Do you easily recognize these names? Mary Kenny O’Sullivan, Rose Schneiderman, Helen Marot? How about these women, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt or Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Without these brave women going before us, we would not be where we are today.

Some historical perspective:

Mary Kenny O’Sullivan was from a working class Irish background who became a dressmaker and then worked in a printing and binding factory in Missouri and several binderies in Chicago. She helped organize the Chicago Women’s Bindery Workers’ Union. What year was that? It was before 1892 – yep that’s right 1892. Because of her work in the union, in 1892 she was appointed the first woman general organizer for the American Federation of Labor. That same year she helped form the Union for Industrial Progress to help study factory working conditions. She went on to organize rubber makers, shoe workers, laundry workers and garment workers. (Continued after the flip…)

100 years ago:

“On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, located on the top three floors of the ten-story Asch Building in Manhattan. Fueled by combustible garments, cloth, and dust, the fire quickly spread.Most of the more than 500 workers there that day were immigrant women, some as young as 12 years old, mostly from Russia, Italy, Germany, or Hungary. Of those present when the fire started, some escaped down elevators, which then stopped working; some escaped to the roof of the next building; some escaped down stairs which then became engulfed in flames. Those who didn’t escape the building sought to escape the fire by moving towards the doors and windows or hiding in small rooms within the factory. More than 60 chose to jump from the windows rather than die in the fire and smoke. Some 24 died falling from a fire escape that collapsed under the weight of the escaping workers.

The fire started about 4:30 p.m. and firefighters had the fire mostly under control by 5:15. In all, 146 people died as a result of the fire — immediately or soon after as a result of their injuries. Thousands watched from the park and surrounding streets and buildings.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was the most deadly industrial safety incident in New York City, and resulted in public outcry to establish safety and labor reforms”.

The results of this fire brought about changes to municipal, state and federal regulations to ensure better working conditions and worker safety. In addition, it brought about stronger unions in the garment industry to allow for bargaining on safety and working conditions and to lobby for legislative reforms. One of those to lobby and work on the reforms was rose Schneiderman.  Rose Schneiderman an immigrant to America from Russian-Poland, was a labor activist who served as President of the Women’s Trade Union League. Her speech after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire helped mobilize the public to establish better industrial protections for workers. “It is the spirit of trade unionism that is most important, the service of fellowship, the feeling that the hurt of one is the concern of all and that the work of the individual benefits all” (Rose Schneiderman 1905).

Helen Marot, a librarian from a wealth family in Philadelphia, became active in investigating working conditions, particularly among children and women. She joined Women’s Trade Union League, organized the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union in New York and organized and led the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike in New York.

These women were so significant to the labor movement and protecting the rights of workers. If we forget these valiant women, we are apt to take for granted their achievements and assume employers of today are more enlightened in the treatment of their workers. Are they really more enlightened or do they just follow the law? If we allow the laws to be repealed, do we really believe the employers will continue to do the right thing? Some may but with nothing compelling them, who is to say they will do the right thing.

Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the women of the suffrage movement. They fought and suffered so that women today would have the right to vote. So when I hear women say “oh it doesn’t matter if I voter or not,” I try to remind them – it does mater. It mattered to these women that they were willing to give their lives for the right to be equal citizens.

The women who were organizers in the labor movement were also women of the suffrage movement. Advocating for women to be treated well in the workplace, to change working conditions through the legislative process, meant women had to vote. “What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.” (Rose Schneiderman – 1912, Cleveland)

Now let’s fast forward those 100 years – reproductive rights, working conditions, working families issues, jobs, equal pay are again at the forefront of our fight. But do we stop to think there are women workers today who do not have even the basics. I want you to know and remember 17 year Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez. In 2008 while working in the fields near Stockton she died from heat related illness because the employer failed to provide even the basic necessities of water and shade on a day over 95 degrees. No water in the first part of her shift. When water was provided it was about a 20 minute walk away. When she got sick, they put her in the van and there she stayed until the end of the workers’ shift. In a hot van, no air conditioning, no emergency care. In 2005 then Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill providing the basic needs for workers in the fields. Even with those laws in place, the employer chose to ignore them. Apparently the employers have no fear of the laws being enforced.  Women in the labor movement – men in the labor movement – decent humans in the human race – should not tolerate this happening anywhere. Stockton is not a third world country and workers here should not have to die to provide for their families. It just shows me that our work is never done. To allow one more death in our county because employers do not follow the laws is unconscionable.

