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. When Andy Stern trusteed the local and removed Rosselli and all his supporters from local office, they founded NUHW as an independent union now engaged in drawn-out contests before the National Labor Board and state bodies to supplant the SEIU as bargaining agent.

The story is all here, persuasively presented: How Stern signed a questionable deal with a major hospital chain. How he moved to crush Rosselli and his supporters after they denounced the deal as bordering on "company unionism." How Stern trusteed the local only to meet massive resistance from the local leadership. How a broad segment of local and national intellectuals, public representatives, and labor leaders criticized Stern, publicly and vigorously.

Most enlightening is his account of how Rosselli's supporters could succeed in sustaining their new union and mounting a serious challenge to Stern's SEIU. Stern was armed with the huge SEIU national treasury, beefed up by the local treasury he had seized. Deprived of paid office, the NUHW rebels had no more guaranteed paychecks, no money of their own. But they would not walk away. They worked as volunteers and depended on handouts from sympathizers. But their morale was sustained because they were greeted with enthusiasm by the members they once represented. Winslow writes that their determination to fight hard and hold on flowed from their deep conviction that this union belonged to them; they come out of a union local whose strength was based upon an active, elective steward system; this spirit, infuses the new union.

Success for the new NUHW will surely encourage partisans of union democracy. But our author hopes for more. "Is the NUHW rebellion the harbinger of a new unionism?" he asks, "We hope so although nothing is guaranteed." Two pages of rhetorical upbeat show that he is not only hopeful, but optimistic. Readers will hope he is right.

(One useful appendix reprints the full text of the letter signed by 101 academics, writers, and civil libertarians protesting against Stern's plan to trustee Rosselli's local. For copies of the book: www.pmpress.org)