As if to confirm the futility of union members pooling their funds through their unions to assert their political interest, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO endorses Arlen Specter in his Democratic primary struggle against Joe Sestak, the same Arlen Specter who, back when he was a Republican in early 2009, killed the Employee Free Choice Act by saying that he would vote against cloture. Yes, you've got that right, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO is supporting a man who played a central role in killing legislation that it publicly describes as its top priority.

Actions speak louder than words, they used to say, and, in this instance, the endorsement of Specter is more proof that the AFL-CIO doesn't consider the EFCA that important after all, public pronouncements to the contrary. Which raises the question: what does the AFL-CIO consider important? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Along these lines, I had a conversation with someone in my office the other day who was unhappy with being affiliated with SEIU. I told her that unions were important, and that even a bad one like SEIU provides protections and benefits that you don't get in the absence of one. But I also said that she should seriously consider withdrawing her contribution to the SEIU political action committee, and directing it somewhere more agreeable to her. Unfortunately, that's what it is going to take to get union leadership to start actually representing the interests of their members.

Labels: Democrats, Neoliberalism, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

Yesterday morning, I put my young son in the car seat, and traveled down to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to go to the 15h Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, purportedly one of the largest, if not the largest, in the United States. Fortunately, we missed the cayenne pepper pie assault upon an anti-vegan speaker on Saturday. My son decided that he didn't like the 2:00 p.m. Cafe panel discussion on Prospects for Winning in an Age of Crisis, and he eventually hit upon the successful strategy of playfully screaming to force me to take him out of the building and out into the adjacent arboretum. Perhaps, the panelists would have benefitted from contact with him, as he seems to be quite skilled at both winning and taking advantage of crises, many of which that he creates.

You have to give the anarchists credit for their commitment to the importance of propagandizing and education through book publishing and distribution at a time when both have been overwhelmed by television and the Internet. Anarchism has always been firmly rooted in the Enlightenment, and its proponents act upon their belief that people are capable of ruling themselves without hierarchy by ceaselessly seeking to persuade them of it. Given that anarchists are smaller in number than Marxist-Leninists and liberals, and that they, unlike the others, lack access to the resources of academia, their achievements in disseminating works of radical history and theory is all the more remarkable. Having always been outside the system, so to speak, they appear to have adapted to the current neoliberal environment more easily than Marxist-Leninists who indirectly relied upon substantial state support through universities and public media to reach the public.

But I digress. My son grew tired, and I was able to attend a 4:00 p.m. Cafe panel on the organizing efforts of the National Union of Healthcare Workers ("NUHW") while he slept. Having followed this effort closely, I was interested in hearing what the people involved had to say about it. The moderator of the panel was Cal Winslow, the author of a small, but compelling, book about the struggle of California health care workers to escape the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU") through the creation of their own union, Labor's Civil War in California: The NUHW Healthcare Workers' Rebellion (you may have to scroll the down the page for the description of it). The panelists were Angela Glasper, founder NUHW, Kaiser, Antioch, Maya Morris, NUHW, St. Francis Hospital and Peter Tappeiner, volunteer organizer, NUHW.

All three of them, but especially Glasper and Morris, related their frustration and the frustration of their co-workers as it became evident that SEIU no longer represented them, and collaborated with their employers to take away hard won rights in the workplace. For example, according to Glasper, seniority is no longer respected in regard to assignments, as SEIU and Kaiser allow managers to play favorites among their employees. Kaiser is also laying off workers despite having recently made substantial profits. SEIU undermines the collective bargaining agreements of members by perpetually entering into precedential side agreements without their knowledge, or, if the the issue does become known, despite member opposition. It is not uncommon for managers to disregard the concerns of employees by responding, All I need to do is take it to SEIU. Such actions, over the course of time, water down contract protections which can then be memorialized in the next collective bargaining agreement.

