July 13th, 2009
Counterpunch: The Healthcare Worker War
The SEIU and the Hollow Shell It Left Behind
By CAL WINSLOW
What is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)? And why is it at war with the Labor Movement?
The SEIU is currently up to its neck in a bloody war with California healthcare workers led by the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) – a conflict SEIU leader Bill Ragen quite rightly compared to the US Occupation of Iraq – “easy to get into, then a slog …
July 10th, 2009
Caregivers picket Labor Board after 157 days without a vote
More than a hundred healthcare workers picketed the Oakland office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) yesterday, protesting the Board’s failure to schedule union elections for tens of thousands of workers who want to leave the scandal-plagued SEIU. Nearly 100,000 workers petitioned to join NUHW after SEIU’s hostile takeover of California’s healthcare union in […]
July 9th, 2009
Healthcare workers picket Labor Board after 157 days without a vote
NLRB has kept workers trapped in SEIU for more than five months by failing to schedule union elections
Oakland, Calif.—More than a hundred healthcare workers picketed the Oakland office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today, protesting the Board’s failure to schedule union elections for tens of thousands of workers who want to leave the scandal-plagued SEIU.
The NLRB’s neglect has allowed SEIU officials to wage a months-long campaign of intimidation against workers who support NUHW, while extracting millions more dollars in dues from workers who have plainly rejected them.
July 7th, 2009
Labor movement unites against SEIU
Randy Shaw of Beyond Chron reports on last weekend’s Unite Here convention: “The real story of this convention is that this is no longer a fight between SEIU and UNITE HERE. Rather, it is SEIU vs. the American Labor Movement.” The labor movement has united against SEIU’s anti-union attacks that divide workers and weaken our […]
July 1st, 2009
Against the Current: The NUHW Revolt
THE LARGEST BATTLE within the U.S. union movement in decades is happening right now. It is an organizing campaign to leave the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for the newly formed National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
Like many fights within U.S. labor, the struggle within SEIU is being widely characterized as a battle between stubborn men — Sal Rosselli (ousted leader of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West) and SEIU national president Andy Stern. To understand what’s at stake, however, is to look beyond the personalities, rhetoric and ideological dispute among the top leaders. The actual goods democracy can deliver should be discussed concretely.
Within 72 hours of SEIU’s placing UHW in trusteeship, rank-and-file leaders at 100 worksites with some 9,000 workers signed up a majority of their coworkers on decertification or de-authorization petitions.(1) Currently petitions have been filed with majority support (far more than the 30% required) covering over 360 facilities, 100 employers, and close to 2/3 of the locals’ 150,000 members.