The split isn’t trying to deride growth. Since 2000, UHW has been the fastest growing local in SEIU. Their members have absolutely embraced this vision because they understand that if an industry is constantly competing with the non-union competition, union members can only go so far, but if workers aren’t being organized to raise industry standards, this logic fails. Members’ dues pay for organizing, which is the best use of their dues for the above, but if Union leaders fail to raise those workers’ standards they have violated that covenant.
Some interesting questions to ponder:
Is it fair to organize workers if they never achieve the basic benefits of a collective bargaining agreement?
Is it fair to organize workers if they have a 20 year ban on being able to strike (effectively extinguishing any hope of achieving a cba)?
Is it fair to organize workers by agreeing to gag orders on patient care violations of the employers?
Unfortunately, the answer of SEIU’s top leadership has been yes.
The middle class in this country was created by the concept of the industrial union, culminating with John L. Lewis’s famous punch on the AFL convention floor. Our country wasn’t organized by accommodation, it was organized by principled leaders leading workers to exercise their collective power. It wasn’t done by dialing 800 numbers, it was done by organizing.
There are no shortcuts in organizing, i.e. building collective power to achieve goals. The means truly are the ends. Without worker involvement and militancy, unions become just another advocacy group. This won’t change society.

Republicans did not change the labor law–they re-interpreted it. That is a big difference. The push to change the way unions are recognized would be a significant change in the law.

Andy Stern is charismatic and convinced that he is right. The issue for the reformers, that Stern dismisses, is union democracy. Unions are unique organizations. Unlike corporations, they are democratic bodies controlled by the membership. Stern and his cronies insist that union democracy interferes with their ‘big picture’. If a local disagrees with Stern’s plans, he simply takes the local over and installs his loyalists.

His tactics to increase union density is not to physically organize new workers, but to get employers to sign “trigger contracts”. In other words, an SEIU organizer approaches an employer and says “We will not organize you if you sign this agreement that says, once we do organize other employers in the same category (i.e. nursing homes) then you agree to let your employees join and follow the contract. Where do workers have a say in joining?–maybe the workers have another union in mind.

Another appalling plan is to remove grievance reps from shop floors and force workers to talk to call centers. Workers are entitled to representation when an employer calls them into a meeting to issue a disciplinary action. Call centers take this right away.

Lastly, where is the disclaimer that says watertiger is at the convention on SEIU expense account?

As to the general issue, I think that Democrats and the Union Movement can get a lot of mileage out of the concept of ’stakeholder.’ What’s happened since Milton Friedman pushed his notion that the only business of corporations is to make money for shareholders is that every other stakeholder, communities, workers, all of whom put something into a company’s success were edged out and treated like any other disposable input. Correctly articulated and framed, the notion that we are stakeholders in our community could become a dynamite theme in the hands of someone as gifted as Obama.

Good Morning, all.

FDL done gone but is come back agin …

Maybe?

So?

Is da problem squirrels, gremlins or complexity its ownself?

Do we need techies, animal whisperers or faith healers?

Anyhoo, glad to see this site back, hope the misfire goes away.

In my day, ’twas either no spark or no gas, now; I just waits fer the folks wid the magik wands … and wonder.

Somewhere, out ‘there’, are all those lost and lonely comments that slipped, victims of da space-time continuum, … into da void, nevah agin to be hoid or beheld by da humanoid.

Who is anoid?

Is you anoid?

Nah! No one here is anoid, jus’ occassionally dis-grunt-ellated … a-dults.

Shore am glad you-all is back, it’s good, very good, to have friends who care ’bout the same kinds of things.

jayt – saw your note at the treehouse last night about your boy – will include your family in my prayers for all military families and pray they really meant the 12 months of technical training thing – as I believe no one is getting deployed after January