As the conflict erupted, SEIU and health care employers engaged in surveillance and intimidation of workers associated with the attempt to replace SEIU with NUHW. Glasper described how she is followed around her workplace daily by numerous people, some managers, some co-workers, as they search for any reason to write her up. She has also received threatening phone calls: You're dead. Morris was denied work for 16 months. All three panelists, Tappeiner, Glasper and Morris, emphasized that California health care workers want a union that operates democratically from the bottom up instead of from the top down.

Unfortunately, the panel was not as well attended as it should have been, becauise the Book Fair scheduled it against an appearance by Ward Churchill in the adjacent auditorium. But one of the more interesting moments came when someone inquired about the potential for NUHW to lead the fight for single payer health care as well as more generally challenging the current neoliberal climate. He received a sincere, polite response, although I thought the question was unfair in its scope. After all, he seemed to implicitly suggest that it was responsibility of the workers within NUHW to lead this fight. Why?

Now, I understand the centrality of trade unionism within Marxism and anarchism, but to place such a burden upon workers stuggling to obtain their own union representation struck me as a little extreme. NUHW workers and organizers are fighting against SEIU and their employers to gain a voice in their workplace. That's a pretty tall order. Furthermore, if they succeed, they will have to build a union from the ground up by creating democratic structures that induce participation on the shop floor. They will have to negotiate new contracts, protect the rights obtained through them and defend their memberfs against grievances. Of course, many in the NUHW have a lot of experience doing this, but it still requires a great effort. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that a movement towards the socialization of the US economy will require, as a precondition, the empowerment of workers within the workplace, and experience in making collective decisions. Assuming, of course, that external events don't force it upon us more rapidly.

Labels: Activism, Anarchism, Bay Area, California, Education, Marxism, NUHW, Postmodernism, SEIU, Unions

Finally, some members of SEIU are rebelling against the autocratic trade unionism of Andrew Stern:

In a striking blow to SEIU’s national leadership, the reform “Change 1021” slate defeated Stern appointees and won all of the major offices and near total control of the Executive Board. It was the first election since SEIU’s International Executive Board merged ten California locals into one three years ago, creating one of the union’s largest primarily public employee locals. Longtime SEIU reformer Roxanne Sanchez won the top position of President in a landslide (3054-1458), Sin Yee Poon defeated Stern appointee Damita Davis-Howard 2141 to 1445 for the key position of Chief Elected Officer (akin to Executive Director), and controversial incumbent James Bryant was defeated by Alysabeth Alexander for Political Action Chair.

The one-sided outcome follows staggering SEIU defeats at Santa Rosa Memorial and Kaiser Sunset Hospitals, and reflects growing worker opposition to SEIU’s increasingly top-down, undemocratic approach. SEIU 1021 will now become part of the growing movement toward more democratic unionism in California, joining UNITE HERE, NUHW and other unions in promoting this trend. As Sanchez put it after the victory, “workers will now have real power in this organization that they did not have before.”

While SEIU 1021’s reform slate was expected to do well, few anticipated an electoral tidal wave that would sweep out of office the entire team SEIU President Andy Stern appointed to leadership over three years ago. Campaign reports indicated widespread member hostility toward SEIU’s leadership, with many members not voting in the election – only 5360 ballots were cast out of 42,000 eligible – because they lacked hope in the prospect for change.

Well, the times are about to be changing at SEIU 1021. The winning slate will not be content rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; this is a veteran group that knows that SEIU 1021’s success requires bottom-up, democratic unionism, and it will not deviate from its mission to empower workers. (Disclosure: Both newly-elected President Sanchez and Political Action Chair Alexander are employees of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which I head and is the publisher of Beyond Chron.)

It is hard to overstate the importance of this. SEIU is the largest union in the US, with a top down, corporatized model of unionism that operates not only to the detriment of its members, but to the interests of workers generally. A revitalized SEIU could serve as a center of resistance to the predations of capital within the US economy, and shatter the political duopoly in Washington, D. C. But, while we are from from that today, we have some cause for optimism, an optimism that had no factual basis six months ago.

