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

Jim Straub rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com
Sun Apr 15 13:06:18 PDT 2007


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
>
>



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