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.
Stern and his allies in the Service Employees International Union dismiss the allegations and downplay the significance of the rift.
"It's not open warfare, it's a debate," said Pennsylvania union official Thomas De Bruin.
"It's David and Goliath," Rosselli said.
Much could be at stake for the union's 703,000 California members and for the millions of people who depend on them for healthcare, social services, road repairs, college instruction and cafeteria meals.
The union is a huge presence in hospitals and nursing homes, and in state and local government offices. It represents home-care workers, Los Angeles Unified School District support staff and thousands of private-sector janitors and security guards. The California State University's faculty association is an affiliate.
Covering more than a quarter of organized labor in California, the union's contracts frequently set broad standards for pay and benefits, including those for nonunion workers. And its clout as a get-out-the-vote machine is keenly felt in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., as well as in the Democratic presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Among employee groups in the United States, it is second in size only to the 3.2-million-member National Education Assn.