Labels: Global Recession, Neoliberalism, NUHW, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

After my initial post this morning, hurriedly put up while getting my son ready for day care, I have some more thoughts about the Supreme Court's decision giving corporations free rein in the US political system: First, it appears that people within the Obama administration, especially Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have no problem with the prospect of a Congress controlled by Republicans after the 2010 election, or, alternatively, a Congress controlled by Republicans in league with conservative Democrats. Through such a Congress, Obama can successfully hunt down the great white whale of US politics, the destruction of Social Security and Medicare as we know it through entitlement reform, all the while positioning himself as someone defending us against the even greater predations of the Republicans. Today's Supreme Court decision creates an opportunity to get more candidates elected who will implement an accelerated, more merciless evisceration of social welfare policies adopted between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Second, the only institutions capable of raising large sums of money to finance campaigns to compete with corporate funded candidates are labor unions. Admittedly, this has always been true, but now, the proportion of individual donations in comparison to labor contributions and corporate contributions will be graphed with individual donations near the bottom, labor union ones somewhere between the bottom and the middle and corporate ones in excess of both. As a result, corporations will not only be dominant, but the decisive voice in relation to attempts to implement progressive policies to constrain them will rest with the unions. Upset that Andy Stern of SEIU and Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO abandoned single payer and the public option during drafting of health care reform legislation? Dissatisfied that neither of them are willing to challenge US militarism and demand that the government redirect Pentagon expenditures towards the fulfillment of domestic needs? Better learn to love it, because the Supreme Court has made them the godfathers of US progressivism, such as it is.

Lastly, we can also reasonably conclude that the many of the members of the US Senate, regardless of party, are pleased with the decision, because they confirmed Bush appointees Roberts and Alito, two justices whose votes were necessary for the Court's 5-4 decision, in the face of siginificant opposition. Some of this opposition emphasized their judicial records in support of corporations and more repressive measures of social control. But a majority of the Senate, including quite a number of Democrats, had no problem with it, and why should they? Now, they can defend their incumbency against potential threats with even larger sums of corporate largesse.

Labels: American Empire, Elections, Neoliberalism, SEIU, Supreme Court, Unions, Vote or Die

The embrace of expediency by the Obama administration continues unabated. Just announced:

President Barack Obama declared Friday a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" had been reached among the U.S., China and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty.

"It is going to be very hard, and it's going to take some time," he said near the conclusion of a 193-nation global warming summit. "We have come a long way, but we have much further to go."

The president said there was a "fundamental deadlock in perspectives" between big, industrially developed countries like the United States and poorer, though sometimes large, developing nations. Still he said this week's efforts "will help us begin to meet our responsibilities to leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner planet."

The deal as described by Obama reflects some progress helping poor nations cope with climate change and getting China to disclose its actions to address the warming problem.

But it falls far short of committing any nation to pollution reductions beyond a general acknowledgment that the effort should contain global temperatures along the lines agreed to at a conference of the leading economic nations last July.

Meanwhile, cue the music, the AFL-CIO is against the evolving Senate health care bill . . . well . . . sort of. As is Andy Stern of SEIU. Given that both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win are now singing from the same songbook, all the way down to self-serving press releases about ongoing faux resistance, while the White House, the Congress and industry lobbyists decide the provisions of the health care reform bill in secret, one wonders why the split in the union movement persists. The only plausible explanation is that it would require SEIU to stop raiding the members of AFL-CIO affiliated uinons.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Health Care, Neoliberalism, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

If forced to choose between hospital employees being represented by a union other than SEIU, and siding with management, SEIU would choose . . . well, you already know the answer, don't you?

