> WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN OHIO REGARDING CATHOLIC HEALTH PARTNERS, SEIU,
> AND NATIONAL NURSES ORGANIZING COMMITTEE/CALIFORNIA NURSES ORGANIZATION
>
> by a Registered Nurse Who Was There
> <http://www.kclabor.org/what_really_happened_in_ohio.htm>
>
> Marilyn Albert, RN
> Cleveland, Ohio
> NNOC Ohio member and organizer
Still waiting for someone in CNA's camp to explain on what principles that conservative craft union vehemently opposed SEIU-Tenet organizing agreement for most of 2003, and what principles led them to sign the same agreement at the end ofthat year. For reference, see the CNA flyer from August 2003, which hypocritically and hilariously attacks the very same "back room deal" they later became a party to (the successor agreement to this allowed them to organize the first private hospital RN unit in Texas recently):
http://www.youshare.com/view.php?file=CNAbackroomdeal.pdf
For all the blather about the horrors of an RM petition, the fact of the matter is that the only organizing agreement the CNA opposes is one they're not a part of. An RM petition locked out the CNA from intervening at the last second to get on the ballot, ergo they're opposed to them. Just like they were opposed in principle to "back room deals" with Tenet, until they weren't. Total fucking hypocrites.
How did SEIU get such an agreement with CHP? Well, this "registered nurse who was there" evidently doesn't know a 10th of what constituted the three-year Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign with CHP (most of which was never produced for public consumption), so her conclusion is that it must have been a sweetheart deal. Just like CNA's criticism of the "back room deal" SEIU signed with Tenet, except now that the CNA is party to that agreement they don't characterize it as such.
The sad fact of the matter is that the 70,000 member CNA doesn't have the capacity to run successful CSR campaigns, projects which are designed to stop a boss from engaging in a whole host of bad business practices -- practices which include preventing employees from having a free and fair election. The only growth they've had recently has been off the back of SEIU's Catholic Healthcare West and Tenet CSR campaigns (plus that raid of the INA's Cook County unit -- and maybe one or two CA hospitals, not sure . . .). Since they couldn't intervene to get on the CHP ballot, they decided to wreck the whole thing by telling CHP workers to vote no in a union election.
Better to be a hypocrite and a unionbuster than to get out-organized, I guess.