On Apr 16, 2008, at 9:59 AM, Mark Rickling wrote:
> So all the years of organizing in OH -- thus far -- was not to build
> committee in each CHP hospital in the state, with the idea that
> developing worker leadership in each unit would allow the union to
> build strong majorities to weather a boss campaign in an NLRB
> election. Sure SEIU had many CHP workers in motion, but as part of
> SEIU's "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR) campaign, whose goal it
> was to prevent CHP from engaging in a host of bad business practices,
> including preventing their workers from having a free and fair
> election. As I still work for SEIU, our legal department tell me I've
> got to be sure I accurately characterize what these campaigns are
> about. Suffice it to say, the decision to agree to a free and fair
> union election was not one CHP reached easily. So we didn't build
> committee in each and every CHP hospital, because the goal of the
> campaign at this point was to make the boss back off, not to build the
> union on the shop floor (which without the CNA's intervention would
> have come during the contract campaign phase).
So this means that all the work SEIU allegedly did in Ohio - all those 12-hour days spent talking to workers - still left virtually no trace on the ground, no base at all of rank and file support? The foundation was so weak that a few CNA carpetbaggers could spoil everything? You don't hear that such an argument sounds risibly thin?