SEIU, whose mission includes the unionization of hospital workers, is now waging a full-scale campaign to prevent over 600 workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital from joining NUHW, a rival union. SEIU’s effort follows its abandonment of its own union organizing drive at the facility, and its success at convincing workers to vote for “no union” in the December 17 election would ensure these workers remain non- union for years. In response to SEIU’s actions, longtime SEIU supporter Monsignor John Brenkle recently condemned what he described as SEIU’s “anti-union campaign,” and revealed that SEIU had rejected efforts by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and himself to negotiate ground rules that would avoid negative campaigning and ensure a fair election.

Brenkle blamed SEIU’s refusal to negotiate ground rules for giving employer St. Joseph’s Health System (SJHS) “the freedom to continue anti-union practices. ” He also accused SJHS of violating the principles for Catholic health care organizing adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last June – an agreement SEIU helped negotiate but now claims does not apply to NUHW’s Santa Rosa organizing drive.

When SEIU devoted millions of dollars and hundreds of staff to battling NUHW over Fresno home health care workers last spring, the struggle was fierce. But the stakes at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital are much higher. An SEIU “victory” would defeat unionization for over 600 workers in Santa Rosa, and prevent NUHW from using its success as a springboard for organizing SJHS’s over 9000 non-union workers at its hospitals across California.

Few could have imagined one year ago that SEIU’s number one hospital organizing drive in 2009 would focus on preventing workers from joining a union.

Last week, lenin wrote a downbeat, realistic appraisal of the current state of the US labor movement. People engaged it sincerely, refusing to idealize a difficult situation. In light of this most recent episode, I hope to return soon to the subject of the left and the extent to which it achieve a meaningful social transformation through an emphasis upon trade unionism.

Labels: Neoliberalism, NUHW, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

From BeyondChron:

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) held a boisterous picket line in San Francisco [on Monday night], but their chants targeted a surprising adversary: labor leaders and their political allies. While California Democratic Party Chair John Burton (labor’s greatest California ally), State Senator Mark Leno and leaders of UNITE HERE, the Sailors, Plumbers, Building Trades, and Police and Fire unions, were inside the Plumbers Union Hall honoring the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), SEIU was outside denouncing NUHW – and by implication its supporters – as corrupt. Last week, SEIU informed Burton that it would end its $1 million annual donation to the state Party unless he withdrew his support for NUHW, which he refused to do.

SEIU’s threat to labor hero Burton, and its reported statement to the United Teachers of Los Angeles (sponsor of tonight’s NUHW fundraiser) that it would seek to organize charter school teachers in retaliation for UTLA’s pro-NUHW stance, reflects a union increasingly at odds with the labor movement. In July, 25 international union leaders condemned SEIU’s raids on UNITE HERE, and new AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has since vowed to defend UNITE HERE against SEIU attacks. SEIU is now isolated, viewing fellow unions and pro-labor politicians as adversaries, and its scorched earth campaign against its former California health care leadership is coming at a steepening internal and political cost.

Things got worse last night:

One night after withdrawing its support for the California Democratic Party and picketing progressive politicians and labor leaders in San Francisco, SEIU threw eggs at those attending an event honoring NUHW in Los Angeles. Among those hit were the Vice President of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the union whose support for NUHW led SEIU to threaten to organize teachers in charter schools (not that SEIU has any staff available to implement such a threat).

SEIU is seeking to impose its model of business unionism upon American workers by any means necessary. At a time when organized labor should be coming together to resist the global neoliberal onslaught, SEIU has chosen to go in a different direction. One gets the impression that Andy Stern welcomes the remorseless restructuring of the economy because he believes that SEIU is best positioned to organize increased numbers of low paid service workers.

Labels: Neoliberalism, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

In Part 1, I explained why I find the current social climate for progressive, much less radical, change so bleak. Today, I will provide begin to provide some signposts that would, if found, suggest reasons for optimism.

