Early Life and Career
He grew up Jewish and middle class in West Orange, N.J., where his father was a lawyer. Stern was a student leftist in the 1960s. He began college as a business major at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business but ultimately graduated in 1971 with a B.A. in education and urban planning. Stern began his career as a welfare case officer and member of the SEIU in 1973, eventually being elected president of his Pennsylvania local. In 1980, he was elected to the union's executive board, and in 1984 the union's then-president John Sweeney put him in charge of its organizing efforts. Stern is a backer of the Employee Free Choice Act.
In 1996, Stern was elected to the presidency of the union. After launching a national debate aimed at uniting the 9 out of 10 American workers who have no organization at work, SEIU, along with the Teamsters, announced on July 25, 2005 that they were disaffiliating from the AFL-CIO. Stern led SEIU out of the AFL-CIO and founded Change to Win, a six-million member federation of seven major unions "dedicated to giving workers a voice at their jobs".
Stern is now a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.
Read more about this topic: Andy Stern
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Death does determine life.... Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)