SEIU International goons attack Labor Notes Conference

This is exactly what the SEIU militants were doing. Rank and filers fighting a politically motivated union bureaucrat (CNA) who stood in the way of prioritizing material gains over political concerns.

revolutionrugger - please share what you've been smokin'. Has the SEIU not been compromising (to say the least) with bosses? Was the election scheduled without a showing of interest based on rank-and-file activity?

(honest question): is an action identical if it is:
a. done autonomously by workers
b. planned and orchestrated by staff in a bureaucracy, and executed by large groups of paid staff alongside workers (some of whom were poorly informed about the action)?

personally union staff don't get to count as militants in my book. they go in the bureaucrat category. nothing against them personally (a bunch of staff are my friends), but politically I think they don't get to be in the same category as regular workers. Having a position outside the workforce, and their mediating role in capital is relevant. I've been apart of these sorts of actions that are ordered from above by unions, and it's a whole different deal.

Workers in ohio are pissed. They ran an action about it. Staff were of course part of it. Thats not the same as saying it was an action "ordered from above" and by repeating the labornotes CNA claim that a member said they weren't aware of why they were there you're clearly choosing a side in the conflict. I find it amazing that someone who is normally relatively intelligent could believe that a worker got on a bus in ohio to ride to dearborn michegan and not know what they were doing. Do you think workers are so idiotic thats even possible?

If they had the shopfloor strength to pull off an autonomously planed action across state lines why weren't they strong enough to withstand a leaflet prior to election?

1. The working class aren't anarchists and 'autonomously planned action' makes no sense to anyone outside of your little fringe political world. so it was a union planned action. Which workers and staff were part of.

2. Yes. A leaflet is what happened in ohio. Do you seriously think a leaflet caused a national conflict and disrupted a huge multi-year campaign? Is it merely leaflet that bosses put out that destroys organizing drives? It was a full on union busting drive including robocalls, planted media, mailings, ads, housevisits, physical challenges, legal challenges and more.

*shrugs* was just using the terminology already in discussion. Though I'm personally not all too fringe considering I just helped the seiu win neutrality for a 1200 member unit.

I haven't read anything about robocalls etc. just the leafleting for the most part. If they came in only a day or so prior to election it would seem that they couldn't do much else. Seems like it spooked CHP and that's why they yanked the election. Though I'm no authority on the subject so feel free to provide contrary sources.

I've been on buses before with "mobilized" people who didn't know exactly where they were going or what they would be asked to do.

It has nothing to do with intellectual capacity, but rather has to do with conditioning to chain of command and taking advantage of trust.

I don't think its choosing a side to recognize this occurs. However, if the only question was more democratic craft unionism versus business partnership unionism, I think I'd have to hold my nose and go with the craft union.

this is actually why i put up the other thread about CNA in the first place. the CNA claims a democratic structure. i haven't heard even the most pro-SEIU here claim otherwise. the SEIU have a top-down structure. i haven't heard even the most pro-SEIU here claim otherwise. about the personalities/motivations of individuals in either group i know nothing, nor about the brouhaha at this meeting, but what about the internal organization of the two unions?

Sorry, this was the yiddish language anarchist newspaper."Fraye Arbeter Shtime = Freie arbeiter stimme = Free Voice of Labor. New York, N.Y. : Free Voice of Labor Association, 1890-1977" (Spunk Library). View this video "THE FREE VOICE OF LABOR: JEWISH ANARCHISTS"

http://freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?id=600&wh=1000x720

Actually, the core group of anarchist garment workers were in Dressmakers Local 22(predominately female). These comrades published a newpaper in Yiddish called the "Der Yunyon Arbayter. [The Union Worker] Ed. Simon Farber. Nyu York: Der Anarkhistisher Grupe, I.L.G.V.Y., 1925-27. Weekly. [IV; 'Anarchist Portraits']
http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ybibperiodicals.htm

CNA is a tiny union. They claim 80 thousand members which in union speak usually means 60 thousand. However, the difference between 60 and 80 and 100 thousand is so negligible lets just go with 80k. They have basically the same democratic structure as any other union. SEIU has 1.9 million members. Generally that would mean something like 1.5 in reality. However, that numbers been vetted by the press and the anti-union organizations so I feel generally comfortable with 1.9. However, lets say for the sake of argument that its 1.5 mill.

