[lbo-talk] more on SEIU's "pushing the comfort zone" with their partners

[Jim Straub]

There is a lot to criticize about -some- of seiu's relationships and
politics these days, but you are way off base here doug.  I don't think
anyone who has ever tried to organize against a boss fight in a nursing home
would ever conclude that getting organizing rights there is a bad thing.
The boss fights in homes are the worst, workers literally treated in
sub-human manner by the bosses, fired like nothing.  And because of the
chaotic consolidations of the industry, plus the extremely insignifigant
amount of compulsory power workers in a single home have against a chain, it
only makes sense to do whatever possibile to get organizing rights across
entire chunks of companies.  the reality is that that deal, like a
collective bargainign agreement, is going to be just that--- a deal.  The
workers don't impose dream terms, the terms are negotiated.  For a
commentarian to point out how horrible it is that in an organizing rights
agreement that mgmt gets final call on a decision, or whatever, is quite
beside the point--- in all collective bargaining agreements in
actually-existing planet earth, mgmt retains the vast majority of
decision-making rights with regards to running their business.  Changing
those terms of that is a matter of building power massively, and the US is
going not in that direction, but in the opposite.  Of course one could argue
that the terms of x agreement are weak or could be better, but if one says
that, I'm sure as hell gonna be eager to hear about the better terms one has
achieved elsewhere--- and if its all just idle speculation from some labor
geek labor notes intern two years out of amherst or whatever who's never
worked in a nursing home, spent time in one, or organized with teh workers
of one, but is just offering a theoretical opinion derived from their
arduous study of la botz and trotsky, well I would argue that that person
speaks without credibility.

But yeah its a fact of trade unions that once you have a bargainign
relationship with a company, if the relationship is okay by your standards,
a union will often act politically or economically to support that company,
because those are its workers jobs, and maybe because by cooperating where
possible on areas of agreement will improve the relationship.  The goal is
not to wave militant banners at a dozen losing battles and then go write
articles about those inspirational losses for labor notes--- the goal is to
organize a million workers a year and turn the country around.

Workers voices muzzled?  What on earth are you talking about?

Yeah, no, I urge you to look more into nursing home organizing and
reconsider.  This is what I used to work on.  Developing good relationships
where we get organizing rights from the few companies we can force into that
situation, while continuing to fight the good fight in board elections
elsewhere where the employers are intransigent, is the best possible thing
for organizing in that industry.  I don't think anyone else on this list has
ever had a personal relationship with a nursing home CNA fired while
organizing.

Critique of seiu is turning into a fetish of the left.  Nobody is interested
in finding out details or names or facts or industrial realities.  Just read
stern's latest press release and fire off the appropriate labor notes
article.  Irrelevancy heaped on irrelevancy.


>
>
> [a little late on this, and not much to add to the SF Weekly piece,
> except that it's happened in Washington too - the muzzling of the
> workers is pretty far down in this story, as is the disparaging
> characterization of traditional unions as protecting narcoleptic
> forklift operators]
>
> Seattle Times - March 20, 2007
>
> Union, nursing home alliance team up
> By Ralph Thomas
> Seattle Times Olympia bureau
>
>