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Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

UDR Story

  • Shorts: Kaiser vote, L.A. Operating Engineers, Respect Our Crafts, A Budget Workers Union?, Dolores Paskal, NY State Nurses
  • Florida Carpenters decry total disregard for democracy



  • “Fear & intimidation carry the day for SEIU” - A Letter

    I read the article in Union Democracy Review on the recent SEIU vs. NUHW election at Kaiser in California (Sept/Oct. 2010). First, I appreciate very much the long and consistent support you've given to rank-and-file workers and union democracy for decades, including your on-going coverage of the struggle within and outside SEIU. Your work has helped the movement for union democracy advance, and that is vitally important in building the kind of trade union movement that we need to deal with the problems facing working people.

  • SEIU holds on at NLRB. Autocracy tops Democracy.

    In an NLRB election in October, 43,500 Kaiser healthcare workers in California got what had been denied to them in the Service Employees International Union, the right to choose which set of officers should run their local union.

  • Just in time. Andy Stern retires from SEIU

    Andy Stern's retirement as SEIU president took everyone by surprise. He is only 59 and voluntarily stepped out at the height of his power inside the union. Why? It was a rare initiative among top leaders who usually try to hold on until they are tottering on canes. If he said that he yearned to spend more time with his loving family, who would believe him? But he explained that he always felt that leaders should quit early to make room for the younger generation. Believable, even admirable --- except for one element that may not ring quite true:

  • In California, tide turns toward union democracy

    Andy Stern must have been intoxicated with the sense of power when the 2008 Service Employees International Union convention so easily ratified his plans to reorganize the union into huge locals led by officers of his own choice and concentrate sweeping authority into his presidential hands. The long range promise was to change the labor movement, change America, and change the world.

  • Melancholy reflections on the SEIU

    Months before it was denounced by John Wilhelm as a dangerous threat, and Andy Stern became persona non grata inside the AFL-CIO, the SEIU was losing esteem in the progressive public outside the labor movement. Beginning in 2008 when he first threatened to destroy Sal Rosselli by taking over the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers local, Stern faced a mounting torrent of protest from the pro-union, civil liberties, academic community in California and around the country. First came a concerned letter from a hundred writers and educators imploring him to back off.

  • 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."

$100 Plus Story

  • Are UBC locals really labor organizations?



Book Review

  • Labor’s Civil War in California, the NUHW healthcare workers rebellion

    Cal Winslow, author of this 121-page booklet, is identified as a PhD historian trained at Warwick University; but as he makes clear, "This is not an academic exercise." It is an extended brief on behalf of Sal Rosselli's new National Union of Healthcare Workers in its battle with the Service Employees International Union over which union shall represent some 150,000 healthcare workers in California. These are the unionists who were represented by United Healthcare Workers-West, the SEIU local headed by Rosselli.

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