On Saturday, July 30, 2005 7:38 AM [PDT], Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> optimist: the glass is half full.
> pessimist: the glass is half empty.
> realist: it's half a glass of water.
> surrealist: it's a cow.
>
> JD
>
It's a cow.
I watched as the local Peet's, INC. coffee shop workers tried to organize a vote for union representation. Peet's fired and laid off all of them, even cut back the store's evening hours till the staffing was replenished with the local favorite lumpen workers... ...college students.
SEIU sat on it's hands as 8-10+ workers were fired for attempting to organize in SEIU's name. Nary a word, and definitly no complaint to the NLRB. Pitiful. Further, my experience as a home health care worker under the auspices of SEIU was no different than paying dues to any other "company union" that I have had the "pleasure" of knowing, including forced health benefit payments from part time workers, with minimal to no coverage for said part timers, no protection at all from firings and layoffs... more.
The SEIU is trying to build political clout and it WILL BE at the expense of the workers. Same system... same scum rising to the top.
It *looks* fresh and exciting. But you'd have to be really, really bored... desperate... or just not paying attention to not notice.
Same old scum...
The Teamsters as a force for structural change in unions?
That has got to be a joke!
The major unions as they exist in the USA today *are* ABSOLUTELY part of the employing class and need to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. That includes SEIU.
Wait until that great idea of coordinating with Europeans unions produces an outcome seen as detrimental to American workers. That'll be the end of THAT grand plan.
One Big Union... That's my demand. One that puts ALL workers first... ALL the time.
Until that time, I consider every single one of the national unions to be "House Unions".
Leigh www.leighm.net