One of the most disheartening developments of the last 30 years has been the acceptance of neoliberal economic doctrine by not only liberals, but even labor unions. During this period, union leadership has become more and more docile, focusing on procedural impediments to union membership, through measures like the Employee Free Choice Act ("EFCA"), instead of direct challenges to the country's economic structure. One of the most vivid concrete expressions of this phenomenon occurred in Seattle in November 1998, when union march marshals directed the participants in a massive union protest away from the direct action civil disobedience taking place downtown near the World Trade Organization assembly hall.

Upon the election of Barack Obama, unions were quiescent as Obama continued to direct trillions of dollars of assistance to transnational banks and brokerage houses, while millions of Americans faced foreclosure. Indeed, they even failed to organize for the passage of the EFCA as major corporations put on a full court press against it, calling into the question the sincerity of this inconsequential endeavor. Unions held innocuous rallies across the country but failed to pressure the President or the Congress to pass it. Meanwhile, in relation to health care reform, unions left it to firebrands like Jane Hamsher and other liberals like her to forestall the abandonment of the public option.

Accordingly, the emergence of a confrontational movement within the unions to push for a more assertive leadership would be cause for cautious optimism. Earlier this year, some health care workers challenged the employer friendly practices of their union, the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU"), by attempting to form a new union, the National Union of Health Care Workers. Unfortunately, that effort has yet to succeed. Meanwhile, emblematic of the Social Darwinism endemic in the union movement, SEIU has attempted to raid members from another union, UNITE HERE. Under conditions of extreme neoliberalism, it is much easier to devour the weak than to confront powerful elites.

For those schooled in the traditions of the left, whether it be Social Democracy, Communism or anarchism, the reinvigoration of trade unionism is an essential precondition to any prospect of a progressive, not to mention revolutionary, social transformation. While there has been many points of disagreement between these leftist variations, there has been one constant. All three have emphasized the necessity of participating in unions as a means of educating and organizing workers in support of a radical, class based politics. None of them, with the exception of anarchists in the 1890s, believed that we could bring about a more just, more egalitarian society independent of the trade union movement. Furthermore, the unions served an essential purpose by providing a means whereby workers could learn how to manage their workplaces for themselves.

If the moribund trade union movement cannot be resuscitated, the consequences for the left are profound. An entirely new doctrinal approach will be required, one that reinterprets class and capitalism in such a way as to present the prospect of social change despite an immobilized union movement. It would require transcending nearly 200 years of modernist left thought that sanctifies the worker as given expression through trade unionism. It is hard to imagine, but it may be unavoidable.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Anarchism, Neoliberalism, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

An update on the conflict between the Service Employees International Union and California health care workers, as initially posted here a month ago:

Healthcare workers have taken another giant step forward. At the same time, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) stands exposed as never before. Corporate unionism – Andy Stern’s contribution to the long decline of organized labor in the US – is up against the wall in California.

This contest is a fight with big implications. The prize is “a free choice” for workers, a right rarely enjoyed in late-imperial America, but with a California twist – it is “a free choice” in choosing a union – California healthcare workers are fighting for the right to have a union of their own, a union that they control and that works in their interests, not, in this case, the SEIU.

On Thursday afternoon ( February 26) the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) made an historic advance – it filed petitions asking that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conduct decertification (rescind legal recognition)elections at Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest non-profit health care provider. These petitions were signed by more than 50 per cent, (that is, an absolute majority) of all California’s 50,000 of Kaiser’s SEIU represented healthcare workers. The petitions represent, starkly, the desire of these California healthcare workers to leave SEIU.

This petition campaign is the culmination of one phase in what has become the war to form the NUHW – yet it is an astonishing achievement. It is all the more impressive as it represents just the core of an ongoing drive in which, so far, workers at 380 California facilities (employing 80,000 workers – the majority of members of SEIU’s once flagship local, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) – have rejected SEIU and petitioned for recognition of NUHW as their union. And this in less than one month! 10,000 home care workers will file Monday in Fresno.

Not surprisingly, SEIU is not taking this lightly:

As predicted the stall has begun - the clock runs and back home on the job, intimidation, harassment, threats.

