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United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW-W)

Book Review

  • Labor’s “civil wars” ending inconclusively

    The “civil war” that Steve Early mentions in his new book is not about the class war between labor and capital, nor any war between a conservative right and a radical left in unions. It is the war that split labor’s progressive left (however you define it), a conflict that was triggered by the swift celebrity rise of Andy Stern as the new labor leader, touted, for a time, as the champion of a newly invigorated and enlightened union movement.

  • 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.

UDR Story

  • 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.

  • SEIU raw power is replacing falling moral authority

    How things have changed for Andy Stern in five years!

  • On the eve of the SEIU convention.

    For over a year, the line pursued by Andy Stern, SEIU president and supported with near unanimity by the union's top leadership, has come under attack by Sal Rosselli, president of the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW-W). The dispute, openly or by implication, will dominate the union's quadrennial convention which begins in Puerto Rico on June 1.

  • Nurses now for sale, barter and trade

    By combining into a new 150,000-member national union affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the California Nurses Association, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association seemed to have taken a giant step toward creating the kind of united force so many nurse unionists are hoping for. Meanwhile, the move has triggered a swift and dizzying realignment among the many unions that aspire to represent registered nurses. Most notable and unexpected is the sudden love affair between top officials of the Service Employees and the California Nurses Association. From bitter competition over who shall represent nurses, they have shifted to an amicable agreement over dividing up the territory.

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