," Stern says; recalling the ethi-
cal will he wrote as part of his bar
mitzvah.
"You drew these concentric circles
about your values, as they related to
yourself, your family and your com-
mitment," Stern explains.
He still looks back on occasion at
what he wrote, he says, marveling at
the privileges he was afforded because
of the hard work of his parents and
grandparents.
Today, Andrew Louis Stern —
Louis from his grandfather who ran a
kosher butcher store in New Jersey —
hopes he can remind his fellow Jews
of that message, and find friends
among them for the immigrants of
the 21st century he represents.
"There are people from all over the
world in our union — people who
come from other countries to live the
American dream that my grandpar-
Jewish seminarians into the labor
movement to work on campaigns and
return labor's message to the commu-
nities where they'll eventually serve as
spiritual leaders.
But others question whether the
Jewish community at large is really in
tune with the Andy Sterns of the
world.
As Stuart Applebaum, president of
the Jewish Labor Committee, recently
wrote, it's not so much that the
Jewish community and the labor
movement have had any real falling
out.
"No, they're more like two lifelong
friends quietly asking themselves how
much they really have in common
anymore," Applebaum explains.
Another prominent Jew in the
labor community, who also asked not
to be identified, suggests that Stern
still has his community on his side,
but it's got little to do with anything
he's said or done.
Oddly perhaps, as cognizant as he is