Here are four examples, I’ve seen dozens:

*On February 1, Inez Moreno, a shop steward at 269-bed Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, received a phone call from an SEIU organizer. Moreno was told not to circulate petitions. If she refused, the organizer would call the hospital’s Human Resources Department on Monday and have her terminated. “She said I had been stripped of my stewardship… She thinks she can call me and treat me like nothing…”

*On February 9th, Maria Garcia, a Certified Nursing Assistant and elected shop steward at 99-bed Bay Point Healthcare Center in Hayward, was fired for circulating a petition to join NUHW. Her boss phoned SEIU Trustee Eliseo Medina and told her that if Medina didn’t approve of the petition, she would be fired. Days later, he terminated Garcia, who is an immigrant from Mexico and a single mother of three children.

*On February 11th, Angelica Valerio, a Certified Nursing Assistant and member of the elected Windsor Healthcare bargaining committee, was suspended from her job and nine others received written warnings for refusing to let an SEIU staffer bargain their contract. A majority of Windsor workers had already petitioned to disaffiliate from SEIU. With 29 nursing homes, for-profit Windsor Healthcare is one of the largest nursing home chains in California.

*On February 23rd, three SEIU organizers arrived at 1,049-bed California Pacific Medical Center, Sutter Health’s flagship hospital located in San Francisco. Two of the facility’s elected rank-and-file leaders, Helen York-Jones and Porfirio Quintano, asked the SEIU organizers to leave their hospital. York-Jones is a Cashier and 40-year employee who is the facility's Rep Chair and a former elected member of SEIU-UHW's Executive Board. Quintano, a Housekeeper with 10 years on the job, is a steward and an elected member of the union's bargaining committee. The two leaders told the SEIU staffers that a majority of the hospital’s workers had already submitted petitions to disaffiliate from SEIU, and they did not want SEIU organizers in their facility. The SEIU organizers reported them to the hospital's Human Resources Department. Two days later, York-Jones and Quintano received calls from Sutter management announcing that they had been placed on unpaid investigatory leave.

So much for protected activity! But no one said it would be easy.

Obviously, this is a crucial fight in the struggle for the creation of an independent, progressive trade union movement in the US. But we need more than the abandonment of failed leaders and institutions, like Stern and SEIU. It is essential that the labor movement adopt principles of democratic participation and direct action that it has historically repudiated.

Labels: Global Recession, Neoliberalism, NUHW, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

At at time in which the financial sector of the US is receiving trillions of dollars in federal assistance, much of it deficit financed, and millions of Americans are on track to get foreclosed out of their homes, you'd think that the Service Employees International Union, commonly known as SEIU, would have something better to do:

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) wants its members to believe that their union is just like the alluring but ultimately nightmarish hostelry immortalized by The Eagles. It’s a place of permanent imprisonment only "programmed to receive" workers and their dues money, not let either go elsewhere when the rhetoric of “progressive unionism” wears thin and the rank-and-file becomes restive. According to proprietor Andy Stern, once you’ve checked into SEIU, you can never leave.

Tens of thousands of Stern’s disgruntled “guests,” who work in west coast health care facilities, are about to disprove this claim. Their bags are packed and they’re headed out the door of Stern’s “Hotel California,” as soon as federal (or local) labor law permits. After a bruising internal battle—in which an estimated ten million dollars of their own money was used by Stern to undermine and attack them—rank-and-filers in Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers (UHW) have formed a new union of their own. Launched on January 28, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) is seeking to retain bargaining rights long held by UHW, until Stern placed it under trusteeship the day before.