To our sisters before us who fought so valiantly so that we can vote and join unions, we cannot let their work go in vain. We are each busy fighting for our own cause – but please take a moment to thank the Women Labor Warriors and Suffragettes who allow us the opportunity to fight and vote for our causes.

Marcie Bayne

Executive Director, North Valley Labor Federation

Secretary Treasurer, San Joaquin Calaveras Counties Central Labor Council

Central CA CLUW(Coalition of Labor Union Women)Charter Member

Note: Background information about this diary can be found at the new website www.seiufactchecker.org. Mary Kay Henry is International Executive Vice President for SEIU

I would like to thank Calitics for hosting this debate about the future of workers in this country.  

I have worked along side Sal Rosselli, the president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (UHW-W) for 25 years, starting when both of us worked on staff for SEIU Local 250 (which is now called UHW-W).  I was the organizing director and he worked in the East Bay as a union representative.

I also worked closely with him when I was in charge of SEIU’s hospital organizing campaign in Southern California from 1999 to 2004 that ultimately resulted in 26,000 workers becoming members of UHW and gaining major improvements in pay and benefits.

So I am surprised by his recent actions. He has been attacking the democratic decisions made jointly by the huge majority of SEIU local unions across the country. In fact, he recently resigned from the SEIU Executive Committee, saying he could no longer abide by decisions made by “simple majorities” of elected SEIU leaders.  

Sabotage in Ohio

For the past three years, SEIU has been working with hospital workers in Ohio to help them organize to win improvements for themselves and the patients they serve.

Like most workers in this country, they didn’t stand much of a chance as long as management was using its power to intimidate them and discourage support for a union. For three years, they waged a campaign with support from the community to persuade their employer to accept a fair vote where workers could freely choose without management interference.

But this month, just as the workers were about to vote to unite with SEIU, Rosselli went to San Diego and met with Rose Ann DeMoro, president of the California Nurses Association (CNA) at the executive council meeting of the AFL-CIO.

Two days later, CNA organizers showed up at the Ohio hospitals with flyers telling workers how bad SEIU is, parroting many of the arguments being put forth by Rosselli.

CNA’s materials referred workers to a website co-sponsored by leaders of UHW that has anti-SEIU propaganda.

It’s hard to imagine a more unconscionable act of sabotage against workers who were courageously standing up for their patients and themselves. Because of the confusion caused by a union putting out anti-union propaganda, the vote had to be called off and more than 8,000 Ohio healthcare workers were denied a chance to improve their lives.

Some California Organizing History

The idea that Rosselli could be connected in any way to the situation in Ohio is puzzling given the history of his local union. That history provides several lessons that Rosselli seems to have forgotten.

1. The road to winning better pay and benefits for workers and better communities depends on uniting many more workers with us.

2. With so many employers now regional, national, or global, it takes the combined strength of workers and their local unions from across the country to get management to respect workers’ rights.

3. With labor law so heavily stacked against workers, the first step in winning the right to form a union usually is to wage a community campaign to get management to agree not to intimidate workers in the process.

In the early 1990s, the only national chain where Southern California hospital workers had a union was Kaiser. Those members had good pay and benefits and thought they could never lose them. But Kaiser looked around, saw it was the only union company in the South, and started pushing wage cuts.

It was then that SEIU local unions and the national union made an historic decision to pool our resources and unite our strength to help workers organize the other big hospital chains in California – because we realized that uniting tens of thousands of other workers to win better lives was the only way to protect the pay and benefits of our existing members.

In this profound strategic shift, SEIU local unions from Ohio Florida, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Maryland, Washington, and Pennsylvania made the decision to send tens of millions of dollars, and top staff and members came from all over the country to help Local 250 (Rosselli’s local union at the time) and Local 399 in southern California to unite nonunion workers at major hospital chains in the state – Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), Tenet, and HCA.

