-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 13, 2007 9:17:19 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Join the Union, Lose Your Legal Rights As a Worker -- A
Case Study in Co-Opting
I've had personal experience with how the SEIU operates. Once when
I was Shop Steward in another union at a high-profile site, I
watched as the SEIU sent in their brownshirted thugs to bully our
workers and eventually, using a dissident faction under a disloyal,
dishonest infiltrator, forcibly elbow the existing union out.
(Andy Stern must think he's the leader of the Stern Gang, because
he's adopted the same tactics.)
The hospital where my wife works was recently "taken over" by the
SEIU, union membership becoming mandatory, and every cent of the
"pay increase" the union won her is consumed in paying union dues.
Union Disunity
The secret deal worked out between
SEIU bosses and nursing home owners
denies union members the right
to speak out, strike, or protect patients
By Matt Smith
SF Weekly, April 11, 2007
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-04-11/news/union-disunity/
SEIU president Andy Stern photographed with civil rights leader
Jesse Jackson.
“With time, my loss of Cassie began to transform the way I
approached life.”
—Andy Stern, Getting America Back on Track: A Country That Works,
Simon & Schuster, 2006
“It is as if he cant help conflating the fate of workers with the
fate of his daughter.”
—Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine, Jan. 30, 2005
“When she died it broke my heart,” he says. “It just gave me the
strength to say, ‘Speak out; dont be afraid.'”
“One brave thing he's done is pursue a partnership with corporate
America.”
—Leslie Stahl, CBS News, May 14, 2006
In the above excerpted narrative, repeated ad nauseam in Service
Employees International Union (SEIU) press materials, union
president Andy Stern emerged from a personal catastrophe
differently than others who face crisis in middle age.
Stern did not turn to sports cars, young girlfriends, adventure
athletics, or otherwise immerse himself in narcissism after his 13-
year-old daughter died from surgery complications, his wife later
divorced him, and he took to dining alone in bars.
Instead, Stern has said in his book and to newspaper and magazine
writers, the 2002 personal tragedy caused him to become something
of a combined Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King, a futuristic
innovator applying his genius to empowering disenfranchised workers
in his 1.8-million-member SEIU, where Stern became president in 1996.
The union left the umbrella of the AFL-CIO in 2005, based on the
idea that the old trades federation was a stodgy, backward-looking
organization not focused enough on growth.
Key to Stern's characterization of himself as a new, different type
of labor leader is his assertion that the SEIU is leaving behind
the old class-struggle-style unionism pitting employees against
bosses. In its place is a modern template where workers and
employers seek to advance interests they hold in common.
"Employees and employers need organizations that solve problems,
not create them," Stern wrote in A Country That Works. "Nursing
home owners and SEIU leaders are formulating a new national labor-
management committee and new state-based relationships to promote
quality and employer economic stability. In California, the
industry and union worked with the legislature on a plan to enhance
quality in nursing homes, stabilize the work force, and provide
more resources for direct patient care."
However, there's another trove of literature describing the recent
history of Stern's SEIU, one that's quite different than the Cassie-
focused genre popular in newsstands and on bookshelves. It's
contained in secret for-top-union-officials-eyes-only contracts,
memos, lobbying agreements, and analysis reports obtained from
various sources by SF Weekly. They illustrate the details of a
sweetheart deal between the SEIU and California nursing home
companies that impair, rather than empower, workers and patients,
while inflating dues-paying union ranks.
These documents suggest Stern's post-Cassie leadership of the SEIU
shares little in common with Martin Luther King, and doesn't
involve much real innovation. Instead, it's merely a re-hash of the
sort of sweetheart company-union labor deals that have marred the
reputation of trade unionism throughout history. It has involved
trading away workers' free-speech rights, selling out their ability
to improve working conditions, and relinquishing their capability
to improve pay and benefits, in order to expand the SEIU's and
Stern's own power.
As testament to how little interest Stern's SEIU has in explaining
to the public, or to union workers, the inner workings of its
modern, employer-friendly style of leadership, 10 requests for
interviews to officials at Stern's Washington headquarters, and to
union officials in Northern and Southern California, went unanswered.
In spite of the official silence, union memos obtained by SF Weekly
also point to a serious rift between Stern and Sal Rosselli,
president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, an Oakland-based
140,000-member local representing workers in California hospitals,
nursing homes, and other health facilities. The fight is over
whether the union should continue its current, Stern-backed
strategy of expanding membership by giving up workers' rights, and
the rights of patients they serve, through "partnerships with
corporate America" such as the nursing home pact mentioned in A
Country That Works.
Or should the union seek to expand the old-fashioned way, through
recruitment, political pressure, picketing and other protests,
lawsuits, alliances with advocacy groups, and pointing out
corporate abuses to the press?
