SEIU Supporters Assault Labor Notes Conference

[Martin Blank]

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

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Some of the backstory to this incident is found in this thread. 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.

[chimx]

Why do you not care for the CNA? My girlfriend is a RN and member of the SEIU and she tells me most RNs are incredibly impressed with the CNAs victories in California, particularly with state regulated nurse-to-patient ratios. Not to mention differences in pay. Looking at both, the SEIU seems primarily interested in growth and gaining dues, whereas the CNA seems to pay far more attention to what RNs are calling for.

That and I am not necessarily convinced that a little union competition isn't exactly what the labor movement needs right now. Hopefully it will undermine bureaucratic complacency.

[rebelworker]

The CNA is a craft union, that is they oppose including janitors and "less qualified"(read lower class) workers in their contracts.

In thye recent Ohio Drive battle with SEIU that was actually one of the points they argued for workers to not vote union with the SEIU, becuse they'd be stuck with all "commoners".

Now I oppose the tactics of the SEIU in this case, but there are alot of problems with the CNA too.

Its sad Labour Notes didnt decide to change their key Note speaker after the kind of shit CNA pulled in Ohio recently. They are even currently using a picture of an injured SEIU member(a woman assaulted by a labour Notes delegate) to attack the SEIU (the picture is unclear as to the identity of the woman or her attacker, its just shows an SEIU member, who was pushing through the Labour Notes line to help her, as a thug attacking labour notes people.)

The whole affair is pretty sad, violence in the movement like this cannot help anyone.

[chimx]

In thye recent Ohio Drive battle with SEIU that was actually one of the points they argued for workers to not vote union with the SEIU, becuse they'd be stuck with all "commoners".

If you had more information on that, especially there use of that kind of language, it would be greatly appreciated!

[Ultra-Violence]

Im iffy with the SEIU on the one hand i love em to death IMO their the most radical union out thier right now not to mention the most powerfull. BUT at the same time the fact that their so big really ends up hurting them in the long run cause from i can tell in the health care worker sector theirs a big battle going on over the SEIU and the United Health care workers "janitors etc.." and the CNA i dont know what behind it tho i do know that the UHCW voted to be an affilate but not be absorbed completelty with SEIU i know this because my GF grandmothers is part of that unioin but heres what im getting to Why? why dont they want to be absorbed in to the SEUI? i read here union letters but i new it would be baist and it said it didnt want to be absorbed into the SEUI because their "UN DEMCRATIC"? what do they mean by this? can some one give me a quick over veiw?

[chimx]

their the most radical union out thier right now

I completely disagree. They are one of the most successful unions out their right now in terms of gaining members, but they are not radical at all. They are extremely anti-democratic.

[Martin Blank]

Why do you not care for the CNA? My girlfriend is a RN and member of the SEIU and she tells me most RNs are incredibly impressed with the CNAs victories in California, particularly with state regulated nurse-to-patient ratios. Not to mention differences in pay. Looking at both, the SEIU seems primarily interested in growth and gaining dues, whereas the CNA seems to pay far more attention to what RNs are calling for.

It's not that I don't care for the CNA. Not at all. I am merely pointing out the fact that the CNA/NNOC is a craft union that seeks to organize RNs into an organization separate from LPNs, medical assistants and other hospital workers. Right or wrong, that is what they do. They are the medical industry equivalent of AMFA, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which succeeded in gaining the mechanics at Northwest Airlines and other companies away from the International Association of Machinists on a similar basis -- that they didn't belong in the same union as the baggage handlers and cleaners.

If I'm getting down on any of those involved, it is the Labor Notes people. They should have known they were playing with gasoline when they invited Rose Ann DeMoro to be a keynote speaker -- especially after the recent events in Ohio. They should have been more prepared for what happened. Maybe then they wouldn't had to have called the cops to protect their conference.

[Ultra-Violence]

well what i mean by radical is that when i go to demonstrations i see the SEUI every were they were their for the May1st Mac Arthur parck riot they were their to support the writers guild thier thier to support immigrants rights so in that sense they have my respect are they revolutionary? no

[Comrade Rage]

I wanted to go this year, but didn't have the funds. Now I really wish I went.

At least I can get the rundown from a comrade of mine who went.

[hekmatista]

I have been an SEIU organizer as well as a rank and file member at the last organized hospital I worked at (served as shop steward there in early 2000's). While an organizer, I was turned off by the top-down semi-military leadership style of SEIU. Rank and filers were more of an audience for plans generated by organizing staff than active participants in planning their collective destiny. Never mind questions of reformism vs revolution, we're talking here about basic procedural democracy.
Having said that, I have seen the type of appeal that at least some of the supporters of CNA use in raiding existing SEIU local memberships. It is straight-up elitism: "maybe SEIU is good for janitors, but we need an organization for professional nurses, etc." Meanwhile, SEIU leaders are not averse to using demagogic appeals to the non-degreed, unlicensed portion of their wall-to-wall locals that play into the hands of those promoting RN chauvinism. Until reds successfully form internally democratic, militant unions, or transform the existing ones, we have little choice but to work within the bureaucratic, manipulative, class-collaborationist structures of "actually existing unionism," building rank and file caucuses as we can, promoting the leftmost line possible (and credible) at any given juncture, sharing our successes and failures with other reds and our friends. In these circumstances, to speak of one corrupt, sellout International as "better" than another does not help our class understand its true position.