I know I should stop carrying a grudge about what you said during the Ohio CNA-SEIU mess. Here's what I remember. You made some suggestions, and one assertion I think, that SEIU was trying to become a company union in the Ohio CHP campaign (and thus you said it was right for the CNA to step in and bust a union campaign and prevent ten thousand workers from getting to unionize). Your information leading you to conclude this was wrong. I took was you said very seriously for two reasons. One, calling a union a company union is like calling an activist an undercover cop: it's a very deadly serious charge, that when thrown around lightly and wrongly, does a lot of damage. And two, because I worked, alot, on the campaign in question, knew the workers and the facts. I reached out by phone to speak with you about what you were saying, but never did get ahold of you. You didn't really care that you were wrong, though; just shrugged and moved on to spreading whatever rumor the CNA guy gave you next.
But a friend of yours named Esther Kaplan did care about the facts. She spoke to all sides, including workers, and wrote an excellent investigative piece on the whole drama for the Nation that vindicated SEIU and gave a lot of people their first doubts about the harm the CNA is doing to hospital workers in their raiding wars. You should talk to Esther more, or maybe even strive to use her balanced and informed approach to labor commentary.
I don't think I'm smarter than you--- you're pretty clearly very much smarter than me. You know more economics than me (about which I know nothing). But I know more about SEIU than you do. We may have different opinions about some things, agreements on others, but I believe we can find a way to discuss things that has less rhetorical melodrama and venom (looking at myself here very much too!), more enlightening exchange of information and opinion, etc. Your opinions on things like that Ohio CNA raid are enriched by knowing the facts, even if you still hate and oppose SEIU till your dying day.
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> Yeah it's tragic that the labor movement is in such a fatal internal
> pissing match. But, given the recent UHW stuff, it looks like the
> facts are breaking more in my direction than yours.
We can both agree that I've seen SEIU as mostly good, you've seen it as mostly bad, and that SEIU has been getting worse over the past year. I have a very different opinion of their organzing strategy and program given my experiences in it and its success at a scale no other union has succeeded at.
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> I don't get this organizing rights agreement business. Why would a
> boss sign such a thing if it didn't guarantee the edentulation of the
> union?
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Uh, you can probably answer that yourself. because you beat on them
and hurt their bottom line and force them to do so. For the same
reason they would sign a contract or recognize a union.
Man, if you can't get behind organizing rights agreements for any
other reason, do it for this one: they are the only way the CNA
organizes and wins anymore either.
Edentulation? Is that a word. People will probably say I'm posing as a faux-redneck because I claim not to know what a simple term like Edentulation means.
Anyway, look, if you're against finding ways (through law or pressure on corporations) to stop employers from preventing their workers from organizing using unethical and illegal means, then you're for the extinction of labor unions in the private sector. They flatly will cease to exist in another decade if we do not limit bosses ability to stomp on organizing workers. I am baffled that you would seriously question this principle, I thought you knew about this stuff. Are you even for EFCA? What are you for, Doug, for workers in the workplace?
Sorry I'm writing alot today, I'm working from a desk with a computer today.