SEIU: Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Succeed. With their recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the democratic primary prompts an analysis of the labor union titan and its ability to foster collective action in its ranks, and even more dire, its ability to represent the will of its members. Last week the executive board of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) surprised literally no one by approving their endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the democratic primary election. Despite Clinton’s opposition to both a $15 dollar minimum wage and further healthcare reform efforts – two of the SEIU’s most publicized and heavily funded goals – offering support for Clinton reaffirms their mission of electing a democratic president, by any means necessary. Furthermore, SEIU’s support follows hearsay that the National Education Association, the country’s largest union, will be endorsing Hillary Clinton. These two unions alone represent almost two-thirds of the United States’ organized workers, and with that kind of backing Clinton will have a large debt to repay to the labor movement. Such a move is not unprecedented. The SEIU spent almost $27 million in 2008 on advertising and other election expenditures to elect Barack Obama, which gave then SEIU president Andy Stern extraordinary access to the white house, including an appointment on Obama’s National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010. Over the course of the past two decades, the SEIU has undoubtedly cemented itself as a monolithic force for labor organization in the United States. Since 1996, the SEIU has managed to add over 1 million new members to its ranks; an absolutely staggering number considering how unionized labor has floundered since the 1980s. As of 2014, the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions was a lowly 11.1 percent, down from 20.1 percent in 1983, the last year for which comparable union membership statistics were available (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Using SEIU’s vast ranks to back a moderate democratic candidate could be vital in the upcoming election, especially considering the right-leaning Supreme Court has already shown its hand in regards to dismantling existing workplace representation practices. But whether or not this increased representation means a stronger, more active union is debatable. This bolstering of SEIU’s membership is due in no small part to Andy Stern who served as the international president of the union from 1996 to 2010. Under Stern’s leadership, the SEIU entered a new age of structure where expansion was paramount – by any means necessary. Without union growth, Stern purported in 2008, union gains are “a higher compensation island in a growing nonunion sea.” Stern’s emphasis on quantity over quality has undoubtedly increased unionization across the U.S., but this approach is not without its caveats. SEIU’s expansionist agenda has garnered him an immense amount of criticism, from both outside and inside the SEIU. As one anonymous senior union official put it, “Andy Stern [leaves SEIU] pretty much without a friend in the labor movement.” Perhaps the greatest example of SEIU’s expansionism-gone-awry was Stern’s usurpation of the Oakland, California-based United Healthcare Workers West (UHW-West) in 2009. Stern appointed himself as the trustee of the SEIU affiliate after the union expressed discontent over the SEIU’s desire to reallocate over 65,000 of the union’s workers to another, state-wide SEIU affiliate. The UHW, which represented about 150,000 healthcare workers, was weary of their national management’s willingness to break up the union’s rank-in-file without consulting the members or allowing them to vote on the matter; Stern responded by dismissing 70 of the union’s executives, including then UHW-West president Sal Rosselli. Within two months 90,000 UHW- West workers had signed decertification to leave the SEIU. Stern was also known to throw unionization efforts under the bus in order to cut backroom deals to finance SEIU expansion elsewhere. One such agreement saw Stern disavow SEIU support for over 10,000 security guards in Philadelphia. The guards, employed by security firm AlliedBarton, were promised support by Stern in 2006 until he met with the owner of AlliedBarton, multi-billionaire Ron Perelman. Mysteriously, after their meeting, Stern pulled the plug on SEIU’s unionization efforts. The Philadelphia security guards inevitably won their right to be independently unionized, but the battle was hard fought; their union, Philadelphia Officers and Workers Rising, was not recognized until 2009. Stern’s inclination to rub elbows with the anti-union pantheons has raised more than a few eyebrows. The deals that Stern cut with some companies, including retail giant Wal-Mart, were often reached in secret and their details were never revealed to SEIU’s members. The SEIU, under Stern’s tutelage, has also been criticized for their reliance on “card check” union systems, in which a company will recognize the formation of an SEIU-affiliated union if a majority of employees sign waivers stating their membership, and more importantly, agree that they won’t interfere with the company’s profit-making. Though this method is a quick and easy way to bolster union density, it is often criticized for not fostering collective, committed union members in the same way a union that has won its recognition through the National Labor Relations Board; card-check workers typically have less information about the role of their union than NLRB recognized groups. The SEIU that Stern leaves in his wake, under the direction of his confidante Mary Kay Henry who took the reins as SEIU president in 2010, thrives on this corporate-friendly, “everyone wins” mentality. They are concerned not with mobilizing its existing members so much as ingesting and restructuring as much of the United States’ existing labor unions as a bargaining chip to flex the organization’s political muscle, even at the expense of its own employees. With all of this considered, it comes as no surprise that SEIU would disavow its rank-in-file in pursuit of political influence. Foregoing a more progressive, liberal candidate reifies SEIU’s decades of commitment to regressing towards the mean. But with union membership dwindling and workplace representation on the chopping block, the labor movement cannot afford to be piecemeal with its demands. Of greater concern is whether the decision to support Clinton accurately represents the will of the rank-in-file. According to a SEIU source more than 72 percent of SEIU members polled were Clinton supporters, however in the union’s typical fashion the decision was reached without any input from union members and SEIU has not supplied the raw data to support this claim. Why so many SEIU members would support a candidate whose views are in opposition to their union’s modus operandi deserves to raise some eyebrows. Take, for example, recent discord within the NEA in response to their declaration of support for Clinton; local NEA chapters are lambasting union execs for reaching the decision so early and stifling the opportunity for local chapters to reach a consensus amongst themselves. Given SEIU’s tendency to ignore the will of its local chapters, it would not be surprising if this same dissention were present in the organization. That the backing of a more progressive candidate would mean throwing the election also remains to be seen. Take the recent case of the UK’s labour party election; Britain’s largest union, Unite, pledged its support for outspoken socialist Jeremy Corbyn, a candidate who many had deemed unelectable and was standing at fourth place in the polls when Unite pledged their support. With the union’s backing, Corbyn managed to win the election and now sits as the Leader of the Labour Party. On the domestic front, some sizeable unions have already pledged their support for Bernie Sanders; National Nurses United is one such example. The union, which consists of over 180,000 members, pledged their support fairly early in the primary, and the Postal Workers Union, 200,000 members strong, pledged their support just a week ago. It remains to be seen that the United States’ labor movement needs to “play it safe” on such crucial issues such as minimum wage increases and single-payer healthcare; the fact that the SEIU is so willing to disavow their most notable campaigns illustrates a blatant disregard for the needs of their rank-in-file. Coupled with a history of shady business tactics by the SEIU’s highest ranking members, one can’t help but question if simply being out of touch is the sole motivator behind the union’s move to endorse Clinton. If SEIU wants labor to thrive in 2016 they will need a reorganizational genesis. If a vast organization like SEIU were to declare support for a more progressive candidate it would send a powerful reminder to mainstream politicians that the backing of the labor movement is much harder won than it has been made to seem. Reinvigorating local chapter input in the SEIU is integral to reversing decades of organized labor’s declawing and bucking the organization’s track record for selling out the very people it claims to serve. .