Workers made a collective decision to flee SEIU after the long-threatened take-over of its third-largest affiliate. As previously reported in CounterPunch, Stern began brandishing this club last March. When UHW had the audacity to question SEIU’s management-friendly approach to health care organizing, bargaining, and politics, the SEIU president launched a multi-faceted counter-insurgency campaign. Now, several hundred out-of-state SEIU staffers have been dispatched to California as a full-time occupation force. At huge expense to the union treasury, their mission is to replace 100 elected UHW leaders, purge UHW’s own 500-member staff, seize the local’s offices and assets, and inform employers that they should no longer deal with UHW representatives about any labor-management issues. According to Stern, this highly disruptive intervention in a well-functioning local is necessary “to restore democratic procedures” and “protect the members’ interest.” After “UHW has been stabilized”—which could take 18 months to three years, based on past SEIU practice—“elections for new officers will be held.”

Sal Roselli, the President of United Healthcare Workers-West, recently explained the dispute from his perspective:

A couple of years ago, Andy Stern decided that he wanted to control the relationship between our nursing home employers, be able to establish top-down sweetheart deals that sacrificed workers’ rights and the ability of workers to advocate for their patients. Our members stood in the way of that, decided that we weren’t going to stand for it, resisted it, and ever since then, he’s been trying to force these workers out of our union.

During 2008, in multiple different ways, our members have demonstrated in a very democratic way that they want to stay united with the hospital workers in our union. Third-party-supervised democratic secret ballot votes, over 95 percent of our members voting to stay united with hospital workers in our union, are being dismissed.

Last month, Andy Stern conducted a bogus vote, where 309,000 SEIU healthcare workers in California received a ballot with two choices: one, to force the long-term care members out of our union, where he would appoint the leaders of this new union, or two, dissolve our union altogether, merge all healthcare workers in California into one union, and he would appoint the leaders of this new union. Our leadership decided to boycott this vote, because they were both false choices. Out of 309,000 ballots mailed out, only 24,000 folks voted, and that was with huge resources to get people to vote. So only eight percent of the folks voted. Andy Stern declares that’s union democracy, the workers have spoken, they want a separate union of long-term care workers in California. And that’s the issue before his executive board today, to take that vote to create a new union and force these long-term care members out of our union.

And ironically, while this is all happening, our union has been settling contracts with these national for-profit nursing home employers that have realized the dreams of our nursing home workers for over the last fifteen years, including acute hospital standards that we’ve been fighting for: third-party resolution of staffing disputes; stronger language for workers, healthcare workers, to advocate for their patients than exist anywhere else in the country; and good wages and benefits to stabilize the work force in nursing homes. Simultaneously, Andy Stern’s trustee in southern California is settling with these same employers, compromising collective bargaining rights for the workers, compromising the workers’ ability to advocate for their patients.

In a similar episode, SEIU was defeated in its attempt to push Puerto Rico teachers into a management friendly union closely connnected to Puerto Rican Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila. SEIU is centered around a model of business unionism, a model whereby favorable relationships with employers so as to increase membership are valued more than the interests of the members themselves. Last April, SEIU members shouted down speakers and attacked some participants at a Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan, because Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association, was scheduled to speak. In some instances, CNA and SEIU compete for members, and CNA is generally known for a more politically assertive, more independent approach.

Meanwhile, SEIU, along with the AFL-CIO, is backing a health care plan that may bury the prospects of implementing a single payer system in the US. For those of you who are interested, there are numerous sources of additional information associated with these internal labor disputes available over the Internet. My purpose here is to highlight the enormous challenge we face in bringing about progressive change in this country. If SEIU, the self-described largest and fastest growing union in North America, is primarily interested in consolidating power through deals with management that disempower its members, and is willing to expend significant resources to defeat those within the union who object, then how can we expect to create a movement that will transform our society for the better?

It will certainly be very difficult. Historically, labor unions have played an essential role in support of civil rights and labor rights, and have, in some instances, participated in antiwar movements as well. Because of their financial and organizational resources and their increasingly diverse membership, they can elevate the visibility of any issue with which they associated themselves. They are, quite literally, with the possible exceptions of ACORN and immigrants rights groups, the only organizations in the US with the capability of organizing a significant part of the middle and lower classes around an agenda of progressive social and economic change.