Officials with Sal Rosselli's UHW-West have apparently taken a
strong stand saying corporate-friendly alliances aren't the panacea
Stern makes them out to be.
And documents I've obtained suggest that regardless of the image
crafted by his own brilliant public relations, Stern has tread a
route common among men who've suffered crippling late-life personal
setbacks. He's become ornery in his old age.
Sal Rosselli won't answer questions when I call him on his
cellphone. And judging from the wall of silence I've received from
some other officials in his local, he's apparently instructed the
rest of his staff to do the same.
Notwithstanding, secret SEIU documents I've obtained have made me
come to respect Rosselli's style of union leadership. Leaked SEIU
contracts, memos, and reports, as well as off-the-record interviews
with some union insiders, suggest Rosselli has been engaged in a
showdown with Stern over the rights of unionized health care
workers, and of the patients they care for.
According to a recent report prepared by UHW-West, Stern's brand of
corporate collaboration has done little for the SEIU besides
inflating the membership rolls with workers who've received hardly
any benefit from union membership.
At issue is a 2003 agreement between the SEIU and a group of
California nursing home chains. According to this pact, its terms
would be kept secret, and otherwise "be held in confidence to the
full extent allowed by law." Notwithstanding, I received two copies
of the misleadingly named "Agreement to Advance the Future of
Nursing Home Care in California," from different sources last
month. I have also obtained a copy of a similar agreement recently
negotiated between the SEIU and nursing home chains in Washington
state, which involves similar tradeoffs between the SEIU and
nursing home chains.
The California agreement was set to expire at the end of last year;
the union and the nursing homes are currently negotiating a
possible extension. Whether, or how, the agreement will be extended
may have been thrown in doubt thanks to complaints about the
current agreement coming from Rosselli's UHW-West.
On the SEIU's side of the 2003 bargain, the union agreed to use its
clout with Democratic legislators in Sacramento to accomplish three
goals of interest to nursing home owners:
The SEIU pledged to use its lobbying muscle to pass a 2004 bill
increasing MediCal subsidies to nursing homes by more than $2
billion over four years, according to patient advocates. The bill
passed, creating a windfall for nursing home owners.
The union also agreed to attempt to pass tort reform legislation
that would have limited patients' right to sue in the event they
were neglected, raped, abused, or killed. (The union's tort reform
lobbying efforts were put on hold, however, after a 2004 SF Weekly
story led union members and advocacy groups to complain.)
The SEIU also pledged in the 2003 pact to staunch any efforts by
patient advocates to push for legislation or regulations requiring
nursing homes to provide enough staff to keep patients safe and
healthy, unless the nursing home companies agree to such reforms in
advance. The SEIU will "oppose any long-term-care-specific staffing
and reimbursement legislation or regulation that fails to meet
mutually agreed objectives," the agreement states.
According to lobbyists for nursing home patients, the union has
indeed been successful in repressing efforts by nursing home
advocates to pass legislation that would have tied increases in
state nursing home subsidies to improvements in the quality of care.
In return, the nursing home chain owners agreed to allow the SEIU
to recruit workers into their union. Under ordinary circumstances,
nursing home owners vigorously resist union organizing drives by
occasionally intimidating and firing union-sympathetic workers, and
by attempting to convince them that union membership isn't in their
interest. Under the lobbying agreement, however, the nursing home
chains would refrain from these tactics in a certain number of
facilities if the union helped to pass the 2004 funding bill, and
in more facilities if the union got tort reform legislation passed.
So far, workers in some 42 nursing homes have joined the SEIU in
this way, according to a union report.
This membership gain has allowed the union to publicly characterize
the lobbying deal as a means to improve the quality of care for
nursing home patients, while improving wages, benefits, and working
conditions for people who care for the aged and infirm.
This is the new era of worker-employer collaboration touted in
Stern's book, and in articles that characterize him as a bold
modernizer. Journalists, however, appear to have been so caught up
in Stern's tactic of getting weepy about his deceased daughter
during interviews that they've failed to find out exactly what it
is he's talking about.
If they had, they would have discovered a monumental catch: workers
who joined the union specifically as part of the 2003 agreement
with nursing home chains, an agreement that is supposed to be a
national model for corporate collaboration, get a severely stripped-
down version of union representation. In important ways, the
agreement causes workers to lose rights rather than gain them.
Under the 2003 lobbying pact, all nursing home workers entering the
union under the auspices of the agreement would work under uniform,
employer-friendly labor contracts called "template agreements."
