<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">But Marvin Gandall asks a good question - tell us how you're doing among the workers of Las Vegas. I'm guessing that few of them are into radical politics, and are mainly looking for a couple of dollars more an hour and some health insurance. Doug </blockquote></div> Great idea.  I definitely wouldn't propose we follow in the footsteps of the SWP (gawd!); the labor notes folks will always have my respect if not my strategic agreement, for their hard work with the workers themselves.  <a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm">http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm</a> The above link is to an article that elaborates on the local I worked for in Ohio.  As for the Las Vegas local, Doug skeptically guesses "that few of them are into radical politics, and are mainly looking for a couple of dollars more an hour and some health insurance."  This is fairly accurate, although I'd change the wording to "-a- few of them are into radical politics, and the rest…".  At Local 1107 in las Vegas, our main work is on the stated goal of seiu--- to be a part of organizing, and winning material gains for, enough workers (it will take millions nationwide) to rebuild the labor movement and some of the working classes institutional power.  That's what the members sign up for--- an organizing-driven fight over the material conditions of their lives.  In the past couple years, the local has organized three new hospitals; we are in one of Bob Fitch's 'workers democracy' right to work states, so we actually have to fight an ongoing battle with management over everyone's individual membership; we are relatively good at this, and have about 75% of the approximately 18000 workers we represent signed up as dues paying members at the moment (this is probably seiu's highest right to work percentage).  Right now we've lined up all the big contracts to expire at the same time so we can fight for a minimum area standard in health care work (get everyone up to the best contract in the valley) and to force a large-scale confrontation between health care workers and employers in hopes of increasing gains through dramatic semi-crisis.  Besides winning that 'minimum standard', the main goals are: 1.winning pensions in the private sector hospitals; 2.winning unit-based staffing ratios, to address overwork among the workers and improve patient care for the patients, and 3.win organizing rights (essentially just a more fair process with less of an employer fight) for the three hospitals we don't represent here yet. One way we're going about this contract fight that has a bit more of a social movement orientation is every hospital is using 'big bargaining'; where a large (50-150 people) team elected by their co-workers to actually do the face to face negotiating, instead of the members just voting whether or not to accept something a couple lawyers hashed out in a smoky room with a gag rule on em.  This makes the process more informed and participatory, but it also makes the fight feel more like a –fight-; the bosses recoil at the idea of sitting across a (large) table with 80 of their actual employees and tell them to their faces they want to strip them of their longevity pay, or that they're not worth full family health insurance. Once we win this fight, we go about organizing those three remaining hospitals; after that, we move on to organizing workers in long term care (nursing homes and home health aides), which will be massive, but I will have moved on to wetter pastures hopefully. Besides that, the union has a fairly big footprint locally in politics.  The governmental power in southern Nevada is in the clark county board of commissioners; we got the only progressive on it elected, and we're right now in the process of electing another two.  Then there are some things like asserting a worker voice in the structural consolidation of the regional housing authority; we want a pro-worker, pro-tenant vision of bla bla.   The layer of the most active hundred members or so is largely lefty, but not entirely.  It includes catholics and mormons who are militant about class stuff, conservative about social issues; anti-immigrant latina nurses; socialist shop stewards who are regarded as quacks by their co-workers; some ex-steelworker radicals; republican filipina RNs who are involved to improve the care they can give their patients; janitors who are openly hostile to the higher-paid nurses; county employees who are angry the union focuses on organizing in health care and burly guys who do road maintenance in 120 degree Nevada summers.  And all the wonderful contradictions of a group of normal people struggling to unite to struggle.  A stroll through the parking lot on a night when the main decision-making body is meeting (the executive board, about 40 elected workers in a variety of positions) reveals many 'union yes war no' bumper stickers, SUVs, NRA decals, and a harley or two.  One of the activist nurses is a frequent speaker at local anti-war rallies; a number of the activists went as a group to a 'worker against war' protest that was staged by activists from the casino workers local a couple months back.  Of the 200 people demonstrating, almost all were union workers, and a large majority were people of color (there were a few crust-punk anarchists who juggled on the fringes of the crowd, seemingly afraid to interact with anyone else). If the rank and file activists are a mixed bunch the staff are doubly so.  Of the organizers (which is almost all the staff), a few are nurses or other rank and filers who come out of the shop to organize, either temporarily or long-term; a couple come from other unions, a young ironworker with radical politics, a woman who used to work for the teamsters in Indiana, a handful of folks who grew up in steelworker or autoworker families back in the rust belt; and a couple radicals in their twenties like myself, who come to the union from the environmental, women's or anarchist movement.  We have one kid fresh out of Yale, who gets a good share of productive hazing.  The president comes out of the rank and file, and the executive director, Doug's old friend Jane 'Militant' MacAlevey, worked on central America solidarity issues before becoming a healthcare organizer. The radicals among the rank and file and staff aside, I admit (proudly) that we are 'merely' building a mass organization focused on material issues, with some progressive politics and a little bit of bigger vision.  But is this something to scoff at, especially if the organization is 15,000 workers now, and will likely be twice as big in a few years?  In a sunbelt city where the 'Left' is practically non-existent, and even civil society outside of megachurches is too.  If SEIU's measely organizing goals were to be achieved suddenly, and the US had 30% union density in non-offshoreable jobs and twenty million workers actively involved in a progressive movement fighting for their material interests, might our country's politics be, instead of a clash between the extreme right and center right, at least between the center right and center left?  Or even the center left and left?  Our goal is merely to push the continuum of politics in the other, leftward, direction, incrementally and one worker at a time; if achieved, the space open for the left-wing ideas of some of our members and staff would be far larger, and perhaps the theocratic Christian right would have fewer fervent supporters in the blue-collar exurbs and Spanish-speaking apartment tenements that are our country's demographic future.  The name of the game is what George Jackson said, "get to the left of the people and pull!" I apologize for the length of this; it is really a productive exercise to actually articulate this vision stuff about the day to day work.  My biggest complaint about seiu in general and the local in particular is that we don't have as good of a plan for articulating and achieving the transformative vision as we do for winning the bread and butter.  The gap between "a couple bucks an hour and healthcare" and workers' revolution is large, and seemingly larger now than ever before.  In short, I assert our accomplishments on the short-term stuff, but the lack of a strategy past the medium-term.  Alas, it's a rough historical period.