[Marxism] SEIU Disrupts 2008 Labor Notes

[Andy]

On Apr 13, 2008, at 5:18 PM, Joaquin Bustelo wrote:

> can people point to some articles that can fill us in on the  
> background to
> this dispute

http://www.kclabor.org/what_really_happened_in_ohio.htm

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

Marilyn Albert, RN
Cleveland, Ohio
NNOC Ohio member and organizer
30 year member of 1199 in New York City

Submitted by the author to LaborPortside

"...legitimate questions have been raised about the top-down nature of  
some specific SEIU neutrality agreements. A careful look at criticisms  
aimed at SEIU raises more general questions about the wisdom of those  
neutrality-based organizing campaigns that neither engage workers in  
struggle nor build union solidarity."

  - Richard Hurd, Professor of Labor Studies, Cornell University,  
"Neutrality Agreements: Innovative, Controversial, and Labor's Hope  
for the Future", New Labor Forum Spring 2008

The history of SEIU's attempts to get workers under contract at the  
Catholic Health Partners chain of hospitals must be understood by  
those who want to be accurately informed about the role of the  
National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Assn. in  
leafleting the hospitals last week. Foremost is the question of how  
much actual organizing of workers did 1199SEIU do at CHP?    I don't  
claim to know all of the almost decade-long history, but I  
participated in the first organization of a CHP hospital in Lorain,  
Ohio, as a member of 1199SEIU,  in 1999. I have lived and worked in  
Northeast Ohio for the past five years.  I participated in leafleting  
fellow Ohio RNs and health care workers at CHP hospitals last week as  
a member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

In 2005,  1199 SEIU, as part of their corporate campaign against CHP,  
organized a vote for a Hospital Accountability Law in Springfield,  
Ohio, one of the locations of a CHP hospital. Although the union  
predicted a victory, in fact, the proposed law was soundly defeated by  
thousands of votes following a community backlash against SEIU  
criticizing their community hospital.

A few months ago, SEIU lost an NLRB election for three out of five  
bargaining units at the first CHP hospital at which they organized  
RNs, in Lorain, Ohio.

WHY DID THE NATIONAL NURSES' ORGANIZING COMMITTEE LEAFLET CHP WORKERS?

Steven Greenhouse's article of March 12, 2008 in the New York Times,  
other coverage by corporate media,  and SEIU's media spin fail to  
bring to light a few central points about the SEIU deal with Catholic  
Health Partners over a quicky election for March 12 and 14, 2008.

The central fact of this situation was the agreement between the  
employer and SEIU to utilize an NLRB "RM petition" to facilitate a  
fast election, which the Bush NLRB quickly agreed to. Use of RM  
petitions is dangerous, not only to health care workers, but to all  
workers in the US.

Several other international unions have expressed support for NNOC/CNA  
in our view of the use of this RM petition. Although SEIU President  
Andy Stern appealed to the AFLCIO to reign in NNOC/CNA, the AFLCIO  
took no such action against us, as its affiliate.

WHAT IS A RM PETITION AND WHY IS ITS USE BY EMPLOYERS DANGEROUS TO THE  
LABOR MOVEMENT?

An "RM petition" is an employer petition. It is filed by an employer  
when one or more unions claim to represent the employer's employees or  
when the employer has reasonable grounds for believing that the union  
does not represent a majority of employees.

In this case, using an RM petition relieved SEIU of having to prove  
majority support or even producing a single authorization card from a  
single worker.

The agreement between SEIU and the hospital allowed a fast election to  
be called, where neither side would campaign (though there were  
reports of the employer telling nurses to vote for SEIU.)   The pro- 
corporate media is buying into the spin that such an agreement is  
"groundbreaking" and "fair".

However, if we look at such an agreement from the workers' point of  
view - where is the fairness in being rushed into an election, where  
the vast majority of workers had little if any knowledge of SEIU?  How  
could workers find out more about SEIU during this two week period of  
neutrality?  They could call a hot line phone number to ask  
questions!  Under the rules of the agreement, with "no campaigning",  
the workers - whatever their views or loyalties - could not organize  
their fellow workers prior to the voting - what kind of unionism is  
that?

What does it mean for a major US union to create a "model" for labor  
relations which virtually allows an employer to pick their favorite  
union to have to deal with?

Did SEIU really organize workers at CHP?  Labor activists should ask  
what District 1199 Ohio has been doing for almost a decade regarding  
this employer.  It is perfectly reasonable in this period for unions  
to seek neutrality agreements, but the question is:  what is the  
nature of the neutrality agreement?

