June 25th, 2009
SEIU borrows business’ anti-union tactics to fend off a rival
For years, the powerful Service Employees International Union has played a lead role in the campaign for a landmark federal law that would allow workers to join a labor organization simply by signing petitions.
Now, as part of a high-stakes battle in California, the union is urging federal officials to throw out petitions signed by tens of thousands of its own members who have asked to be represented by a rival upstart group.
The David-vs.-Goliath face-off pits the SEIU, its $300-million annual budget and its legions of staffers, lobbyists and lawyers against a band of about 150 insurgents who are either volunteers or being paid from donations. Most have defected from the SEIU’s 2-million-strong ranks.
In lodging legal challenges to the roughly 80 petitions filed by its fledgling competitor, the SEIU has moved to block organizing elections at hospitals, clinics and nursing homes up and down the state. And it has used some of the same tactics that employers often use to thwart union drives.
June 24th, 2009
Los Angeles Times: SEIU borrows business’ anti-union tactics to fend off a rival
The Service Employees International Union alleges that the upstart National Union of Healthcare Workers is intimidating and misleading workers.
By Paul Pringle
For years, the powerful Service Employees International Union has played a lead role in the campaign for a landmark federal law that would allow workers to join a labor organization simply by signing petitions.
Now, as part of a high-stakes battle in California, the union is urging federal officials to throw out petitions signed by tens of thousands of its own members who have asked to be represented by a rival upstart group.
The David-vs.-Goliath face-off pits the SEIU, its $300-million annual budget and its legions of staffers, lobbyists and lawyers against a band of about 150 insurgents who are either volunteers or being paid from donations. Most have defected from the SEIU’s 2-million-strong ranks.
In lodging legal challenges to the roughly 80 petitions filed by its fledgling competitor, the SEIU has moved to block organizing elections at hospitals, clinics and nursing homes up and down the state. And it has used some of the same tactics that employers often use to thwart union drives.
June 24th, 2009
Wall Street Journal blog: Unions fight over health-care workers
Even as the economy has lost millions of jobs over the course of the recession, health care has continued to add jobs. So it makes sense that unions would be eager to sign up health-care workers — so eager, in fact, that megaunion SEIU is locked in a public fight against an upstart health-workers’ union […]
June 22nd, 2009
Beyond Chron: Is Fresno SEIU’s Vietnam?
by Randy Shaw
SEIU defeated NUHW by 233 votes in their bitter election over Fresno’s 10,000 home care workers, but now faces a situation analogous to the United States in Vietnam. It took nearly one thousand staffers and an estimated $10 million for SEIU to eke out a victory in Fresno, the labor equivalent of carpet-bombing. But just as the massive bombing of North Vietnam failed to bring the United States an ultimate victory, SEIU’s Fresno campaign left its opposition unvanquished, and likely better positioned than SEIU to win future elections.
June 22nd, 2009
Fresno County homecare providers expose SEIU’s illegal tactics in illegitimate election
Mistakes by the State election officer could also have disenfranchised hundreds of providers who wanted to vote
Fresno, Calif.—Fresno County homecare providers spoke out today at the County Hall of Records to tell their stories of SEIU’s illegal tactics to interfere in this month’s union election. Thousands of providers petitioned for the election in March so they could quit the scandal-plagued SEIU and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
SEIU spent an estimated $10 million on attack mailings, robo-calls, TV and radio ads, and 1,000 paid staff flown in from across the country, but failed to win enough support from workers to win the election without breaking the law. Homecare providers reported scores of incidents of voter intimidation, illegal threats, and ballot manipulation by SEIU staff. In addition, delays by the State Mediation and Conciliation Service (SMCS) in sending replacement ballots could have disenfranchised hundreds of providers whose ballots were not counted because they arrived after the June 15 deadline.