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John Wilhelm: SEIU represents “the suicide of the labor movement”

It’s the whole question of whether the labor movement is a handful of very smart people in Washington and New York driving the train and figuring out what’s best for the mass of workers, or whether it’s the kind of union you see in the Culinary in Las Vegas, which certainly has very strong leaders but also enormous rank-and-file activity, ownership and empowerment.

Andy Stern believes the former. He says that contract standards don’t matter, that it’s a workable approach for unions to say to corporate leaders, “Give us card-check agreement, don’t fight unionization and we’ll give you a substandard contact in return.” That will never work.

There’s a big brawl within SEIU about this very issue. Tens of thousands of health care workers left SEIU in California to form a competing union. Stern came into that state and removed popular, elected leaders from a strong local. The rank and file was outraged. He also signed a secret deal with nursing home operators in exchange for card check. The standards were unconscionable.

This represents a race to the bottom that will destroy the labor movement.

Fresno Bee: Fresno County vote key for 2 unions

Two unions are battling for votes in Fresno County in an election that labor experts say could affect the unionization of health-care workers nationwide.

The local election to win the allegiance — and paying dues — of 10,000 in-home health-care workers is the largest thus far in a bitter fight between an established union and an upstart launched earlier this year.

Fresno Bee: Homecare workers take back their union

The thing that made me most proud of the union we built was that it was based on a fundamental value we learned from our friends in the disability rights movement: “Make no decision about us without us.” In our union, we elected our own representatives from neighborhoods all over Fresno County, and we made the decisions about our own futures. The era of dignity and respect for home-care workers had begun. We won our current wage of $10.25 an hour and lifted thousands out of poverty.

But by 2009, some of our union’s Washington, D.C., leaders had lost their way. The leaders of the SEIU, our parent union, came to believe that they were smarter than their own members, and that only they should have the right to make decisions for us.

Workers Independent News: NUHW says it has strong support

The National Union Of Healthcare Workers says it has strong support as an election begins for 10,000 home health care workers in California. Doug Cunningham reports.

The Fresno County home health care workers are represented by SEIU. When SEIU took over the United Healthcare West local in a dispute over local union democratic control, many of the local’s leaders formed the National Union of Healthcare Workers. United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta says workers need and deserve to control their union.

Dolores Huerta endorses NUHW in Fresno County homecare election

Click below for the full story, including TV and radio coverage of Wednesday’s rally.