Anyway, I think anyone trying to be actually non-partisan (which I clearly am not) in a conversation about union democracy between the CNA and SEIU would have to conclude that its relatively non-distinct. The smaller an organization is the fewer decision makers there are. The larger an organization is the more structured decision making gets. I don't think either organization wins any points for being more or less democratic than the other. It could lead some folks to conclude that they prefer smaller unions because it allows for less structured rule-bound decision-making. Others could argue that size matters. Either way, I'm not sure thats a central point to this particular situation.

not to this situation, but it is in general.

that makes sense, but 1: a non-partisan type like me will have to investigate the CNA's 'democracy quotient' to see if it isn't higher than the SEIU's, and 2: if numbers bring layers then i need to hear a better syndicalist than i am explain how to get around that.

SEIU 1199's company unionism strikes again!!!!!!!!!11111111111111

Surely these workers did not realize they were authorizing a strike and were tricked into it by bureaucratic misleaders of laborrr!!!!!!!!111

[url=Enter URL here]http://www.projo.com/health/content/BUTLER_UNION_04-15-08_9R9P7OI_v18.34ab15f.html[/url]

Well, what do you think about the agreement I posted? I'm not sayng SEIU is never on the right side, and have come out to their pickets several times.

I haven't had the chance to give it a close read yet. I'm not going to rely on articles from SF Weekly or Labor Notes to assess it, as I wouldn't believe anything that I read about SEIU in either of those publications. I'm also rather skeptical of evaluating an unsigned agreement as if it were a signed one. On the whole, my feeling is that it was probably a bad deal which would make me glad that it was ended. It's hardly typical of neutrality agreements. What I would like to see is the multitude of agreements where the union agrees not to pursue more than $1 an hour raise that you were talking about on that other thread...

I gave that as an example. In some cases, I assume it would be less if there are concerns about industry competitiveness and disadvantaging the large hospital chain. While the agreement is unsigned in the only copies available, it references a previous agreement, which would have had to have been signed, and certainly those terms would not have been included unless there had already been extensive conversations about the terms and conditions of this "neutrality" agreement.

An example of what? No one has apparently ever heard of this except you.

Its funny to read this, knowing that you're a former Maoist, and union staffer.

Thats so deliberatley disingenuous. A maoist when? Age 14? A staffer for what? Three weeks? Argue the point he's making or its back to you can't be taken seriously because of your interpersonal relationships with Federal Agents.

No, it's deliberately disingenuous to represent people who are slugged by SEIU staffers as being slugged by workers. My point is that revrugger has no real point here, he's just trying to talk tough.

Edited to add: Alright, to take his argument at face value: its possible that one of the unions at my workplace (though not the one that 'represents' me - after 4 months no ones talked to me about joining and i've yet to meet a union rep) will go on strike soon, and if they do it seems likely that i can get my co-workers to refuse to cross picket lines. I'm also going to be doing what anarchists should, trying to spread the strike generally and build resistance against a sell-out. I expect other IWWs to help with this. If, hypothetically speaking, the union presents a new contract and the workers vote 'no', and the leaders blame the IWW influence, are they justified to bring a small minority of those workers along with lots of staffers to the next general assembly to 'slug' us?

I'm not taking a position on the CNA, but I think its at least open to debate that the SEIU was going to give a sweetheart deal to CHP. If there weren't serious issues for the workers to have doubts about, how did CNA wreck three years of organizing in just a few days? (To start I'd say that this makes it clear that even if SEIU in this case wasn't offering a sweetheart deal, it is a completely seperate organization from the workers it represents, or it would have spent three years organizing them to take collective action rather than three years working on bargaining rules with their exploiter).

