SEIU International goons attack Labor Notes Conference

I'm a little at a loss as to why you can't read the documents you keep quoting and linking to. I mean, all I got is a highschool diploma and I can read them.

"there was no cap that Pgh fabricated"

That's right. I did not fabricate a cap. It's all there in black and white.

The fact that you are resorting to personal insults just shows your concern about the weakness of your arguments.

Where is this mythical cap? You're calling a negotiated raise a cap. You're being deliberately dishonest. Now while I'm not one to defend Roselli generally, but its just not true that he pre-negotiated a cap. Its true that they negotiated raises into their contract of a specific amount and then I'd assume his members voted on it in the ratification process.

I always resort to personal insults. Got nothing to do with whether my argument is strong or weak. Its really not my fault you can't seem to understand a fairly straightforward series of documents. I think I could lay out 20 critiques of Sal's agreement and his analysis report on the success vs failure accounting and I never went to [edit] school. Just sayin.

Yeah, that was your main point, and you may well be right (I don't feel like reading the contract), but you have these little bits of stupidity throughout your posts, like that sentence I quoted. As if you had to be a lawyer to think a 75 cent a year raise was garbage! That's why you get called an apologist.

a .75 raise for an entery level dietary aide in california is a 9.3% raise. so lets say none of the other economics play out at all just to keep it simple. The first year would be 9.3%, the second year would be 8.57% and the third year would be 7.9%. Now I'm certainly not saying thats enough for the hard work by any means. I am saying that its not a sweetheart deal. I think that most of y'all don't understand much about how medicade reimbusement rating gets done and what the actual profitability of nursing homes are. These for-profit nursing homes (excluding assisted living facilities) generally are completely medicaid funded. The real money in nursing homes is held within non-profits who tend to take care of the wealthiest private pay residents. An unrebalanced state is even worse. If you look at wages in non-profit nursing homes they reflect that but not by the same equivelent to their increased profitability.

As for making [edit] jokes... I merely find it amusing that some [edit] can talk shit about wage amounts that the average worker in the industry have never seen before and then call it a sweetheart deal instead of what it is. A shitty raise thats leaps and bounds better than what came before it. I remember all the lefties in ct a few years ago talking about how amazing the industry wide strike was. And don't get me wrong, it was impressive. However, I think they won like .30 raises on the top end after taking out something like 38% of the entire industry.

Edit ---> I wouldn't want to imply that any of the economics in the documents Pgh is citing are necessarily accurate. Looking at the documents he's posting this is what they say. However, I have no problem believing that Sal would lie about his gains and I've never seen one of his nursing home contracts to back up the economic data in this report.

Don't they have to post up contracts that cover more than 1000 workers now with the the Dept. of Labor? How large would the units be that would be covered by said contract, and with whom?

"You're calling a negotiated raise a cap."

Let's see...wages negotiated in a back-room deal before the collective bargaining process begins. Yup, that would be a cap.

Ok, thug. Let's talk facts. Do you know where Rosselli got his figures from which states template agreements brought in about .20 to .30 on average (I assume this is a yearly raise).

http://seiuvoice.org/documents/9-22-05_UHW_letter_to_Hudson_on_Alliance.PDF

I have supported SEIU campaigns in the past and will continue to do so where workers are involved and struggling for better working conditions and it does not appear there has been backroom dealing as to collective bargaining. (In fact, just today there was a picket outside of a local Pittsburgh hospital). But I take issue with these backroom deals which, hopefully, represent only a small amount of SEIU organizing, and using the union as a lobbying group as a means to gain representation rights.

I guess I was speaking off the cuff, which doesn't help the situation (too much of it happening on all sides, in terms of writing whatever version of the story people are already prejudiced to hear). i don't really know either way so I retract that. I was just replying to revruggers comments, which didn't make any distinction between staffers and workers, which is a political error to me. I've been in actions in unions that were staffer run where the workers didn't understand what went was going to happen, when all the planning happened with staff behind closed doors, etc. assuming though makes a donkey and whatnot i guess

personally i think the situation on both ends just illustrates the problematic dynamics of unionism in general. i don't have much faith in material gains (restructuring and capital wipes them away in a few years), and likewise not much faith in unionism. anarchists do the best work, when they can help make these things into lessons, the union as a schoolyard and whatnot.

All my posts have been in Personal Capacity and shouldn't reflect on any of my organizational affiliations!

That. Is. Not. True. Stop making me defend Roselli. You're suggesting that an after the fact report on what the negotiated raises were happened before negotiations. Lets be clear.