These agreements specify that the union is not allowed to report
health care violations to state regulators, to other public
officials, or to journalists, except in cases where the employees
are required by law to report egregious cases of neglect and abuse
to the state. The agreements also prohibit the unionized workers
from picketing, and negotiating improvements in health care or
other benefits. They prohibit the workers from having a say in
their job conditions.
According to the template contract, employers have the "exclusive
right to manage the business."
This means the owners set pay rates, pay increases, and incentive
plans. They hire, lay off, demote, discipline, and determine
benefits for workers without union input. The employers may
outsource work performed by union members, and speed up, reassign,
or eliminate jobs at will. The employer may eliminate vacations, or
any other time off, as the employer sees fit.
The agreement also guarantees that workers' wages will not put an
employer at an "economic disadvantage," either through employee
pay, benefits, or through staff-per-patient ratios.
To advocates for health care consumers, contract language
guaranteeing the union will refrain from reporting poor nursing
home conditions to state regulators is particularly appalling.
"This is a sector where caregivers are the eyes and the ears and
the witnesses when there is abuse. To tie their hands and to tie
their tongues is to let people die. That's immoral and a terrible
thing for a nursing home worker to have to live with," says Jamie
Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer
Rights, and author of Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals
Your Personal Freedom. "I've never seen a labor union except for
the SEIU enter into a top-down, industry-friendly agreement that
binds the hands of the workers."
The agreement doesn't merely prohibit workers from attempting to
complain about their lot once they've signed a union contract. It
also puts a halt on any traditional unionizing drive in other
nursing homes owned by a chain that is party to the lobbying
agreement — even in cases where workers have expressed interest in
joining the SEIU.
"There's a struggle going on at the SEIU, and the struggle is, what
kind of unionism is being advanced? Are these agreements that lay
the ground for voluntary recognition? Or are they in fact
straightjackets?" said Bill Fletcher, a visiting professor at City
University of New York, who formerly held the SEIU position of
assistant to the president for the East and South.
It's from studying that internal SEIU struggle that I've discovered
new respect for UHW-West under Rosselli's leadership.
That union local recently issued a report analyzing the 2003
lobbying pact from the workers' perspective.
The report, titled "The California Alliance Agreement: Lessons
Learned in Moving Forward," suggests that the agreement resulted in
subsidies that fattened nursing home profits, and handcuffed
workers, while inhibiting the union's chances at ever negotiating
legitimate labor contracts that truly enhanced workers' lives.
"Alliance-based template agreements do not allow workers to empower
themselves," the UHW-West analysis report says. "Is it any wonder
that we have often heard from these workers that 'the boss brought
us the union?'"
The report can be read as a repudiation of Stern's brave new path,
coming out of the biggest health care workers' union local in the
western U.S.
"Clearly this is an internal polemic against the direction coming
out of Washington," Fletcher notes.
Indeed, the UHW-West report comes near calling the 2003 agreement a
sellout.
For one thing, the union might have been able to expand, while
obtaining greater benefits for workers, without any agreement at
all. "Many workers at Alliance nursing homes throughout California
were precluded from organizing," the UHW-West report says.
Those workers who were assimilated into the SEIU through the
lobbying deal were introduced to a paltry version of trade
unionism, the report says.
"If the nature of the labor agreement defined in the current
Alliance templates — which restrict members' rights and ability to
be empowered — is allowed to continue, what effect will this have
on the fundamental nature of a union organization? What ultimately
happens if we give up the right to strike as the means for workers
to level the playing field with employers when needed?" the report
says. "We would argue that it would adversely affect our mission
and goal to advance and defend the interests of our members, and in
fact, may come close to becoming close to what have historically
been called 'company' unions."
According to the "Lessons Learned" report, the UHW surveyed 1,600
members who were under these Alliance template contracts. The
workers' No. 1 complaint: Short staffing at these nursing homes
hampered their ability to provide quality care for patients.
Indeed, short staffing is cited in news stories, in lawsuit
complaints, and by public health advocates as the primary cause
behind cases of neglect where patients develop bedsores, are left
covered in their own feces, or die needlessly of festering
illnesses or injuries.
Ironically, the SEIU's 2003 MediCal subsidy bill was touted as a
way to help nursing homes afford to hire enough caregivers to
adequately provide for patients.
Instead, the Lessons Learned report claims, the nursing home chains
used an inordinate amount of the increased state subsidies to
fatten profits, rather than increase staffing levels.
According to the UHW-West analysis, nursing homes organized under
the agreement received $119 million in added MediCal subsidies
during the '06-07 funding year thanks to the 2005 nursing home
funding bill the SEIU led the effort to pass. But those same
employers will only spend $21 million of that money on personnel in
those facilities.
"Did we sell ourselves short?" the UHW-West study asks, leaving the
answer implicit: absolutely.
