March 1st, 2010
Beyond Chron: rejecting Stern appointees, SEIU1021 members give reformers election sweep
by Randy Shaw, Mar. 01, 2010
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 Memorialand 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.”
February 24th, 2010
Truthdig: A Calamity in the Making
“We see unionized health care workers are the last line of defense against employers making decisions based on profit as opposed to adequate care because unionized health care workers have a union to stand behind them when they blow the whistle on an employer,” Rosselli said.
Stern’s SEIU can’t be trusted with the workers’ welfare, he said. The SEIU has made sweetheart deals with national health care chains, getting their permission to launch organizing campaigns in some hospitals in return for agreeing not to strike and or advocate for patients.
February 20th, 2010
Labor Notes: young California unionists on their way to Detroit
Daniel Ray, a volunteer organizer for the National Union of Healthcare Workers said, “We need resources so we can send our young activists to Michigan so they can become the future leaders of this movement. They have been threatened with their job, their health care, and in some cases in Fresno, their citizenship. The opportunity of learning at Labor Notes will give these workers the tools necessary in empowering their lives and allow them to pass on their knowledge to their fellow brothers and sisters, not to mention a chance to build solidarity with other rank-and-file activists who share the same experiences.”
February 18th, 2010
Beyond Chron: Media Ignoring Labor Union Successes
Labor unions have had some tremendous successes in recent weeks, but you would never know this from the mainstream media. The Teamsters won bargaining rights for 7600 workers at Continental Airlines, which only rated a small non-bylined story in the Business Section of the New York Times and was ignored by other national media. UNITE HERE Local 11 is waging an inventive contract campaign against Disney that included several workers on a week long fast, a tent camp out, and candlelight vigil outside Disneyland — all providing good photo ops — yet media outside Southern California ignored these efforts.
Even worse, the February 15 New York Times ran a story on Disney’s promotion at the Epcot Center in Florida of a “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” charitable project. The contrasting Disney coverage is but one example of how the media has shifted its approach to labor activism so that such stories are treated as strictly local news. Yet news about corporations, as well as local shootings, fires or climate events, get national coverage.