[lbo-talk] SEIU

[Jim Straub]

I am tardy with a reply about the sfweekly article etc about seiu employer
relationships.  I wanted to spend some time thinking about it but present
circumstances don't allow.  But offhand, the piece by Jerry Brown (one my
top seiu heroes--- he worked with us alot during the vegas campaign as he
has retired from the new england local) really sums up my own views on seiu
stuff.  Its worth pointing out in saying that that his local damn sure did
in fact fight a big long corporate campaign for organizing rights just like
the evil bigger locals.  But on the whole his local, along with I guess
1199s in Ohio and PA and probably some others, are on the more combative
side of the internal debate about what terms to try to get with employers
and to what ends.  Point is, the whole thing is a question of degree---
fighting a corporate campaign to get organizing rights and then having a
good relationship on areas of agreement with your rare cooperative company,
are viewed by all sides of this as a good strategy that works--- but people
like jerry brown want to make it more about labor struggle than labor
snuggle.  Fiercer, old-school class warriors, more specifically part of the
left.

That sfweekly article seemed relatively good, but haven't got to read it
yet.

Yeah, but all that said---- winning organizing rights being a 'muzzling of
workers'?  Give me a break.  Its that kind of nonsense that makes me glad
seiu practices such extreme chain of command leninist message control.
People who are off program like that jerome guythink nothin of rambling on
to the journalists of the enemy about how organizing rights are in fact
oppression of workers.

Muzzling workers.  Maybe labor studies departments should start having their
people get jobs as CNAs for a year.   It boggles my mind, the hamfisted
uninformed generalizations that are thrown around about seiu.