> SEIU's version has not remained constant and stating this will not make
> it so.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but seems to me SEIU's version of what happened in Dearborn has been pretty consistent: a relatively peaceful protest against unionbusting. Obviously one can disagree with that interpretation of events, but I don't get the consistency thing.
> Also, your constant use of the term unionbusting is deliberately
> misleading and becoming irritating.
Looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree here. In my book, the CNA doesn't get a pass simply because it's a union for running a "vote no" campaign in another union's election.
> Internecine conflicts between unions are not properly referred to as
> unionbusting.
I agree. Running a "vote no" campaign in a union election, however, is.
> Unionbusting is a tactic by management (or those on managements payroll)
> to avoid a union from being formed.
Until the CNA ran one in Ohio, I thought this was the definition too!
> CNA's goal is not to prevent any union from being formed, only to
> prevent a specific union deal that they feel was bad for workers and to
> possibly offer one they feel was better for workers.
You're wrong here. The CNA believes it has exclusive jurisdiction to organize RNs nationally. It believes all other unions are bad for RNs outside of the CNA itself. It clearly believes no union is preferable to SEIU. It's shocked its putative allies who organize RNs in the AFL-CIO (think the UAN, etc.) by claiming that its affiliation with the Fed means it has exclusive jurisdiction to organize RNs nationally. It shows you what state the latter unions are in that they can't even muster the will to file Article 20 charges against the CNA for dropping union membership authorization cards on their members.
CNA has offered and is offering nothing to Ohio hospital workers. If it were, it would be deploying its organizers in Ohio to help CHP workers win a union. It's not. It's goal in Ohio was to stop SEIU from organizing, not to organize CHP workers itself (in the foreseeable future).
> If you wish to call it raiding you would be on firmer footing but even
> that is a questionable use of that term since the nurses in question did
> not yet have a union contract.
Raiding is stealing another union's members. We need to come up with a new term for jumping in at the last second to organize workers in another union's organizing campaign. We, however, have a word for what CNA did in Ohio: unionbusting.
> If CNA feel they can offer a better deal to workers than SEIU should
> they just sit on their hands and say "Oh well, an injury to one isn't
> necessarily an injury to all?" and simply ignore what they feel is a
> bad union contract to other nurses?
CNA is offering nothing to CHP workers. See above.
> After all the nurses in question
> were not really involved in crafting the SEIU deal were they?
The deal was to make the boss back off in a union election. CHP RNs were intimately involved in the Corporate Social Responsibility Campaign to make this happen, and there were just as involved in crafting the organizing agreement as Tenet CNA RNs were in crafting the "backroom deal" between Tenet and CNA.
> Whether
> the CNA has engaged in similar deals in the past is irrelevant to the
> nurses involved in this particular conflict so bringing this fact up is
> a red herring. As an analogy if I slapped my wife once does that mean I
> can never call the police if I see my neighbor slapping his wife simply
> because I was guilty of the same offense once? This is the logic you
> seem fixated on and the answer is of course no.
Your analogy is poor. Here's a better one: Rose Ann Demoro sees Andy Stern and Trevor Fetter (Tenet CEO) shake hands in 2003. She desperately wants to shake Trevor's hand too. To make this happen, she screams at the top of her lungs "wifebeater! wifebeater! wifebeater!" and threatens to file a lawsuit (files a lawsuit?) to get shaking hands classified as a particularly egregious form of wifebeating. To preserve comity, Andy and Trevor agree to allow Rose Ann to shake Trevor's hand too. Wanting nothing more to get in on the handshaking action, Rose Ann of course does not pass this opportunity up on "principle" and eagerly pumps the Tenet CEO's hand up and down in a rapid motion. Fast forward to 2008. Rose Ann again sees SEIU shaking hands with another hospital system, and screams at the top of her lungs, "wifebeater! wifebeater! wifebeater!" It's clear to me the earlier episode has a direct bearing on the truth claims of the CNA in the latter episode of screaming "wifebeater!"
You don't think it's telling that those not in the know had a hard time believing the CNA would ever sign an organizing agreement with the boss in the first place? I do.
> To label an attempt to shout down speakers and crash a Labor Notes
> conference for whatever reason a peaceful protest is total bullshit and
> quite laughable. It is, as Max wrote, hooliganism.
> An injury to one and all that, remember?
You've no doubt read Dan Clawson's account at DailyKos? Reasonable people can disagree from time to time, right?