Tomorrow's L.A. Times to expose secret plan by Stern three years in the making!

Perez has acquired an early draft of an exposé set to run in tomorrow's L.A. Times that links many of SEIU's major corruption scandals to President Andy Stern. The details that have come to light reveal a years-long secret plan that connects Tyrone Freeman's golf tournaments, the trusteeship attempt against UHW, and SEIU's raid against UNITE HERE. The plan was deliberately kept secret from members, but many reports indicate that, remarkably, there was no fraud or personal gain by Stern or his inner circle.

"As the bold and controversial leader of SEIU, everything President Stern has done has been in the context of members' best interests," SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette may be quoted as saying in tomorrow's story. "In this case, confidentiality was absolutely necessary. It's just disappointing that someone would leak this and lay waste to years of planning and organizing."

According to a memo reportedly obtained by the Times, Stern has been consolidating power for years in order to gain an upper hand against local union "fiefdoms" run by entrenched local union leaders like Susana Segat and David Holway. With his power nearly absolute after the "member-driven reform platform" passed at SEIU's 2008 Convention, Stern determined the time was right to set in motion the final stage of his plan to transfer that power to tens of thousands of rank-and-file workplace leaders, turning an apparent oligarchy into a 21st-century "dictatorship of the members."

The transfer was to take place in a moving torch-passing ceremony in which thousands of rank-and-file leaders would be sworn in as new members of SEIU's International Executive Board before receiving a ceremonial scarf and complimentary goody bag.

To minimize resistance from local union bureaucrats, the coup was planned as a surprise party, and coordination was led by a few select members of Stern's inner circle whose commitment to democratic trade unionism was irrefutable.

The date was set for May 1, in honor of the Haymarket riots in 1886 which launched the general strike that eventually won American workers the eight-hour workday, and in anticipation of a new general strike led by SEIU members that Stern hoped would break the terrible machinery of capitalism once and for all.

Planning for the surprise party required diverting millions of dollars to entertainment services, restaurants, hotels, video production companies, and child care services for members' families, often in unusually large amounts to minimize the number of suspicious transactions that had to be made. When concerns were raised about some of the expenses by a well-meaning investigative reporter, several of Stern's closest allies agreed to "take one for the members" by publicly accepting responsibility so that the real purpose of the expenditures could remain secret. After other Stern allies went through the motions of an official investigation, Rickman Jackson and Annelle Grajeda resigned from their leadership positions to take well-paying jobs elsewhere in SEIU where they could continue their preparations with less scrutiny. Tyrone Freeman officially left SEIU to explore other sources of funding for the event, raising $1.1 million which was to be transferred back to SEIU's treasury under cover of a lawsuit.

The biggest roadblock to Stern's heroic effort ironically turned out to be the members of his favorite local union, UHW. Well-intentioned members and leaders at the local became alarmed about the appearance of financial malfeasance by Stern's committee, and made a noble but counterproductive effort to shine a light on what they genuinely believed was corruption. Stern and his confidantes—understanding the real power of organized workers and the tenacity of UHW's elected leaders—realized that the only solution was a trusteeship of the local union until after May 1.

"Democracy can't be about 'just us.' It's about justice for all," Stephen Lerner, the architect of Stern's surprise party, may say in tomorrow's story. "If it were about just us and our feelings, we never would have trusteed UHW. It's very sad what we had to do, but you have to see it in the larger context. We were planning a revolution within SEIU that would have made all the hopes and dreams of UHW members a reality, across the whole union."

After the trusteeship was executed, trustees Dave Regan and Eliseo Medina set up regional party planning offices in the old UHW offices. Members were no longer allowed inside, to prevent them from seeing the thousands of helium tanks, sheet cakes, and tchotchkes being stockpiled for the epic celebration.

As the date approached and preparations became more intense, new cover stories were needed for the work to continue. A raid of the Las Vegas casino workers' union UNITE HERE had to be staged as cover for the thousands of purple-shirted temporary organizers hanging decorations in the foyers of lavish hotels along the Strip in preparation for the arrival of SEIU's 1.5 million members. Layoffs were announced to explain the disappearance of SEIU's brightest staff who were most committed to worker-led democracy.

And a vague new program called "Change that Works" was created to make SEIU appear focused on political work when key staff were actually in California, working hard on special projects in the trusteed UHW offices.

"The name started out as a joke," said a source close to Stern. "'Change that Works' was the most bullshit thing we could think of, to really make fun of how some unions have turned away from real worker power and put all their energy into branding consultants and lame marketing schemes to sell the union to bosses."

Perez just hopes tomorrow's story in the L.A. Times will not derail Stern's plan, and that UHW members will be getting their oversize novelty invitations to the Las Vegas bash as soon as SEIU staff are able to clear enough space on facility bulletin boards.