worker organizing. Written works A Country That Works (Free Press), Stern calls for unions to be the dominant vehicles for the promotion of social reforms, including espousing the benefits of increased taxation on the wealthy and universal health care. On October 3, 2006, he appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his new book A Country That Works. On October 4, he appeared on Democracy Now! to promote the book. In 2016, Stern authored a book with Lee Kravitz entitled Raising the Floor, in which he makes the case for a universal basic income. The book was a catalyst to a renewed debate about and experimentation with universal basic income, the founding of the Economic Security Project, and Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign.Andrew Yang on Facebook Watch Andrew Yang credited Stern with his decision to run for President in 2020 on a platform of universal basic income, calling his UBI proposal-the “Freedom Dividend.” Personal life Stern is divorced from Jane Perkins, a former head of the environmental network Friends of the Earth. They had two children, Matt and Cassie. Cassie died in 2002. In 2017, Stern married Jennifer Johnson, a former Communications Director for the Center for Food Action in northern NJ, and the mother of Claire, Alex, and Isabel Beckenstein. Controversy "He's arguably the most important labor leader we've had in a long time: aggressive and controversial," says Philip Dine, an authority on labor issues and author of the recent book State of the Unions. On January 27, 2009, SEIU placed UHW West under trusteeship and dismissed 70 of the local's executives, including president Sal Rosselli. Rosselli and other ousted leaders reformed under the National Union of Healthcare Workers and pushed for UHW West members at 60 facilities to vote to decertify SEIU. SEIU filed a lawsuit in mid-2009 alleging that UHW West and NUHW officials embezzled millions of dollars. In 2009 Former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall issued a report, "Acting as hearing officer, Mr. Marshall found that the local's president, Sal Rosselli, and other union officials had improperly transferred union money to a nonprofit group to use in a feud with the parent union. Mr. Marshall also concluded that the local had wrongly hidden $500,000 from the parent union by placing the money into a lawyer's trust account." On March 26, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court ruling that