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in business-model terms, he realized that the old-school union model made no
sense in a world of labor surplus.
The old models of power struggle were mass-market: workers against employers,
with the government taking the side of one or the other. But in today’s modern
world, says Stern, the struggles are more granular. Even governments can’t hold their
own against some modern corporations.
So Stern has been changing the shape of engagement by going after industries as a
whole in a region, that is, taking on all the janitorial services in the New York region
simultaneously – and after companies as a whole across geographies. Often the
employers don’t mind paying up – as long as their competition does, too: “There was
a time when we literally blocked the bridges leading into Washington, DC, to win
raises for SEIU janitors. But we also recognized there was a time to reach out to
those same employers and to work with them. We know that many employers care
about their workers and want to raise wages; they just need to be able to keep their
customers, too.”
Likewise, he is using international arbitrage (so to speak) to pursue better wages and
standards for the US-based employees of the French company Sodexho. He persuaded
labor allies in Europe to put pressure on Sodexho in Paris – where the company’s
senior executives and board members live – to get the talks started. His message to
Sodexho: “We can help one another. Everybody wins when job standards are higher.”
In high technology, things are even more complicated when you consider the international
aspect. Though Stern has been to China, he doesn’t see wages rising there –
at least not enough to forestall a corresponding drop in US wages: “The gap is so
large. There’s nothing to force wages up anytime soon. It could take forever.” As
Diana Farrell of McKinsey argued last year, Chinese workers are also consumers of
US products and the net effect of globalization may be positive, but the impact on
some individual US workers may be severe. She mentioned a need for better unemployment
insurance and training for US workers in palliation, but no one has risen
to that challenge. . .until now.
Stern wants to unionize the IT industry – not to set wages, but to sponsor some kind
of industry-wide fund that would deal with the underlying problems: short-term
job losses and long-term training needs. “We’re not going to come over to your place
and set work rules and measure the distances between computers,” he says. “But we
want to help the industry work together to solve these problems. It’s not a short-
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