Thug,

By "example" I meant to state what I meant by sweetheart deals including limitations on what would be bargained for in terms of pay. I used the $1 raise figure to illustrate my point, and did not intend to state that I knew SEIU had a sweetheart deal to not bargain over $1. They may well have such a deal, but these things are usually kept strictly confidential. What I did post a link to was a document that shows they have negotiated with bosses about keeping the bosses costs down in terms of pay. This could even be less than $1 depending on the circumstances.

Here is my prior post:

Regardless of the politics involved, I'm not seeing especially how running into a conference with signs a waving is any different than groups like Greenpeace who bust into shareholders meetings and yell a bunch of stuff and then get dragged away by the cops. Sure, you've got your money shot, a nice P.R. release haranguing the people you argued with, and then...jack shit. It's about as militant as the bullshit spectacle oriented actions of Unite-Here, where they tell the cops before time whose going to get arrested. It was about as dangerous as taking a karate class with 6 year old's.

SEIU apologists:

I am sorry if the $1 raise remark mislead people. I have to go over this in more detail, but it does appear it was more like a cap of $0.75 per year (See Appendix A)

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/CAAllianceAgreement.pdf

Thats not what that report says in the least. What the appendix you're reffering to actually says, and since you're a [edit] I'm surprised you can't read an internal analysis report, is that what they negotiated with alliance employers was 2.25 acoss the board, .75 additional for the bay area, .06 then .07 addition to a taft-hartley training fund plus some other economic elements. This isn't an aggreement or a contract. Its an analysis of both. It doesn't say there was a cap. It says what they negotiated was this. Now if you compare that to typical nursing home raises which are generally in the .10 to .25 range depending on the states medicare rate structure and the company, its actually fairly substantial increases generally. However, not worth giving up what Sal gave up for them I'd think but thats neither here nor there. The fact is that you're either being deceptive or stupid. This is an analysis of outcomes and does not include some cap you've been fabricating. Now i'm sure .75 looks like a shitty raise to a lawyer and all but the report shows that the contracts increased total bargaining unit costs by over 12% in three years. So the average raise was over 4%. Not the greatest thing in the world but also more than average in union nursing homes and significantly more than non-union nursing homes. The other thing the report indicates but not clearly is that the wages were distributed evenhandedly which means the poorest workers were looking at something more like 5-10% raises and wealthier workers were most likely hovering around the 3% range. Anyhoo, there was no cap. Thats a post-game analysis.

So if its an internal analysis report, then there is an agreement with bosses to have them agree which places will be organized and to have template contracts at a certain number of facilities?

I think .75 per year is a shitty raise for anyone. (2.25 across the board for how many years?)

It's good enough for us lowly workers though!

Yes. Except that a template is a place to start. Bargaining doesn't actually happen any different than anywhere else. However, if you look at the other document of Sal's you posted yesterday which actually does reference parts of his template there are significant limitations that are part of it.

The critique that you've almost been able to make a couple of times but weren't quite articulate about it is the relationship to growth and legislative funding efforts. So the agreement says that if the union drives X amount of money into the nursing homes by things like increasing the medicaid reimbursement rate, eliminating penalty taxes, etc etc then the companies have to agree to neutrality at Y number of nursing homes the next year.

Thats not the point. .75 is a shitty raise if you want to build a life and make a living wage. The point is that there was no cap that Pgh fabricated and these are better than average raises in the union portion of the longterm care industry and like three to seven times the raises in the non-union portion of the industry... and still the union's own analysis said it wasn't good enough. I kinda hate to be defending Sal's local a little here. He's a scumbag, but I don't see where he signed a sweetheart deal and where workers didn't do better than they would've without it and his own internal analysis makes the point that more had to be done.