Kaiser workers vote to leave SEIU

[Communist]

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Kaiser workers vote to leave SEIU (http://news.google.com/news/story?q=Kaiser+workers+vote+to+leave+SEIU&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dErexc8uHsNvYmM&hl=en&ei=ntJgS52qHsrolAfr9oibBQ&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQqgIwAA)
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by Joe Carlson
January 27, 2010

The membership rolls of the nation's largest healthcare union are getting a
little smaller after several thousand hospital and clinic workers employed by Kaiser Permanente (https://www.kaiserpermanente.org/) voted to leave the Service Employees International Union (http://www.seiu.org/) and join an upstart rival.

In a closely watched election, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (http://www.nuhw.org/) overwhelmingly won three simultaneous disaffiliation votes, representing about 2,300 workers at Kaiser's 412-bed Los Angeles Medical Center and more than 90 affiliated clinics in Southern California.

The National Labor Relations Board (http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Press%20Releases/2010/R-2724.pdf) reported that registered nurses, dietitians, psychiatric counselors and social workers voted 1,652-257 to leave three SEIU bargaining units and join the NUHW, which was formed last year.

NUHW's leadership is largely made up of former SEIU leaders who were ousted from the Washington-based international union last year. John Borsos, a vice president with NUHW and one of the ousted SEIU officials, said he interpreted the results as “the beginning of the end for SEIU in California.”

Steve Trossman, spokesman for one of the SEIU's large bargaining units in California, called Borsos' comments “hyperbolic nonsense,” noting that SEIU still has several hundred thousand workers under contract in the state.

Meanwhile, the NLRB is expected to release a major announcement in coming days that will clear the way for the NUHW to hold decertification elections for SEIU bargaining units in dozens of hospitals across the state.

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[Rusty Shackleford]

so, do you know what this means for healtcare workers and service workers alike? Or at least some traits of the two unions?

[Communist]

I don't see this as a good move. The new union has not even one member under contract. Until I find out more, about what exactly it was that convinced the KP workers to vote reportedly more than 6 to 1 in favor of this break, I can't really say much. What prompted such a landslide to begin with?
Talk of top-down leadership is nothing new, and there have been genuine concerns...but this is major.

[Intelligitimate]

Fuck Andy Stern, fucking class collaborationist union bureaucrat that wants to raid other unions and tell the bosses that unions "add value" to their corporation.

[RED DAVE]

Fuck Andy Stern, fucking class collaborationist union bureaucrat that wants to raid other unions and tell the bosses that unions "add value" to their corporation.Could you explain what you mean here?

RED DAVE

[Intelligitimate]

Type in "SEIU" and "raid" in a search engine and figure it out yourself.

[RED DAVE]

Type in "SEIU" and "raid" in a search engine and figure it out yourself.I guess, then, in your own inimitable and comradely way, you are saying that the successful decertifying of the SEIU by the NUHW is as a result of the reprehensible, anti-labor policies of Andy Stern, president of the SEIU.

Now, this is a defensible thesis, and probably correct, but it would help if you documented this.

RED DAVE

[Intelligitimate]

Help who? Anyone who has been paying any attention whatsoever to labor can't help but know what is going on. The NUHW is a thousand times better than SEIU is, and the workers overwhelmingly voting in favor of the NUHW is real victory for class-struggle unionism against a modern day Gompers like Stern.

[RED DAVE]

Help who? Anyone who has been paying any attention whatsoever to labor can't help but know what is going on.How about helping foreign comrades or newbies to this board who mightnot be as aware of the US labor situation as your are. Or is educating people beneath thy exalted self?


The NUHW is a thousand times better than SEIU is, and the workers overwhelmingly voting in favor of the NUHW is real victory for class-struggle unionism against a modern day Gompers like Stern.All true, but some good background links would be helpful. This is especially necessary since the liberal and right-wing press are both painting Stern as the next working class hero.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

I don't see this as a good move.Given Stern's background, why not?


The new union has not even one member under contract.Not true. Check out their website.

http://www.nuhw.org/


Until I find out more, about what exactly it was that convinced the KP workers to vote reportedly more than 6 to 1 in favor of this break, I can't really say much. What prompted such a landslide to begin with?There may have been a massive sell-out by Stern and Co., and/or perhaps the NUHW conducted a systematic campaign. In any event, we need a lot more info.


Talk of top-down leadership is nothing new, and there have been genuine concerns...but this is major.Sure as shit is.

RED DAVE

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yeah, I'm not sure what I think about this. Stern is the asshole business-union bureaucrat that people have characterized him to be, but concretely what is the SEIU split union doing to build rank and file democracy. From the little I've read about this it seems like more a division at the top that caused this new union, not a principled reform movement that wants to do something really different. I'd be all for a rank and file reform challenge inside (or as a split from) the SEIU (which I was formerly a member of).

I know little about the NUHW, so if people have background about them one way (rank and file reform movement) or another (Stern-lite) it'd be much appreciated.

