Martin Blank
14th April 2008, 09:13
For Immediate Release
April 12, 2008
SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION ATTACKS LABOR GATHERING
CONFERENCE-GOERS ASSAULTED
Dearborn, MI — The Service Employees International Union turned their dispute with the California Nurses Association violent by attacking a labor conference April 12, injuring several and sending an American Axle striker to the hospital.
A recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground by SEIU International staff and local members. Other conference goers — members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen’s Association, and SEIU itself — were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed to the floor. Dearborn police responded and evicted the three bus loads of SEIU International staff and members of local and regional health care unions. No arrests were made.
The assault took place at the Labor Notes conference, a biennial gathering of 1,100 union members and leaders who met to discuss strategies to rebuild the labor movement.
David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked protesters why they came. He said one responded, “they told us just to get on the bus.”
The protesters included several members with young children, who had to be ushered away when SEIU tried to force their way into the conference banquet hall. Protesters were targeting Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated CNA. DeMoro was scheduled to speak but declined to appear after threats were made against her union’s leadership.
Despite being welcomed to the conference earlier in the day — and given space to debate supporters of the CNA and the National Nurses Organizing Committee about neutrality organizing agreements — SEIU international and regional staff shouted down speakers at workshops and panels throughout the event.
“Labor Notes has always been a space for open debate, but when a union decides to engage in violence against their brothers and sisters, we draw a line,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes. “Violence within the labor movement is unacceptable and we call on the national leadership of SEIU, including President Andy Stern, to repudiate it.”
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Follow-up comment by Labor Notes: http://labornotes.org/node/1604
==============================
Some of the backstory to this incident is found in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/california-nurses-association-t73227/index.html). I'm sure SEIU had little trouble finding people in Ohio and other states to make the trip to the Labor Notes Conference for this action. The anger among SEIU members is visible and pronounced.
Obviously, such gangsterism in the workers' movement is unacceptable and undefendable. SEIU should be roundly condemned for this act. Moreover, I think that the call for SEIU leader Stern to "repudiate" this will fall on deaf ears. There is no way that an action like this could have happened without his knowledge or consent.
That said, the Labor Notes people made two very bad choices: 1) supporting the CNA craft union as openly and uncritically as they did, which, in the current climate, was little more than a provocation against the SEIU (again, see the referenced thread); and, 2) calling the Dearborn police to settle an "in-house" matter, which again makes them look like they are using the capitalist state to settle labor disputes (they already have something of a reputation for that due to their support for the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and its work with Reagan's Department of Justice to break the grip of the post-Hoffa Mafia-bureaucrats in the 1980s).
Quite honestly, the Labor Notes people should have known what they were getting into when they embraced the CNA and invited one of their leaders to the conference, and had their own security teams expanded and prepared. They're not idiots; they went through this with BLAST (Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters) and the pro-Bieber UAW bureaucrats in the 1980s.
This was the first Labor Notes Conference I haven't been to in a while. Now I wish I had attended. Ah well.
April 12, 2008
SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION ATTACKS LABOR GATHERING
CONFERENCE-GOERS ASSAULTED
Dearborn, MI — The Service Employees International Union turned their dispute with the California Nurses Association violent by attacking a labor conference April 12, injuring several and sending an American Axle striker to the hospital.
A recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground by SEIU International staff and local members. Other conference goers — members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen’s Association, and SEIU itself — were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed to the floor. Dearborn police responded and evicted the three bus loads of SEIU International staff and members of local and regional health care unions. No arrests were made.
The assault took place at the Labor Notes conference, a biennial gathering of 1,100 union members and leaders who met to discuss strategies to rebuild the labor movement.
David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked protesters why they came. He said one responded, “they told us just to get on the bus.”
The protesters included several members with young children, who had to be ushered away when SEIU tried to force their way into the conference banquet hall. Protesters were targeting Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated CNA. DeMoro was scheduled to speak but declined to appear after threats were made against her union’s leadership.
Despite being welcomed to the conference earlier in the day — and given space to debate supporters of the CNA and the National Nurses Organizing Committee about neutrality organizing agreements — SEIU international and regional staff shouted down speakers at workshops and panels throughout the event.
“Labor Notes has always been a space for open debate, but when a union decides to engage in violence against their brothers and sisters, we draw a line,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes. “Violence within the labor movement is unacceptable and we call on the national leadership of SEIU, including President Andy Stern, to repudiate it.”
###
Follow-up comment by Labor Notes: http://labornotes.org/node/1604
==============================
Some of the backstory to this incident is found in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/california-nurses-association-t73227/index.html). I'm sure SEIU had little trouble finding people in Ohio and other states to make the trip to the Labor Notes Conference for this action. The anger among SEIU members is visible and pronounced.
Obviously, such gangsterism in the workers' movement is unacceptable and undefendable. SEIU should be roundly condemned for this act. Moreover, I think that the call for SEIU leader Stern to "repudiate" this will fall on deaf ears. There is no way that an action like this could have happened without his knowledge or consent.
That said, the Labor Notes people made two very bad choices: 1) supporting the CNA craft union as openly and uncritically as they did, which, in the current climate, was little more than a provocation against the SEIU (again, see the referenced thread); and, 2) calling the Dearborn police to settle an "in-house" matter, which again makes them look like they are using the capitalist state to settle labor disputes (they already have something of a reputation for that due to their support for the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and its work with Reagan's Department of Justice to break the grip of the post-Hoffa Mafia-bureaucrats in the 1980s).
Quite honestly, the Labor Notes people should have known what they were getting into when they embraced the CNA and invited one of their leaders to the conference, and had their own security teams expanded and prepared. They're not idiots; they went through this with BLAST (Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters) and the pro-Bieber UAW bureaucrats in the 1980s.
This was the first Labor Notes Conference I haven't been to in a while. Now I wish I had attended. Ah well.