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The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), headed by Andy Stern,
and the California Nurses Association, led by Rose Ann DeMoro, are each
the most successful examples of two contending models of unionism.
Stern has taken the business-union model to new heights (or depths!)
claiming great organizing successes have swelled the number of workers
"serviced" to 1.9 million. While some effective organizing
has been done in the Justice for Janitors campaign, a good percentage
of this growth came as a result of deals negotiated with state
legislatures delivering tens of thousands of low-wage workers who might
never have heard of SEIU.
Others have been brought in through
sweetheart contracts, including some on a national level, where Stern
could offer political influence to advance the employer’s objectives.
Traditional local unions have been dissolved into mega-bodies sometimes
covering a dozen states.
DeMoro has led CNA, and its National Nurse Organizing Committee arm, in
an opposite direction, which they call "social unionism."
They too have enjoyed organizing success among their limited target of
RNs.
CNA, like nurse associations in every state, began as a professional
development group. They still retain this character, maintaining
programs of continuing education classes, a magazine, and other literature
dedicated to advancing the professional skills of nursing. But, like
other nurses associations in states such as Minnesota—and similar to
the evolution of the National Education Association–CNA eventually came
to recognize the need for collective bargaining with employers.
They have, in fact, over the last 15 years or so, gone beyond just
vigorous organizing and negotiating the best contracts in the industry.
They twice mobilized big successful campaigns against California Gov.
Schwarzenegger—first stopping his efforts to roll back previously won
nurse/ patient ratio laws in 2004.
Last year, they led the charge to defeat the governor’s phony universal
health-care plan—supported by top Democrats and the SEIU—that would
have been a windfall for the health insurance robber barons.
Because CNA/NNOC organizes only RNs it would seem logical for them to
forge alliances with unions such as SEIU who organize other health-care
wage workers. But relations with SEIU have recently deteriorated into
fierce public clashes.
The main blame for this mess has to be squarely placed on the Stern
business-union approach. More and more, Stern has cooked up his
sweetheart deals that not only try to ice out CNA/ NNOC but also impose
odious conditions on the newly "organized" SEIU dues payers
as well.
Stern’s backroom contract and political deals have even led to
divisions within the once solid SEIU bureaucracy. Sal Rosselli,
president of the California United Healthcare Workers West (UHWW), has
attracted support, organized in the SMART caucus, for a challenge to
Stern’s methods at SEIU’s May 31 convention.
Both CNA and SMART were well represented at the Labor Notes conference,
and DeMoro and Rosselli were scheduled to give major talks. But Stern’s
California staffers were organizing harassment of CNA leaders, and also
threatening to seize the headquarters of the UHWW, so those two leaders
stayed behind.
The Stern Gang, as they have become known, didn’t neglect the Labor
Notes conference either. They dogged their rivals in workshops, loudly
denouncing them—as they had a right to do. But they crossed the line at
the banquet Saturday night.
SEIU staffers rounded up bus loads of rank-and-file members and told
them they were going to protest "union busters." They made a
rush to the doors of the event, aiming to take it over—but conference
goers quickly rallied to keep the hooligans out.
In the scuffling, a retired UAW officer from a striking Axle local
received a head wound that required emergency room treatment.
Tragically, one of the SEIU members collapsed from a heart attack on
the way out and later died.
The Stern Gang’s assault deserved—and received—immediate condemnation.
Stern’s predecessor as SEIU president and the current AFL-CIO
president, John Sweeney, said, "There is no justification—none—for
the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference
in Detroit. While there may well be multiple sides to any dispute,
violence in any form is reprehensible. Violence in attacking freedom of
speech must be strongly condemned. Any attempt to deny the right of
free speech threatens the foundation of our movement and the future of
working people."
Members of the SMART caucus, while reaffirming their loyalty to the
SEIU union, also bravely and forcefully condemned the attack.
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