Remember Andy Stern?

Former President of the SEIU and bad boy poster child (and pinata) of the anti union crowd, now works for Big Pharma. He's profiled in this piece at BeyondChron, which portrays him as a big fan of China's explosive state driven growth there, a blamer who notes the time of free markets is over, and by implication a tacit supporter of repressive working conditions. Go figure.

Shaw v SEIU

Randy Shaw takes on the SEIU and its strategy of non-workplace organizing.

Updating representation

Here is a good piece from a pro-labor perspective on unions taking different approaches to address declining membership and clout.

18,290-11,364

As always Randy Shaw has an informative piece on the NUHW loss to SEIU in the Kaiser election.

Peace declared

The war between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its one time close ally UNITE HERE has been settled. Randy Shaw explains all here. While the terms of the settlement are heavily in favor of UNITE HERE ( SEIU returns $75 Million dollars and an $85 Million Dollar office building) the accord is a big win for new SEIU President Mary K. Henry, and overall a boost to labor.

Labor nets 3 top lobyists

The Hill identifies 2010's top lobbyists. Of the list of 32, only three are connected to labor unions. (Henry-SEIU, Loveless-AFSCME and Trumka-AFL-CIO).

Payback!

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed Executive Orders permitting independent home health providers and self-employed child care workers to unionize, the SEIU and AFSCME benefited with thousands of new dues paying members. Strickland has directly benefited from the labor organizations political contributions.

NUHW bests SEIU, employer

NUHW has again bested SEIU and the employer with an impressive representation election victory (393-122). Randy Shaw's BeyondChron article has the details. The SEIU blamed management intimidation for its withdrawal from a 3 way election. Not only did NUHW win a lopsided victory, it was able to point to the fact it overcame the very employer hostility SEIU ran away from.

Workers win!

On the surface this article describes the joy and payout received by strikers ten years after the company unlawfully refused to return them to work. In reality the real story is these employees endured a job loss 10 years ago, and waited this long through uncertainty and 6 appeals to get what they would have earned, plus a little interest. The SEIU Blog attempts a little better spin on it, but that's still a long time to wait for a victory and some backpay.

Walkin' in New Orleans

Yesterday was another gorgeous spring day, and late in the afternoon my daughter and I walked through the Tulane campus, and as the glory of spring was overcoming me, I heard in the distance a speaker demanding economic justice and the right to organize. Seems Sodexo workers at Tulane and Loyola need street demonstrations to pump support for their agenda. While I could only hear bits of the appeal as I walked, CLEAN UP SODEXO has a post about it. The part where the guy making $8.12 an hour says he's had only a 24¢ and 12¢ raise in five years seems a little odd. In 2005, the minimum wage was $5.15/hr. I guess the real dollars received as a result of the minimum wage rising to its current level ($7.25) are not real raises. Thats not to say that $8.12 an hour is a living wage, but my bet is that the complaining worker has seen a lot more than 36¢ in raises in the last five years.

Dead EFCA

Jane Hampsher at Firedoglake has a good post on the politics of EFCA, starring Harry, Arlen and Rahm.

SEIU v. NUHW

A federal court jury has ruled in favor of the SEIU and against 16 former officials who bolted from the SEIU and formed the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). The verdict awards a money judgment totaling almost $1.6 million dollars. Randy Shaw has a good analysis at BeyondChron.

Local 100

SEIU Local 100 is no more. Local 100 is now an independent entity and has reverted to its old name United Labor Unions Local 100.

HCR timeline

The SEIU Blog has a timeline for when provisions of HCR take effect.

J'accuse

Sometimes hypocrisy smacks down the hypocrite. By flaming a "pile on" the SEIU mentality, this blogger cannot see she is engaging in the very shameless exploitation that she claims the SEIU is doing. So the SEIU posts about food safety at the Olympics. Possibly a legitimate concern, perhaps not, but certainly a legitimate topic for discussion. The shameless blogger then takes after the SEIU for posting about food safety, in the wake of the tragedy involving the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. It is not the SEIU that exploited this tragedy, nothing in the SEIU post relates to the luge event or safety surrounding the event. It is the shameless blogger who invoked the tragedy as a platform for criticizing the SEIU for raising food safety concerns. Its pretty clear that the safety concerns about the luge track are completely unrelated to labor/management relations.  I'm no fan of the SEIU, or its tactics but this is the football equivalent of hitting a player out of bounds then engaging in excessive celebration over the cheap shot hit.

Survey says: EFCA is not popular

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce has released a new survey which purports to reflect the public's views on card check and unions. I'm sure the smart people on both sides will find things to disagree about in the survey's findings. It has been picked up to show overwhelming public opposition. The SEIU's blog attacks both the poll and the pollster. To me there are two very interesting points. First, overall support for organized labor has dropped dramatically since 2008. Second, a whopping 70% of those surveyed had heard *nothing* about EFCA.

NUHW whups SEIU 6-1

The kaiser vote favors NUHW. Updated: More details at BeyondChron.

SEIU v. NUHW

Tuesday is vote count day in the showdown between SEIU and NUHW at Kaiser.

EFCA- 2010 or never

UPDATE: Trumka calls for spring passage of EFCA. Inevitable loss of the Democrats' 60 seat senate majority makes 2010 a "do or die" year for EFCA. AFL-CIO legislative director Bill Samuel puts forth a pragmatic assessment in this Workday Minnesota piece. Samuel admits the votes were not there in 2009 - Kennedy, Byrd Franken, issues meant no 60 votes. Thats not news, but Samuel's acknowledgment that any bill that passes will be a compromised one is. It signals labor's willingness to address reality. Card check is dead. Has been for some time. Opponents of the bill need to delay a vote on the issue until the public sees past the secret ballot non-issue. As it stands now, largely because opponents of the bill continue to rail against card check and for secret ballots elections, the opportunity exists for labor to seek quick passage of a watered down bill which preserves some form of secret ballot election. Its an opportunity with a closing window, but still an opportunity.

SEIU President Andy Stern gets this. He's already pushing for a spring vote as evidenced in this Financial Times piece. (free registration). The FT piece also evidences the beating of the card check dead horse.

SEIU oopsie

Another Randy Shaw piece in Beyond Chron skewers the SEIU and its strategy for attacking UNITE HERE.