In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here’s what you didn’t hear from Andy Stern’s paid PR blitz. SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers’ Union, responding to SEIU’s raid of the island’s largest union– during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.
Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement, Stern successfully squashed the internal dissent by SEIU’s democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself. The CEO model.
And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers…which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?
There’s more! SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain’s frame of attacking “government-run healthcare” as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO). If anyone doubted SEIU’s willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, there it is.
Details below…
Juan Gonzalez and Democracy Now note that SEIU is trying to colonize the independent Puerto Rican teachers’ union in the midst of a historic strike-and hope to do the same to other Latin American unions. Solidardad no mas? Read the background here or watch the video here about why SEIU was facing a protest encampment by Puerto Rican teachers . Gonzalez:
I think that the key thing here is that the teachers’ union is the largest and most militant union in Puerto Rico and has always been, and the efforts of SEIU earlier this year when the teachers were in the middle of a major battle and a strike with the government to step in, in essence, and to try to take over or raid the leadership of the union, has created enormous reverberations throughout the labor movement in the United States, as well as in Latin America. I think, in fact, one of the most interesting things was that Stern and Dennis Rivera announced before the convention started that they are going to begin a new effort from Puerto Rico throughout Latin America to build ties between the SEIU to build global unions. So, in essence, what SEIU is trying to do by gaining control of the teachers’ union and, in effect, the Puerto Rican labor movement is to then branch out into the rest of Latin America. Now, they insist that they’re not going to do it in a way that will hurt the autonomy or the democracy of those unions, but the record has so far-has not been too good in that way. …. But the fact that SEIU would have such a demonstration at its national convention shows that the contradictions are growing there.
Gonzalez also notes the irony of SEIU pretending to carry the banner of labor reform, while consolidating power in one problematic leader.
And the reality is that SEIU has increasingly become a more centralized union in the way it operates, and it is increasingly, in terms of some critics, doing anything it can to grow, in terms of making arrangements or deals with political leaders to be able to expand membership in different parts of the country. So I think that this is an important or watershed moment, because the SEIU is leading the supposed reform movement within organized labor, when now the leaders of the reform movement are being challenged over the nature of their reform. And I think that this is the opening salvo in what’s going to continue to be an ongoing battle.
Labor journalist Steve Early also covers the contradiction of Andy Stern holding a convention in Puerto Rico-exactly while trying to bust the Island’s largest and most-beloved union!
Using the “mobile picketing” skills well honed during a ten-day strike by thousands of teachers in February, the FMPR delegation marched right up to a police check-point–two hundred yards from the meeting hall-and burst right through. The flying wedge took several casualties along the way, from flailing police clubs and attempted collars. They then made a successful dash for the front door of the building, which is bigger than an airline terminal.
The ensuing picket-line-composed of fleet-footed survivors of the race to get in-had a feisty David vs. Goliath feel to it. For more than two hours, the teachers walked, chanted, sang union songs, distributed leaflets, and displayed a big FMPR banner under the soaring arches of the! convention center entrance. The FMPR message was “Stop Union Raids” — one that SEIU has fervently embraced back home but only when the California Nurses Association is “raiding” SEIU, in which case it should stop immediately….
Apparently the reform and democracy activists within SEIU were squashed by Andy Stern. One reports:
While obviously they wanted to go out on a high note, this convention will always have a cloud hanging over it, memorable for its unparalleled security, its level of doublespeak, its stomping on free speech, and now its marred election process.
Meanwhile, SEIU actually told the New York Times that they are doing away with labor reps, the people who walk the halls of facilities and organize workers. Instead? Call centers. “Please hold if you want to stand up to the boss.” This is an extraordinary development, and one that undermines genuine worker power.
As 2,000 convention delegates gather in Puerto Rico, the Service Employees International Union is about to jettison a time-honored union tradition – having members go to their union representatives with their questions and grievances. The delegates are expected to vote to have union members rely on call centers instead to handle their problems.
But some union leaders and members complain that the call centers would hurt the union and its members. Sometimes you can’t get through to these centers,” said Eva Lozada, a home-care worker from Oakland, Calif. “It’s like talking to an A.T.M. This will be bad for the union.”
Hilariously, SEIU’s latest attack on the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is the same one John McCain launches at Barack Obama: supporting “government-run healthcare”.
In a mailing to CNA/NNOC members this week, SEIU blasts CNA/NNOC for supporting a “government-run health care system.” McCain has used almost identical language to disparage Obama’s proposals for healthcare reform on an issue that will be a major focus of the fall campaign.
“By carelessly and cynically adopting the McCain language, SEIU is not only showing its contempt for the majority of Americans who have told pollsters that the government should guarantee healthcare for everyone as a solution to the healthcare crisis that has put so many of our families at risk.
“They are also giving aid, comfort, and ammunition to Sen. McCain whose own healthcare plan would be a disastrous continuation of the dismal and failed status quo,” said CNA/NNOC co-president Malinda Markowitz, RN….
To obtain sweetheart deals with employers, SEIU has “routinely sacrificed patients,” CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro noted. She cited, for example, an agreement with California nursing home operators under which SEIU agreed to back legislation impeding patients’ rights to sue over nursing home abuses and oppose reforms to require better staffing for patient safety. SEIU also joined with the New York hospital industry to endorse the closure of hospitals and nursing homes.
Another independent nurses union-New York Professional Nurses Union-calls on all RNs to resist SEIU, due to their terrible track record of representing RN issues. They write in an open letter about their experiences with SEIU:
1199/SEIU has a top-down leadership structure with very few RNs in top leadership positions.
We negotiated strong contract language only after we left 1199, including minimum nurse/patient ratios and a prohibition against all mandatory overtime.
We became an independent union in order to gain control over our own bargaining and our own professional lives. No union can represent the interest of registered professional nurses better than a nurses union. Nurses need a union of nurse, by nurses and for nurses.
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