The national union – which pooled the resources of our local unions — could bring resources to bear that no one local union could. At one point the national union had 150 organizers on the ground in Los Angeles.

Through our united action, we won agreements that limited the interference by these big chains in their employees’ right to organize a union. As a result, 26,000 hospital workers gained a union and became members of what is now UHW-W, added to California members’ strength, and helped all SEIU hospital workers to achieve and maintain better standards for pay, benefits, and working conditions.

These organizing wins led directly to dramatic changes in workers lives. In the first contract with CHW hospitals, healthcare workers won raises of 14-28% and full, employer-paid family healthcare. Better yet, the new union benefits became the industry standard: Within months after the CHW contract was ratified, the other large hospital chains began providing family healthcare as well, improving the lives of an additional tens of thousands of families.

By 2004, more than 50% of Southern California hospitals were union. Rosselli was strongly supportive of those efforts and provided resources because he knew that a stronger union presence in southern California would help his members at Local 250 in northern California improve and maintain their pay and benefits.

Rosselli’s local also benefited from another key strategy decision made jointly by SEIU local unions at our national convention in 2000. We all decided that workers could win more for their families and communities if members in the same industry and geographical area were united in the same local instead of being divided into multiple organizations.

Under that strategy, the hospital worker members of Local 399 in southern California voted to merge with their counterparts in Local 250 in the North to form UHW-W.

Between that merger and the California organizing led by the national union and supported by local unions from across the U.S., Rosselli’s local nearly tripled in size between 2000 and 2006– growing from about 50,000 to 140,000 members.

When the newly merged local was formed, it was SEIU President Andy Stern’s responsibility to appoint the local leader until elections were held. Stern appointed Rosselli in 2005 to be the leader of UHW-W, believing that his understanding of how California hospital workers had made gains would lead him to use his local’s strength to unite more workers in nonunion states where his local’s national employers operated.

Withdrawing from Democratic Decisionmaking

But over the last few years, I’ve watched Rosselli slowly withdraw from the democratic decisionmaking process of our union.

He has chosen not to attend a series of meetings of national healthcare leadership bodies when debates were taking place and recommendations were being made by local leaders about how to allocate union resources and unite workers’ strength. He chose to sit out key sessions at the January 2008 International Executive Board meeting, depriving his members of a voice in decisions that directly affect them. And most recently, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU Executive Committee – the committee of elected SEIU leaders that makes national decisions about union strategy. In resigning this post, a move that deprives 140,000 UHW members of representation at the highest levels of SEIU, Rosselli said he could no longer accept decisions made by “simple majorities” of the union’s elected leaders.

Rosselli’s actions reflect a decision on his part to put his own priorities above the lives of his own members and the lives of healthcare workers everywhere.

What Is at Risk

Rosselli through his efforts, is risking the pay and benefits of his own members: The massive resources and time he is putting into his divisive attacks is distracting his local union from focusing on the upcoming contract negotiations of more than 70,000 members – about half his membership.

His efforts risk the ability of nurses and hospital workers in the 33 states where there is no union to unite without interference from their employers. By criticizing the same employer neutrality agreements he once fought for alongside his members, he is giving employers ammunition to use against workers who dream of having what UHW members have.

Through his unwillingness to participate in the democratic process within SEIU, he is forgetting how his local union itself was built and is relegating nonunion workers in California and across the country to permanent second-tier status.

Last year UHW-W helped only 888 California healthcare workers organize, but the number of people working in the healthcare industry overall grew by a much greater number. As a result, healthcare workers in California have less strength this year than last.

As the industry grows and the number of workers who have a union does not, workers’ strength diminishes. The labor movement already has too many union leaders who have adopted the business model of unionism – focusing exclusively on their own members – only to see their failure to grow turn back on them and ultimately decimate the pay and benefits of those members in a constantly changing, globalizing economy.

I urge readers to go to the new SEIU website, SEIUFactChecker.org to learn the truth about SEIU’s record of uniting workers to raise their standards of living and our exciting plans for the coming years to build workers’ power and achieve the goals we all share in the progressive movement.

There is a legitimate, healthy debate to be had in the labor movement about our strategies and our shortcomings, but the lives of workers should always come first. I am afraid Sal Rosselli has lost sight of that.