NO! IT! DOESN'T!!!
Christ, can you READ?
1199 New York, 1199C (which is AFSCME), 1199 New England, 1199 Wisconsin, 1199 West Virginia/Ohio/Kentucky, 1199 EDC (Baltimore and DC), 1199 Northwest, and any others I'm forgetting to mention are NOT one local. They are separate locals, with separate, elected local leadership, and they have been that way for years, from BEFORE these locals merged into SEIU (or in some cases AFSCME). They were built from the late Sixties through the Eighties -- years in which 1199 people actually went head-to-head with the Lane Kirklands of the labor movement on questions like Vietnam, Central America, race, the Jesse Jackson campaign, you name it (hence any evident frustration with people like Lance who think they're being oh-so-tough in dumping on Kirkland -- big fucking deal). These days, each local relates separately to SEIU's (or AFSCME's) international union, not to the other 1199s. My frustration with people like Lance is that they act like know-it-alls about this stuff when they don't even have their fucking facts straight. It may seem like I'm making piddling points, but I'm not. It is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with someone who is going to go off half-cocked and draw conclusions about something -- big, bad, "undemocratic" locals -- that ISN'T TRUE.
That is why I end up calling Lance a clueless dipshit. If he were interested in asking sincere questions and trying to get clarification on stuff, that would be a different matter. Then I would say, Lance, look, you're just wrong about this, and here's why. But instead, he tries to score "debating" points when he doesn't even have his facts straight. That makes him both a clueless dipshit and a garden-variety asshole. Not to mention just plain dumb.
Further, the 1199 mergers with SEIU happened over a decade ago in most cases, though somewhat more recently in the case of 1199 New York. New York has since absorbed 1199 Upstate as well as the healthcare chapters of other SEIU locals in the state -- which is a good idea, since it puts all healthcare workers in the same local instead of spread out over multi-industry locals. But the actual growth in SEIU membership in recent years -- whether the 1199 locals or someone else -- has been AFTER these mergers, and has involved organizing. A lot of it has been in homecare, though there has also been an increase in union density in hospitals and nursing homes.
Only the self-satisfied or the downright insane would go around claiming that this has been adequate, particularly since most of the growth has happened in a handful of states that already have considerable union power, esp. New York and California. All of these facts are discussed within SEIU and there are grand plans for trying to break out of this situation and organize more workers on a massive scale. If Lance is at all interested, he's free to critique these proposals and offer constructive proposals of his own. Instead, he just makes shit up to pontificate about. So once again I have to ask the question, doesn't he feel embarrased by doing this? Or is he just going to do it again?
On the whole question of the supposed lack of "democracy" within large locals -- and what SEIU calls a "local" these days in fact corresponds to what's usually called a "district" in other international unions -- I have seen little but sophistry and red herrings from the "critics." In the 1199s, which are mostly statewide locals, the leadership is directly elected by the membership as a whole, and hires and fires the staff. At the same time, each facility is a "chapter" that elects its OWN officers (and these elections CAN and DO get contentious). Now, it's true that a lot of power is effectively centralized in the hands of the full-time local officers who hire and fire staff, and organizing opposition may be difficult (though Dennis Rivera himself did that, even though 1199 New York was already very big at that time). But is there anyone who seriously thinks that a single hospital or nursing home could hire everyone it needs to run an effective union these days? A nursing home couldn't hire even one staff person; a hospital could hire maybe one or two. But that would most likely be one business agent who would spend all of his/her time handling grievances -- and then being thoroughly outclassed by management every few years at the bargaining table.
In the real world, a union needs researchers to understand the finances and real bargaining position of the employers; communications people to deal with the media; political people to deal with legislation and building political support; an education program to develop members' trade-union skills and social and political consciousness; and so on. (And since Lance brought up Cuba, I'll point out that if 1199 New York were not as large as it is -- and if the members were split up into "locals" at each facility -- then they would not be able to have the Cuba program that they have. This involves taking members -- people who work in the most fucked-up healthcare system in the industrialized world, and in New York City at that -- and sending them to Cuba to see a place where healthcare is run much better and organized in the broader interests of the people despite the fact that the country is so much poorer.)
Oh, and how could I forget -- people like Lance who have a rhetorical hard-on for organizing but know nothing of it do not consider the fact that if staff hiring were up to each individual facility, there would be no money to hire people to organize all of those unorganized facilities that need to be organized if we are to actually change things.
Not to mention the fact that a union as a whole, in order to have bargaining power in an industry, OUGHT to have the right to prevent certain facilities from settling with employers without consulting with everyone else, or from breaking the principles of coordinated bargaining the way, say, the IAM did in the last round of union negotiations at GE. The fact that workers were split into locals that were ready to go their own way is one of the reasons why the UFCW strike in California ended up getting so fucked up -- something that people like Lance love to critique, but never to investigate the cause with an eye to finding solutions.
See why this conversation is so frustrating? There are lots of real issues out there that should be discussed, there are no easy answers to any of them, and meanwhile some people insist on bringing up issues or "facts" that just don't exist. It's downright exasperating.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories