November 24th, 2009
L.A. NOW: SEIU could sever ties with California Democratic Party
California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton says one of the state’s most politically powerful unions has threatened to cut off funding for the party over his support for a group that has broken away from the labor organization.
…Burton said SEIU’s California president, Bill Lloyd, made the threat as Burton was set to appear last week at a San Francisco fundraiser for the splinter group, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
“They threatened me,” said the 76-year-old Burton.
Burton said that he was championing union workers “when [SEIU’s national president] Andy Stern was in college.” He hailed the breakaway union’s leader, Sal Rosselli, as a lifelong friend and “one of the strongest labor leaders in this state.”
November 24th, 2009
WorkingUSA: The Progressive Quandary About SEIU
The terrain of “progressive labor” in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in recent years. The two-million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—long associated with the remaking of labor as a force for social justice—has become embroiled in a series of controversies that have alienated past campus, community, and political allies. A union that once commanded almost automatic support in left-liberal circles now finds many “friends of labor” arrayed against it, rhetorically at least, and, in some cases, actively assisting organizational rivals such as UNITE HERE and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
November 23rd, 2009
In These Times: The Fight For ‘Employee Free Choice’ In California Healthcare
As organized labor tries to sustain its inside-the-Beltway campaign for an Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), competitive healthcare worker organizing in California provides a contentious counterpoint to union claims that representation election decisions should always be made without threats, coercion, or other forms of interference facilitated by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) delays.
In California healthcare, one leading EFCA proponent—the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—has become a major foe of “employee free choice,” wherever its own members or even unorganized workers favor another union.
Tens of thousands of SEIU-represented hospital and nursing home workers have expressed a desire to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers, as demonstrated by their majority card or petition signing. But since last February, SEIU’s standard response to NUHW election petitions has been to enlist the always dysfunctional Labor Board—the bogeyman of EFCA campaigners everywhere—in stalling as many of these votes as possible.
November 22nd, 2009
Unchain our votes: Workers meet with NLRB and deliver hundreds of petitions
On Nov. 19, Southern California caregivers met with the National Labor Relations Board in Los Angeles to ask them to stop blocking election for thousands of healthcare workers to join NUHW.
November 19th, 2009
Labor Notes: NUHW Supporters Brave Eggs, Bottles in Los Angeles
To get to a public forum featuring speakers from the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) yesterday, attendees in Los Angeles had to pass a demonstration of a few hundred SEIU staffers and members who had arrived on buses.
The SEIUers chanted, beat on drums, and threw eggs and water bottles in an unsuccessful effort to intimidate people from attending. One attendee said SEIU was only making more enemies. For others it recalled SEIU’s failed attempt to invade the Labor Notes Conference in Dearborn in April 2008.
Nonetheless, NUHW is gaining allies in Southern California. The forum drew 100 union leaders and rank and filers from at least seven unions and a number of community organizations. It was organized to introduce NUHW to a broader audience, share the story of the union’s remarkable breakaway from SEIU and its plans for tremendous growth, and garner both political and financial support for the 10-month-old union.