Harold Meyerson

"A truck driver is a truck driver is a truck driver," says Teamster official Ken Hall. And while this might seem a Gertrude Stein version of a Teamster truism, Hall's assertion is at the heart of both a major labor dispute and a bill about to be ping-ponged between the House and Senate.

The truckers in question work for FedEx and, alone among truckers employed by delivery services, come under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline and rail companies. Under the RLA, their prospects for organizing are roughly comparable to those of the Mormon Church under Stalin.

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Finally, there's a Tea Party for the rest of us.

Starting Tuesday, large numbers of irate Americans will channel their ire at the parties that are actually responsible for our economic crisis: the big banks. On that day, a coalition of union, clergy and community groups are set to demonstrate in San Francisco outside Wells Fargo's annual shareholder meeting. The next day, a similar demonstration is slated to unfold at Bank of America's shareholder meeting in Charlotte. And the day after that, the AFL-CIO plans to lead the largest such demonstration into the belly of the beast -- Wall Street. Further protests are planned for Wall Street's lobbyist row -- Washington's K Street -- in May.

"We're trying to create a which-side-are-you-on moment for Congress," George Goehl, executive director of National People's Action, a group that has long labored to rein in predatory lending, told me a week ago, just hours before the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Goldman Sachs -- the moment when it became exquisitely awkward for members of Congress to come down on the banks' side.

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The departing head of the SEIU had a profound effect on California's politics and economy.

Andy Stern has arguably been the most influential non-Californian in the affairs of California in the past 15 years. The organizing director of the Service Employees International Union from 1984 through 1996, and the SEIU's president since then, Stern has shaped the state's politics and much of its economy.

During Stern's tenure atop the SEIU, the union doubled in size to roughly 2 million members, and in California it grew to nearly 700,000 members, far more than any other union in the state's history. Stern, who stunned the liberal and labor worlds by announcing his resignation last week, turned the SEIU into the nation's single biggest and most influential liberal political player. The union turned out the most precinct walkers, spent the most money and financed organizations that mobilized new immigrant voters and turned out the vote in key swing states.

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The fight over who will succeed Andy Stern as president of SEIU is missing one thing -- a plan to reverse labor's recent failures.

For a union that frequently takes to the streets with drums banging, the contest within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to succeed outgoing president Andy Stern is proceeding with uncustomary discretion. Two candidates -- Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger and Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry -- are vying for the job, but neither has issued any public statements or put forth platforms that make clear their differences. The candidates are busily wooing undecided members of SEIU's board, which will select the president who will serve until the union's next convention two years hence. But neither has yet unveiled a real campaign.

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"The special gift of this union has been its ability to do things differently," Andy Stern told me on Tuesday as he looked back on his 14-year tenure as president of the Service Employees International Union in the wake of his reported decision to resign, which shocked Washington after it leaked out Monday.

Stern's resignation could be Exhibit A in the SEIU's Doing Things Differently file. It comes at the height of his power, not just as the leader of America's most dynamic union but also as the leader of liberalism's most effective political organization; one with the best access to President Obama and that has done more than any other to build a nationwide progressive infrastructure over the past couple of decades.

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The Goldman Sachs scandal has done the unthinkable: It's made it possible that legislation reining in Wall Street's casino may actually be enacted.

The odds against real reform are still steep. Wall Street remains the most deep-pocketed lobby in the land. And the problem isn't just Republican opposition. "A lot of our members up here just want a bill passed," says one Democratic legislator. "They don't think that people are watching that closely. But this matters immensely to people. This is a which-side-are-you-on moment."

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