1. Raises were negotiated into the contract with an elected bargaining team.
2. The contract was ratified by the membership.
3. The union wrote an analysis of it.
4. You're being fucking retarded.

No I don't. Does he source it? Or do you think his website is more about leveraging message going into convention? C'mon. You're a smart guy whose been around unions and internal squabbles. Everyone spins and lies until someone wins. I can give my personal experience with alliance agreements, which is admittedly more limited than Roselli's. They generally have a provision that sets a floor calculation that reads that no matter what workers get at least X% as a whole for bargaining unit costs based on medicaid reimbursement rates. Even if the company takes a profitability loss. They don't have any sort of cap. They do limit traditionally thought of union advantage in exchange for the economic protections. They do tie legislative efforts on the part of workers to growth in density through neutrality.

CNA as a "somewhat more democratic craft union"? Maybe. I've heard that, but I've not seen hard evidence. I've also heard people call it a "topdown organization" and even a "DeMoro cult." Based on what I've heard thus far, I'd have to say CNA's action in Ohio was destructive to workers' interests there, and perhaps opportunistic as part of what is in fact a struggle between two bureaucrat-controlld business unions.

Knowing a bit about Local 250, the previous entity that Roselli headed, I'd have to say his attempt to potray himself as the supporter of democratic unionism and opposition to backroom deals is hypocritical. He's a labor politician for sure.

That said, the labor folks at the LN conference aren't workers "enemies". This is so irrespective of whatever criticisms one might have of Solidarity's politics. and anyway, there were 1,100 people there, even if Solidarity controls Labor Notes, which is the convenor.

The fact is, I often find myself in agreement with criticisms that people like Steve Early and Kim Moody have to say by way of critique of SEIU's "corporate unionism", because they have a commitment to building a movement from below, and that is also my understanding of anarcho-syndicalism as well, so there is at least some overlap in approach there, tho I wouldn't overlook differences.

I agree with syndicalist that it's necessary to point to a different model of unionism than either "side" here, and to keep that in mind. I see things to criticize on both "sides" in fact.

Steve Early is the hack of hacks.

(1) I dislike disagreing with people whose work I respect as well as personally like. And I have no opinion either way about the conflict between the two unions, CNA and SEIU, because I do not know enough (as Flint has argued elsewhere). That is, besides the general principle of being for unions but against their bureaucratic, pro-capitalist leaderships and overall undemocratic structures--which does not give guidance to any particular inter-union competition.

(2) But it seems clear that SEIU went to the Labor Notes conference to diisrupt things. Several posts here have cited their own experience or that of friends who attended the conference (and I have a friend who attended and spoke to me by phone), who report that this happened. And in any case, several of the posters here have pretty much justified SEIU busting things up.

(3) This seems to me a clear principle, to oppose violence inside the labor movement. Unions should not physically attack other unions. Unions should not attack labor conferences (whether or not they are organized by semi-Trots). Aside from some posturing, I really have not heard any arguments why violence is a good thing inside unions. We, who are a distinct minority within the labor movement really need to oppose this sort of thing.

Maybe. I don't know much about his actual practice. I was referring only to things he's written. and calling him names doesn't prove anything.

You better watch out. If you try to say anything too sensible you're apparently supportive of craft unionism and raiding.

At least I wasn't a jesus-punk.

OH SNAP. you got served.

Alright i hate bringing up my union organizer tenure because it was such a spectacular failure, but this post is utter bullshit. When i briefly worked with Local 7 in Baltimore we did an action where we were arrested for shutting down Pratt Street. We most definitely didn't tell the police before hand. The police locked us up, and snatched staffers and the union president that weren't in the action and locked them up as well. It was very real civil disobedience in defiance of the police. Fuck you and your damned lies. All the time radicals level criticisms that are just UNTRUE and don't match up with my personal experience of the union movement, how ever brief. So lets translate Sean's quote, "one time in one city one local of UNITE-HERE coordinated an action with the police, like a million other reformist organizations have done from time to time, most likely because elderly, children, or imigrants were participating and need to be protected from police violence, and thus because i disagree with that i will now apply it to all UNITE HERE at all times because UNITE-HERE is big and big equals bad because big means they are compromised by real situations and occasionally make mistakes, i will slander them continually on leftwing sltes until they rue the day they dared to talk to cops, mwah"

1. No.
2. Typical nursing homes have about 50 to 250 bargaining unit eligible workers depending on the number of beds.
3. Many unions post pdfs of their contracts on their websites.

