As a direct care RN, and member of the California Nurses Association, I am proud of the fact that our union is both a professional association and a labor organization. SEIU International under Andy Stern has embarked on a disturbing path of corporate unionism — business partnerships with employers that undermine public protections and a voice for workers.
Concurrently, SEIU International has taken steps to silence dissent within SEIU, and engaged in physical aggression and threats against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee for criticizing SEIU’s direction. In contrast, CNA/NNOC is committed to building a powerful national movement of direct care registered nurses that protects the ability of RNs to advocate for patients and work together to improve patient care conditions, standards for all RNs, and achieve genuine healthcare reform through a single-payer, Medicare for all system.
The NATION has just posted a powerful article detailing the reasons why we believe The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is the best union to represent the interests of Registered Nurses.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/2…
According to our Executive Director, Rose Ann DeMoro, “We are a genuine social union. We believe the interests of our members and the public interest are identical. Nurses have a legal obligation to advocate for their patients; they have an intimate relationship to their patients; they function outside of the profit motive.”
“SEIU’s Joe Hill-style talk of One Big Healthcare Union is appealing, she says–if that vision were in other hands. “If we had the luxury to create the perfect union, there’d be one big healthcare union intent on protecting and upscaling each job,” she says. “But the healthcare system is collapsing. Nurses have to fight to save their own occupation, which healthcare corporations would deskill in a minute. And Stern advocates a model of letting the employer define the work and organizing the workers as the employer defines them. That’s deadly for RNs, and deadly for patient care.”
Under a backroom deal with Catholic Healthcare Partners in February, 2008, the employer, not the workers or union, filed for elections to impose SEIU as the union in eight Ohio hospitals without providing a single signed union card. SEIU agreed to not try to influence the election. Employees were specifically forbidden from talking about the union or the election. This model eliminates the role of workers in organizing a union, or building the power of the union in the workplace through collective action.