In its public response to my letter criticizing its reporting on the SEIU-UNITE HERE dispute, The Nation argued that its coverage has been “thorough and diverse,” and cited a story examining the dispute by “the esteemed labor historian Joshua Freeman.” But The Nation’s reliance on Freeman is part of the problem. As academics across the nation signed onto a letter expressing concern about “SEIU’s interference with UNITE HERE,” Freeman sent out his own public letter urging that the open letter criticizing SEIU be stopped, and condemning it as a “serious mistake.” Freeman’s letter includes common SEIU talking points, and describes the academics’ criticism of SEIU as reflecting “a one-sided view of a complex affair.” Yet The Nation is so unaware of Freeman’s partisan role that he is touted in defense of their reportage, showing how disconnected their publication has become from the facts underlying this conflict.

When The Nation claimed that it had “thoroughly” covered the SEIU-UNITE HERE dispute, it cited articles that ignored SEIU’s raids against UNITE HERE, the 15 international union presidents and 20 labor councils backing UNITE HERE, or Bruce Raynor’s alleged theft of over $20 million from UNITE HERE’s coffers. I clearly differ from The Nation on what it means to “cover” a dispute, but Beyond Chron typically lets readers have their say without responding.

But when The Nation’s letter to Beyond Chron cited Joshua Freeman to bolster its case, they raised a very troubling issue.

Freeman’s Partisanship

Joshua Freeman is unquestionably an “esteemed historian.” I loved his book, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II.

But Freeman has taken a fiercely partisan approach to the SEIU-UNITE HERE dispute.

When a group of historians decided to circulate an “Open Letter of Concern about SEIU’s Interference with UNITE HERE,” Freeman circulated his own letter urging his colleagues to refrain from signing, and to withdraw their names if they had signed.

According to the writer that The Nation believes has provided part of its “thorough and diverse” coverage of the dispute, the letter ultimately signed by over 150 academics and sent to Andy Stern is “one-sided” and lacks “context and history.” Freeman argued that the “moral presumptuousness and factional purpose” of the letter would harm the relationship “between organized labor and progressives in the academic world.”

What were the sentiments that Freeman found so offensive? Here is the letter’s closing:

“It is deeply troubling, then, to witness a leading labor organization like SEIU choose a path that is so at odds with its worthy tradition. SEIU's concerted efforts to undermine UNITE HERE belie the progressive ideals SEIU has upheld for decades and ignore its own past and rightful insistence that unions need to organize the unorganized, not engage in destructive raiding of existing unions. The attempts to discredit UNITE HERE leaders, to lure workers out of UNITE HERE and into SEIU, and to interfere in the constitutional process of UNITE HERE will not help the cause of democratic unionism or progressive reform. On the contrary, we are concerned that these actions are undermining the principle of union democracy and dividing the progressive movement at a critical moment in history.

We urge you to stop your interference in UNITE HERE, refocus SEIU's energy on organizing the millions of unorganized workers, and engage collaboratively with other progressive unions and community supporters so that together we can effectively challenge the vast inequalities and hardships which face our nation's working families.”

These two graphs contain precisely the type of allegations that The Nation has kept out of its pages. These points would never be found in a Josh Freeman article. To the contrary, Freeman’s letter reiterates SEIU’s and Raynor’s framing of the dispute, even to the point of stating -- unbelievably for anyone familiar with the history of this conflict -- that “SEIU is not the main actor.”

Memo to Professor Freeman: had SEIU not told Bruce Raynor it would fully back his effort to have the former UNITE secede from UNITE HERE, this “dispute” would have remained an internal matter, with the constitutional and democratic processes of UNITE HERE controlling the process.

So to claim SEIU is “not the main actor” profoundly misunderstands what has occurred since last November. And it forces readers of The Nation to wonder how the editors saw Freeman as a good choice to report on this struggle, and why they continue to promote his writing well after he intervened aggressively, though unsuccessfully, to prevent academics from criticizing SEIU.

CNA Raids on SEIU

It is interesting to contrast The Nation’s inadequate coverage of the SEIU-UNITE HERE dispute with Esther Kaplan’s perceptive May 29, 2008 analysis of CNA interruption of SEIU’s Ohio hospital campaign. (“Labor’s Growing Pains.” A key difference could be that while SEIU sought the widest possible publicity for what it perceived as CNA’s wrongdoing, it has not publicly promoted its robo-calls and mass mailings to UNITE HERE members attacking their union. Nor has SEIU sought media coverage for allegations that Bruce Raynor, its newly selected Executive Vice-President, wrongfully transferred $23 million from UNITE HERE (as well as allegedly misappropriating $19.5 million from the union’s strike fund).

It’s curious why Kaplan did not provide a similar probing analysis for The Nation on the SEIU-UNITE HERE struggle. Instead, the entire UNITE HERE convention was ignored, the labor movement’s support for UNITE HERE against SEIU went uncovered, and the publication’s promised pro-UNITE HERE article by Peter Dreier will emerge no sooner than August, well after many key events have occurred.

Meanwhile, today Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times wrote his most detailed piece yet on the SEIU-UNITE HERE dispute.

The Nation needs to provide transparency regarding its relationship with SEIU. Progressives deserve no less from a publication touting itself as a “wholly owned subsidiary of our own conscience.”

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron, and author of the new book, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century (University of California Press)