union convention

UDR Story

• New national union aims to unite nurses

  Delegates from three major unions of registered nurses, meeting in Phoenix on December 7, merged their forces into a new national organization, the National Nurses United. The three founding affiliates --- the California Nurses Association, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the United American Nurses --- report a combined membership of 150,000. To thunderous applause from some 150 delegates, one of the three elected co-presidents proclaimed that this creation of the "largest union of direct care nurses is about a century overdue."

• SEIU raw power is replacing falling moral authority

  How things have changed for Andy Stern in five years!

• A formidable force for reform in the ILA

  The International Longshoremen's Association is definitely evolving, but into what? This is one of the four unions that, over the years, had been cited in government investigatory reports as most heavily infiltrated by organized crime: the scene of payoffs and murder so graphically portrayed in On the Waterfront. It is still the object of a stalled federal RICO suit. But things are happening that could never have happened before.

• Reflections on the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico

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  At the June convention of the Service Employees International Union, climaxing President Andy Stern's twelve years in office, a big majority of the 1,900 convention delegates endorsed his program and endowed him with increased power amounting to presidential authoritarianism couched in democratic verbiage.

• Opposition wins most delegates from big SEIU local

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  More than ten years ago, Cathy Hackett and Jim Hard were elected the top leaders of SEIU Local 1000. One of the early supporters of their democratic reform movement was Alex Hernandez. Since then, relations have changed drastically. In elections for the local's 61 delegates to the SEIU convention, an opposition group, led by Hernandez, contested 49 slots and won 33, a clear majority. In a surprising upset, Donna Snodgrass, an insurgent leader, came in second and Hernandez eighth, edging out Hackett and Hard who came in twelfth and seventeenth.

• IBEW local fights employers' "right to reject"

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• Teamster Convention reveals fatal flaw in election rules

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• Last year's scandal hangs over next Plumbers convention

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• Battling corruption in the ILA: a partial chronology

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  The federal government's RICO suit against the ILA comes after a long history of corruption on the East Coast waterfront and of resistance to it. What follows is a partial summary of that record. Some of the facts are based upon the text of the government's complaint.

  1940: Body of Peter Panto, murdered insurgent leader, found in New Jersey lime pit.

  1942: Joe Ryan elected lifetime ILA president

  1945-48: As the war ends, a series of rank and file "wildcat" strikes on NY-NJ waterfront reveal deep discontent among ILA members.

• Action in the Operating Engineers: reformers campaign in Locals 18 and 66

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  In Ohio Operating Engineers Local 18