[lbo-talk] NYT on SEIU-CNA fight

Mark Rickling mrickling at gmail.com
Wed Mar 12 11:19:47 PDT 2008


On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:


> How can nurses have "a free and fair union election" unless both SEIU
> and CNA are on the ballot?

Is this a serious question? Why not AFSCME, AFT, UAW, the Ohio Nurses Association, the Steelworkers, and any other of a half dozen other unions that organize RNs? Why not the IWW too?

Did you miss the words of CHP RN Marianne Heider, quoted in an SEIU press release issued yesterday, or the relevant part of Stern's letter to the AFL-CIO executive committee, both of which were posted in the other thread? Do you have a response to their arguments?


>From SEIU's press release dated yesterday:

"Our efforts to unite for better jobs and health care were not a secret," said Marianne Heider, a registered nurse at Mercy-Western Hills Hospital in Cincinnati. "At any time during those three years the CNA could have come and presented their union, compared themselves to SEIU, and asked us to make a choice. But they didn't. So it is obvious to us that their sole intention was to destroy what we have built."


>From Stern's letter:

Perhaps even more disingenuous is the CNA's repudiation of the CHP agreement on the grounds that it does not provide a choice of unions. Should the CNA's agreements with CHW and Tenet have included a choice of unions for registered nurses? If CWA works to achieve an agreement with Verizon Wireless for a valid union election, should other unions jump in at the last minute? CHP nurses and other hospital employees have been working with SEIU organizers for years. These workers made their choice a long ago. Just because the CNA showed up a week before the elections doesn't mean they belong on the ballot (or that it's acceptable to mislead nurses into thinking that a "no" vote will automatically result in a "yes" vote for the CNA).



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