For labor unions to bring workers together in modern times, Andy Stern believed there would first have to be a severing of ties from the "one size fits all" organization that backed them.

So about three weeks ago, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — the group known for unionizing janitors, school-bus drivers and health-care workers — divorced his union from his umbrella organization, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Aligned under the Change to Win Coalition, six other affiliates of the labor-union federation opted out as well, leaving the AFL-CIO with 53 affiliates and reducing its 13 million members by about a third.

Stern, who stopped by Seattle's downtown SEIU office yesterday to rally Swedish Medical Center nurses protesting possible benefit cuts, says the AFL-CIO wasn't taking action to change declining union membership. He said its strategies were not aggressive enough, were stuck in the past.

"The truth is too many of them are not organizing anyone," said Stern, who claimed they were making it hard for workers to join unions and were interfering with other groups to step in.

Despite severing ties with the AFL-CIO — led by Stern's former mentor John Sweeney, who handed off the baton of SEIU presidency to Stern in 1996 — Stern is not concerned about other unions getting his members to defect. "There's always competition," he said.

Union membership has dropped consistently since the AFL-CIO formed in the 1950s. Back then, about 33 percent of all workers belonged to a union. Today, about 12.5 percent do.

Stern, whose group is the fastest-growing union in the nation, wants to aggressively go after groups that had, until now, not been unionized.

For instance, in Miami Beach, he says, condo workers and residents are complaining about conditions and want fair pay for their work — or fair living conditions for their rent.

Home-based day-care workers in Washington are trying to get collective-bargaining rights with SEIU.

Stern said there's a workforce shift from manufacturing industries to service industries, and the way to unionize effectively is to tap into individual groups' wants and needs. Then, they need a group that is large enough to represent them — but not so large that it's not specific to their needs.

SEIU and its six affiliates, which include the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and UNITE HERE — formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union — will each represent specific industries and focus their resources there, Stern says. They are planning a convention in St. Louis next month to work out coalition details.

"As others join, we want to make sure we aren't re-creating problems we had [at AFL-CIO]," he said.

"The goal is to build an organization that can make sure Americans' hard work is rewarded," he said.

Christina Siderius: 206-515-5066 or csiderius@seattletimes.com