SEIU Claims Fresno Victory: Now What?

by Randy Shaw via Beyond Chron

Mon, Jun 15, 2009 7:51AM

Monday, June 15, 2009 : When SEIU announced on June 5 that the Fresno home care worker election was “virtually over” and that it had prevailed, skepticism abounded. After all, balloting continued through for another ten days, hard data from the field was lacking, and the rival National Union of Health Workers (NUHW) was getting good reports back from its efforts. But there is growing evidence that SEIU has become the likely winner. And if SEIU does prevail, the question is whether SEIU will use this victory to help unify – rather than further divide – the labor movement.

SEIU’s battle to keep 10,000 Fresno, California health care workers from joining rival NUHW has resembled a heavyweight championship fight. Activists and journalists from across the nation have flocked to the Central Valley city, with many seeing the election as a contest between competing visions for the labor movement. In one corner we have the scrappy challenger NUHW, which touts its commitment to worker power and union democracy. In the other we have SEIU, the nation’s largest union, whose reputation for feisty grassroots activism and history of organizing low-wage workers has given way to a perception that it is willing to gain members through weak deals with employers, rather than winning strong contracts through pressure campaigns.

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§If SEIU wins there first move is to divide UHW...

by chuck mcnally

Mon, Jun 15, 2009 12:31PM

This is a good article, but I still have my doubts about whether SEIU was able to fool and threaten enough homecare workers into voting for them.

If they did win this election there should be challenges made to it legally because the campaign that SEIU ran violated as much rules as a typical boss campaign(only SEIU actually documented a bunch of the violations).

However, it is common knowledge that if SEIU is able to pull off this hostile takeover their first move is to begin to divide the homecare workers from UHW and send them to local 6434(the infamously corrupt statewide longterm care worker union),

So even with all the other UNITE HERE stuff on the horizon, we know that Andy Stern and Co.'s first order of business is to further divide the labor movement. If they can divide UHW like this, while all the time telling Fresno county homecare workers to stay united in UHW... Well then I guess anything is possible. Maybe Andy Stern will try to buy the president off next...Oops, already happened...

Anyway, we are all in for a long drawn out fight unfortunately. Though you would think that Andy and SEIU would catch on to the fact that they are not only ruining SEIU, but also making all the bosses happy by continuing this anti-union campaign. Maybe Andy should just come clean and join the ranks of all the anti-union consultants there, he has proven that he is good at it, and companies love SEIU's recent deals with Kaiser and other former UHW contracts. At least Andy could be a little more honest, and then SEIU could be officially renamed - Serving Employers Instead of Us...

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