[Rusty Shackleford]

NUHW was formed after a two-year struggle to expose and reverse SEIU President Andy Stern’s drive to centralize power among a small clique of Washington-based officers and staff at the expense of rank-and-file workers’ voices with their employers and in their own union.
got this from their website. looks to be a bit more radical :)

[Jimmie Higgins]

got this from their website. looks to be a bit more radical :)Thanks, comrade.

I went to their website and it all sounds good, but other unions make similar statements while effectively only being a little less top-down and opportunistic (and pets of the Democratic Party) as SEIU has been under Stern so I was hoping that someone knew about what they've done or are trying to do that might be a step in the right direction.

[RED DAVE]

Apparently, the SEIU put the local into trusteeship, and the vote was a result of this:


The vote comes nearly one year to the day after SEIU placed its third-largest local, the dissident United Healthcare Workers-West, into trusteeship, prompting members and leaders to establish the breakaway NUHW. Within a month of the trusteeship more than 100,000 workers had filed petitions to leave SEIU and join NUHW.http://www.labornotes.org/2010/01/nuhw-takes-kaiser-elections


The trusteeship came a day after UHW rejected an ultimatum from SEIU’s top body to split their local in two. Following meetings with more than 5,000 stewards and other rank-and-file leaders, UHW’s elected officers refused the order, reiterating earlier proposals that would guarantee members a right to vote before a merger would take place.
SEIU’s ultimatum mandated that UHW move 65,000 nursing home and homecare workers into a new statewide local for long-term care workers. Such a local would be led by Stern appointees, and UHW argues it would produce weaker contract standards, citing their experience with the International’s partnership in the California nursing home industry.http://www.labornotes.org/node/2043


RED DAVE

[Rusty Shackleford]

Thanks, comrade.

I went to their website and it all sounds good, but other unions make similar statements while effectively only being a little less top-down and opportunistic (and pets of the Democratic Party) as SEIU has been under Stern so I was hoping that someone knew about what they've done or are trying to do that might be a step in the right direction.

i was looking at the United Association(a north american construction oriented union) and also was watching a video of the AFL-CIO and the sound generally left. most unions seem to use similar rhetoric. but for an actal split to happen means there must be some progression within the workers' political minds.

I dont know much of the history of the CIO but from what i read in the Wobblies, the CIO seems to have built on the IWW.

Another thing this reminded me of was the factionalism in the IWW between centralizers and decentralizers.

[Intelligitimate]

SEIU’s ultimatum mandated that UHW move 65,000 nursing home and homecare workers into a new statewide local for long-term care workers.

This is how scum like Stern try to dominate and control locals. When you have a "statewide local," no workers show the fuck up for "local" meetings. It would be left to the Stern-clique to run things for the entire state.


Yeah, I'm not sure what I think about this. Stern is the asshole business-union bureaucrat that people have characterized him to be, but concretely what is the SEIU split union doing to build rank and file democracy.

Don't believe me, believe Counterpunch:


Only a few short months ago, NUHW supporters had been leaders of Service Employees International Union, United Healthcare Workers-West (SEIU UHW-West). With 150,000 members, it was the second largest unit of the powerful national SEIU union.

Now the two organizations are at war with one another. Union democracy is at the center of the dispute and certainly the most important rallying point that is prompting tens of thousands of members to leave SEIU and to form a new union.

As an example, SEIU refused to allow a vote of UHW-West members on International President Andy Stern’s proposal to split off 65,000 homecare and nursing home workers.

This is an important issue because most homecare workers believe, as the Fresno example indicates, that their bargaining pressure increases by inclusion in the same unit with hospital and clinic workers. Stern believes each craft should essentially be divided into separate units.

The overwhelming majority of UHW-West argued the opposite; pointing out that combining the power of all crafts into one bargaining unit earned them the best contracts in the country.

Nonetheless, SEIU tops insisted on proceeding with the forced, massive reassignment into different mega-sized locals of tens of thousands of California healthcare workers. Many workers also complained these centralized locals were too far away from the geographically scattered worksites, establishing obstacles to rank and file participation.

http://www.counterpunch.org/finamore05012009.html

[genstrike]

All true, but some good background links would be helpful. This is especially necessary since the liberal and right-wing press are both painting Stern as the next working class hero.

I find it funny, I took a couple labour studies classes and it seemed like all the books there would have the same thesis. Unions are in the shitter becuause they're detached, lost their way, etc. They can recover, if they build strong rank and file initiatives, adopt some community organizing tactics, and stop being bureaucratic grievance-machines. Oh, and the one person who will save the labour movement is Andy Stern. Of course, Change to Win wasn't anything close to the success that some of these writers were hoping.

Although, I noticed that the age of the books had some effect on this (it was a couple years ago, and the books would have been a couple years old then). When I looked at older books from the 90s, they all said pretty much the same thing, except the one person was John Sweeney and we all know how that turned out.

[AmericanRed]

I'm quite sure that any attempt to reform SEIU from within is just pissing in the wind. A split like the NUHW split was an inevitability, given the Stern Gang's ham-fisted operating style of cracking down on dissidents. The NUHW's constitution provides for considerably more democracy than is allowed in the SEIU (see reports by Herman Benson from the Association for Union Democracy). If we're lucky there will be "two, three, many Kaisers." (So to speak.)