During the fall presidential campaign, my liberal Democratic friends insisted that the election of Obama would ignite a new progressivism. I saw no prospects then, as I see no prospects now, for such a development. As James Petras wrote recently about South America in relation to the political consequences of the global recession: . . . . we are in an unstable period where both capitalism and socialism are weak. The question becomes which side will be able to intervene, reorganize and recompose its forces to take advantage of the other. As long as unions like SEIU insist upon focusing their efforts upon internal factional disputes, the answer to this question, at least in regard to the US, is not a promising one.

Labels: Global Recession, Neoliberalism, NUHW, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

Last weekend, the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU") disrupted a Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan, shouting down speakers and attacking some participants:

The Service Employees International Union turned their dispute with the California Nurses Association violent by attacking a labor conference April 12, injuring several and sending an American Axle striker to the hospital.

A recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground by SEIU International staff and local members. Other conference-goers—members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen’s Association, and SEIU itself—were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed to the floor. Dearborn police responded and evicted the three bus loads of SEIU International staff and members of local and regional health care unions. No arrests were made.

The assault took place at the Labor Notes conference, a biennial gathering of 1,100 union members and leaders who met to discuss strategies to rebuild the labor movement.

David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked protesters why they came. He said one responded, “they told us just to get on the bus.” The protesters included several members with young children, who had to be ushered away when SEIU tried to force their way into the conference banquet hall. Protesters were targeting Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated CNA. DeMoro was scheduled to speak but declined to appear after threats were made against her union’s leadership.

Despite being welcomed to the conference earlier in the day—and given space to debate supporters of the CNA and the National Nurses Organizing Committee about neutrality organizing agreements—SEIU international and regional staff shouted down speakers at workshops and panels throughout the event.

“Labor Notes has always been a space for open debate, but when a union decides to engage in violence against their brothers and sisters, we draw a line,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes. “Violence within the labor movement is nacceptable and we call on the national leadership of SEIU, including President Andy Stern, to repudiate it.”

lenin, over at Lenin's Tomb, summarizes the situation pretty well:

The SEIU leadership is increasingly bent on a model of business unionism, cutting sweet-heart deals with employers that rule out strike action and promise to increase the bottom line. It means imposing such templates from the centre and expecting local affiliates to comply. It also includes loyalty oaths being imposed on members by the leadership. Though anti-democratic and disempowering local workers, it seems to be a vision that inspires some admiration at Business Week. This has produced a rift in the organisation with a layer of workers demanding a more militant and democratic approach. So, it seems that several SEIU members were present at this conference, whose purpose was to establish a viable strategy for effective unionism. Also present were members of the CNA, who have long been in a dispute with the SEIU over its timid politics and strategy, with complaints summarised here. The SEIU, including the dissident faction led by Sal Rosseli, charges that the CNA aggressively undermines SEIU recruitment and organising efforts. Following a negotiated truce in which the two unions agreed to keep to respective geographical areas of strength, the war of attrition has continued, and the SEIU is now engaged in an aggressive campaign against the CNA and its national off-shoot, the NNOC. The SEIU dissidents are refusing to have anything to do with it, considering their tactics a form of union-busting. The SEIU leaders, and several hundred loyal members, clearly saw this weekend's efforts as a defense of the union's interests and long-term strategy. The current SEIU leader, Andy Stern, is adored in much of the media ("charismatic", "firebrand"), but doesn't appear to have much to recommend him. Promises of explosive growth thanks to a brilliant new strategy to one side, he seems to be a leader very much in the mould of his predecessor John Sweeney, and not a great deal different from past advocates of business unionism such as George Meany or Lane Kirkland.

It will be interesting to see if SEIU brings such tactics out here to California to challenge CNA on its home turf. I'd recommend that CNA labor representatives consider obtaining permits to carry mace in anticipation of such a development.

Labels: CNA, Neoliberalism, Political Violence, SEIU, Unions