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed. Protests are generally geared towards some level of disruption.
3. A protest happened. It got heated. Shit happens. It happened on both sides. Calling a protest an attack is disengenuous.

75 cents more an hour is an extra 120 dollars a month. Think about it in these ways. a hundred and twenty dollars can buy the following:

enough groceries to feed a family of five for two weeks.
two prescription medicines for your elder for one month.
car insurance for one month. (depending on your state)
a doctors visit.
a cavity filling.
a monthly energy bill.

since when is a 75 cent raise considered bad? my father is a teamster at UPS at night and i think he only gets fifty cent raises per year. When you look at the things listed above, those are HUGE concerns for any working family. I make a good living, and i've always had a safety net, but even i'm not priveledged enough to think a seventy five cent raise and hour is worthless and hold my nose up at it.

No comment.

Alright i hate bringing up my union organizer tenure because it was such a spectacular failure, but this post is utter bullshit.

And you're full of it. You're argument, essentially is, that because they only did a bullshit move once, they should be let off the hook. Unlike you, however, who profess the credentials of once being a union organizer, I have the pleasure of being IN a union as a rank-n-file member (AFGE as a social worker). So when I say UNITE-HERE is full of it, I'm not saying it as mastubatory leftist wanker, but as a rank and file member. So take your "street cred" and stuff it.

Let's be honest here, UNITE-HERE is big for one reason, and one reason only; the Culinary Union. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. UNITE has been unable, either politically or in contracts, to defend its textile workers. It merged with HERE mostly to bolster its sinking numbers, and for the possibility of organizing cleaners of various hotel chains.

And in response to Thuarchist, in fact they DO have to post contracts; just see over here at

Yeah, and watch out for those real workers. Apparently they don't like anarchists with clear principles:

no. i think people shouldn't make false universailizing statements that are patently untrue. I think honesty is generally a good policy. So why not say, local such and such of UNITE HERE coordinated and action with the cops. this is moderately annoying. instead you want to lambaste a whole union in a dishonest way. Also i was a rank-and-file teamster for two years. So i'm not all petit-bourgeois failed union organizer. Just mostly. Why shouldn't UNITE strategically place itself with the hotel union to begin organizing laundries? you make it sound like the merger wasn't to breathe new life into the union. Isn't that a good thing? why are you mad?

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/olms/rrlo/CBA_File_21101_final.pdf

Above is the document on the DoL collective bargaining agreements file. It clearly states that submission of contracts to the file is voluntary. It then goes on to state that they only include contracts covering over 1000 workers. Unions or employers do not have to post their contracts to the CBA file unless they choose to do so and any signatory of less than 1000 workers that does choose to post the contract to the CBA file would be rejected. There are political implications to the 1000 member bargaining unit rules here. It connects to the DoL's choice a number of years ago to also refuse to track strikes of less than 1000 workers for government reporting statistics. However, thats neither here nor there in answer to your initial question. Again.

There're about 500,000 members of UNITE-HERE. Culinary has about 50,000 members.

It wasn't meant to breathe new life, like many union mergers it was done to boost sagging membership numbers, and to give the illusion of density and size that one wields. The merger of USW and PACE, the merger of the Teamsters and the GCIU, these and many others were done to compensate for the lack of organizing and density within their respective areas. I remember the TDU writing about this not too long ago, saying how while the various mergers gives the impression of an ever larger Teamsters, density within their core areas has been down.

The merger of UNITE and HERE was not about bolstering sagging growth numbers. UNITE was dying because their core industries basically no longer exist. The only growth area for them was industrial laundries which dovetails with a number of sectors within HERE's core areas within the hospitality industry. HERE has been on a growth upsurge over the last ten years with the exception of losing approximately half their membership in the weeks following 9-11. UNITE brought financial strength to the merger and HERE brought organizing and growth.

Now I'm not suggesting it was a good merger for reasons other than those. I think HERE has a solid organizing program and a disciplined approach to core industry focus. UNITE is a bunch of incompetent losers who luckily for them own a bank. However, it is what it is.

Not true. Real workers have just never heard of anarchists, don't know any and wouldn't care if they did. When anarchists represent 5% of organized workers then you might be able to say something meaningful. Until then anarchists are generally meaningless in organized labor. Do you disagree? RR suggested that anarchism is a fringe movement with nothing substantive to add currently. You seem to be disagreeing with him. What significant (or even trivial) influence do you think anarchists have in the realm of organized labor currently?