How could a few organizers over a few days influence the situation if  
SEIU had a real base? NNOC/CNA would have been a pimple on an elephant  
last week if they had really organized the workers and built an  
organization at CHP. Nurse after nurse to whom we spoke said they were  
voting against SEIU and they had clearly made up their minds long  
before NNOC/CNA arrived on the scene.  Most, including a former  
nursing student of mine and his wife and sister, knew nothing about  
SEIU.

SEIU pulled out of the election less than 24 hours before it was to  
take place because they didn't have an organization and they didn't  
have majority support. In fact, the support they did have appeared to  
me to be very small.  It is impossible not to conclude that SEIU  
planned to have their small minority of supporters sweep SEIU in at  
CHP in a rushed election, while the majority in their confusion,  
failed to vote.

The employer has stated that this election would have been wonderful  
because it would have avoided "disruption of patient care"  and the  
"pressure of both sides campaigning".  No labor supporter should be  
sucked in by this boss's spin....there have been NLRB elections for  
over forty years which resulted in health workers forming unions which  
did not disrupt patient care. If employers had refrained from extreme  
union-busting and "union avoidance" tactics over the same period, many  
more health workers would be unionized today.  We cannot let the  
assertion that "both sides" pressure workers go unchallenged...

WHICH IS THE BEST UNION FOR PATIENTS?

In 2003, District 1199/SEIU in Ohio launched a campaign to convince  
the citizens of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) not to vote for a tax levy  
which would support our only public hospital and needed health  
services for the poor. This was apparently an effort to put pressure  
on certain human service agencies with which 1199 was bargaining at  
the time.  This earned District 1199 strong criticisms from the health  
care community and progressive movement in Cuyahoga County.

For those of us who are health care workers, particularly nurses,  
there is a central question which many in the labor movement tend to  
overlook.

This question is:  what is the role of health care workers' unions in  
our society, especially in the US where corporate health care is  
ruining peoples' lives and in fact, killing patients through  
understaffing, non-regulation of drugs and medical devices, etc.

As a working nurse, shop steward and organizer in 1199SEIU  
particularly during the period of the late 1990s and up to 2003,  it  
was my experience that the union did not take up the struggle of the  
rights and responsibilities of health care workers and their unions to  
advocate for patients against corporate health care and the hospital  
industry. The union became immersed in the strategy of labor-management
cooperation, interest-based bargaining, and "strategic alliances".   
Whether in collective bargaining, or in enforcing contracts and  
reacting to on the job, day to day working conditions and patient care  
conditions, the union did not take up the important struggle of nurse  
to patient ratios, or work overload for other workers, for fear of  
rocking the boat with the hospitals.

Furthermore, SEIU has supported corporate and for-profit medicine in  
many instances as part of its legislative program, and entered into  
agreements which gag the union's members in health care from exposing  
dangerous patient care conditions. This has been particularly true in  
California.

THE CURRENT INTERNAL STRUGGLE IN SEIU, LED BY 140,000 CALIFORNIA MEMBERS

What happened in Ohio regarding CHP must be understood in the context  
of strong rejection among many within the union and in the labor  
movement of SEIU's current practice of developing what SEIU's leaders  
call "employer relationships".

The members of United Health Care Workers West, after living with the  
results of these policies for years, are now openly struggling against  
them.  For information on their program, see www.seiuvoice.org <http://www.seiuvoice.org 
 > and www.reformseiu.org <http://www.reformseiu.org> .  The main  
issues for the California SEIUers are experimental types of agreements  
with the nursing home industry which were breathtaking in their pro- 
employer and pro-corporate health care stance. All documents related  
to these issues are on the websites noted above.

There is a long history of extremely concessionary and extremely  
undemocratic deal-making in SEIU. I don't claim to know it all.  But a  
letter dated June 18, 2007 from SEIU Healthcare President Dennis  
Rivera  to the CEO of Tenet Health Care regarding California  
bargaining, offers a 7 year contract with the ability to re-open, and  
gives up the right to strike for the life of the contract.  
Additionally, it offers to agree with Tenet's demand for no defined  
benefit pension plan or retiree health plan in their California  
bargaining units.  I believe, in California, as in New York City,  
defined benefit health plans and retiree health benefits continue to  
prevail for unionized health care workers, making this concession even  
more draconian.

SEIU WILL BE CHANGED BY ITS MEMBERS

Many facets of the struggle of the working class in the US are tied up  
in this debate about SEIU's role.  Many of us with a past history in  
SEIU hope that its membership will turn the tide toward democratic  
militancy, real social movement unionism, and reject extreme  
concessions to the US health care industry.