Having forced a split between America's unions, he wants to start building global ones. Ellie Levenson talks to a man with grand plans for the labour movement

If you have heard of just one American trade union official in the past few months, it is very likely to be Andy Stern. As president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Stern has been responsible for a split from America's largest union federation, the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), which has rocked the US labour movement. The SEIU has been joined by five other unions, leading to the formation of a new organisation provisionally called the Change to Win Coalition - though Stern admits they are still working on the final name.

The split came down to a difference in strategy between Stern and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO and Stern's predecessor at the SEIU. While Sweeney wants the labour movement to concentrate on political activities, Stern places far more emphasis on building up membership. "Clearly we need to use legislative and political activities to achieve changes in workers' lives," he says, "but union leaders in our country sometimes forget it's not about who we are as people but who we represent." Stern strongly believes that without a large membership base, unions will lack the political clout to achieve any change. And he holds no truck with those who argue that the split came at a particularly damaging time for the Democrats, after a second consecutive failure to win the presidential election. To Stern, this failure hammers home the need for expansion. "If there had been 100,000 more union members in Ohio and they had voted like most other union members vote, then John Kerry would be president now." He also believes that the Democratic Party has "lost its voice and its moral compass when it comes to workers".

Stern certainly knows a thing or two about building up membership - while union membership overall is falling in the States, the SEIU has built an organisation that can grow, according to Stern, 50,000 to 100,000 workers a year. "But we don't think that is enough," he says. "With the new organisation, we want to help ourselves and the other unions grow faster and stronger. People have more debt, more insecurity about their jobs and worse healthcare than ever before. So this should be the moment for trade unions." But Stern points out that trade unions all over the world are losing members, and he is worried that "the movement is growing smaller at the time we're most needed in our society".

He believes that the only way to tackle a global economy is to build global unions. "It's companies, not countries, that are making the economic rules, so we need global unions." To this end, the SEIU has several international partnerships, including a campaign with the Transport and General Workers' Union in Britain on the conditions of security officers. Together, the two unions are trying to prevent the security contract for the London 2012 Olympics being given to Group 4, owner of the Wackenhut Corporation, against whom the SEIU is running a campaign citing questionable hiring practices, poor officer training, security lapses and retaliation against employees who point out security vulnerabilities.

But at the top of Stern's wish-list is a British-style national health service, and he is particularly concerned about the 45 million people who lack basic healthcare in what is the richest nation on earth, describing this as "the largest issue facing our country".

Stern believes his new organisation will differ from the AFL-CIO in several ways. While the AFL-CIO has eight million members belonging to 53 unions, the new organisation will have six million members belonging to seven unions, including three of the four largest, which Stern thinks will make it a "more focused and manageable system".

Structurally it will differ, too, with no full-time officers. "We think it's important that all the unions participate directly, rather than just paying a fee and hoping someone else will sort things out," says Stern, who also wants the new organisation to be more representative of the people it works for. To this end, the current chair of the coalition is a woman, SEIU secretary treasurer Anna Burger, and the treasurer is Edgar Romney, an African American who is an executive vice-president of Unite Here, a clothing and hotel workers' union. Stern, a former rank-and-file union member and shop steward, is hoping that the new organisation will "have much more rank-and-file participation".

But the first step is to find a new name. Whatever it is finally called, Stern promises it will be "a new, different, modern 21st-century labour movement focused on growth and changing workers' lives".

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