In what some view as payback for UHW-West's role in speaking up for
the rights of nursing home workers and patients, the union's
Washington headquarters has moved to strip the local of its ability
to represent nursing home workers.
During a 2006 statewide reorganization of SEIU locals, in which
California union locals merged along industry lines, Stern's
representatives recommended that all the state's nursing home
workers be reassigned to a new bargaining unit run out of Los
Angeles by a Stern ally named Tyrone Freeman.
Freeman is reportedly more amenable than Rosselli to the
"collaborate-with-corporate-America" style of worker organizing
alluded to in A Country That Works. Freeman did not return calls
requesting comment.
"I would be likely to offer up my Southern California buildings
first, because the Southern California union reps are simply more
pleasant, more cooperative, and more pragmatic," said Greg Stapley,
spokesman for California's fifth-largest nursing home chain, the
Ensign Group.
Though Ensign is not currently part of the agreement with the SEIU,
Stapley has been sitting in on negotiation meetings with a thought
to joining.
Indeed, according to a Jan. 13 memo to UHW-West board members from
the local's director for nursing home organizing, Freeman's local
"literally said that the union should have no say on things like
what shifts the workers should work."
This attitude has earned the favor of nursing home owners, the memo
said.
"The operators indicated very strongly that they do not want SEIU
to 'run' their facilities and that their position on any new
agreement meant that the current 'template' contract would remain
intact."
Rosselli's UHW, meanwhile, has said in negotiations that "the
template must go, that workers as health care providers need a
voice and rights on the job," the memo said.
Rosselli has so far struggled to resist efforts by the national
union to dilute his power. A recent Stern memo, however, suggests
the possibility exists that nursing home workers currently
represented by UHW-West could eventually be moved to the Long Term
Care Workers' local run by Freeman.
Stern's "corporate collaboration" rhetoric aside, the facts of the
California Alliance agreement demonstrate that workers and
employers don't have the same interests.
"You can get a condominium of interests that includes the union,
but excludes the union member. He doesn't get self-determination,
doesn't get the full market value that strong collective bargaining
would give him. He doesn't get the right to be a citizen, and be
able to complain about a situation where they aren't treating
clients properly," says Robert Fitch, author of Solidarity for
Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined
America's Promise.
Somehow, though, Stern has managed to get journalists to look past
possible downsides of his new labor paradigm by offering up a
compelling story line, where a labor leader is impelled by the
death of his daughter to become courageous, and to make a real
stamp on the world.
Though American newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and
television stations don't employ labor reporters anymore, they've
got plenty of business writers. And if those journalists know
anything, it's that there's truth in numbers. The union's
membership numbers are up every year — "1.8 million members and
growing" is www.seiu.org's homepage tagline.
Making Stern's ideas even more attractive, the man is constantly
doing things that are just plain newsy. In February he appeared
with the head of Wal-Mart giving lip service to the idea of
universal health care. Before that, he was meeting with leaders of
China's government-controlled national labor union — the one with
the reputation for worker suppression. And in 2004 he was quoted
saying that his union might be better off if George Bush beat John
Kerry. And then there's the intriguing underlying story line: the
anti-intuitive idea that workers and the boss are actually on the
same team. For story-hungry hacks, what's not to like about all that?
Stern "does things that are very provocative. Unless you dig into
it, you say, hey, the guy is full of good ideas," says Fletcher,
the former SEIU organizer who teaches at CUNY. "The fact is,
workers and employers are going to clash. And they have
contradictory interests. Andy obscures that question, and that
helps explain the attraction he has for Fortune, for Business Week. "
Buoyed by a cushion of flattering press, the SEIU and nursing home
owners are now in talks to extend the cynically named "Agreement to
Advance the Future of Nursing Home Care in California."
If the pact is extended as a result of current negotiations, the
SEIU would lobby for a new piece of California legislation adding
hundreds of millions of dollars of enhanced state Medical subsidies
to nursing home companies. In return, the SEIU would be allowed to
gain members in additional nursing homes, according to a version of
the agreement currently under discussion.
However, a Bay Area union local that's party to those negotiations
has pointed out that the reality behind SEIU's policy of joining
hands with corporate America is far worse than the hype.
I urge UHW-West leader Sal Rosselli, along with any other SEIU
members with a conscience, to work toward the next logical step.
It's time to scuttle this pact before it causes the waste of more
tax dollars, diminishes the rights of more workers, and helps
endanger the lives of more elderly and disabled nursing home patients.
Somehow, I believe Cassie might have wanted it that way.
To read the report from the United Healthcare Workers West on the
agreement between nursing home owners and the SEIU, click here.
See what's free at AOL.com.
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