[Marxism] SEIU and Califonria Nurses: Interesting move, any comments?

[Anthony Boynton <anthony.boynton@xxxxxxxxx>]

I thought the article below from the NYFT was pretty interesting. Any
comments from people who know what's really going on? Anthony


Two Unions, Once Bitter Rivals, Will Now Work Together

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: March 19, 2009



Two of the nation’s fastest-growing labor unions — the Service Employees
International Union and the California Nurses Association — ended a bitter
yearlong dispute on Wednesday by agreeing to work together to unionize
hospital workers and push for universal health coverage.



For the last year, the two unions have viciously denounced each other, with
the service employees accusing the nurses of sabotaging efforts to organize
8,300 hospital workers in Ohio, and the nurses’ union accusing S.E.I.U.
officials of stalking and harassing its leaders.



“We have buried the hatchet,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, president of the
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.



Andrew Stern, the service employees’ president, said that at a moment when
there is an unusual opportunity to push for a better health care system and
a law that would make it easier to unionize workers, “we believe that our
unions, together, can do far more in terms of accomplishing these goals than
either of us can do on our own.”



For years there have been tensions between the two unions, which have
competed to unionize registered nurses. The 1.8-million-member service
employees’ union represents 80,000 nurses, while the California association
represents 85,000 nurses. But the California association will soon become
the largest nurses’ union in American history, with 150,000 members, when it
merges with United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Union.



As part of their agreement, the service employees and the California nurses
say they will seek to unionize many hospitals around the country,
concentrating on the nation’s largest hospital systems. Nurses from those
hospitals would generally join the nurses’ union while the other employees
would join the S.E.I.U. In Florida the two will create a joint union of
registered nurses.



“We spent a lot of time watching each other and at times competing with each
other, and now we think it’s the right time to work together,” Mr. Stern
said.



Their agreement calls for coordination in contract talks and in urging
legislation to make it easier to unionize, and for measures that allow
states to adopt single-payer health care systems. The two unions also agreed
to refrain from efforts to displace each other at various workplaces.



Last March, the California nurses, asserting that the S.E.I.U. had
negotiated a sweetheart deal, sent dozens of organizers to Ohio to block the
service employees’ effort to unionize at nine Roman Catholic hospitals
there. That caused the service employees to suspend that effort.



Several weeks later, several busloads of service employee members crashed a
conference in Michigan where they confronted leaders and members of the
California Nurses Association.



Just two months ago, Ms. DeMoro called the service employees “the new poster
child for bad union behavior” and said that, compared with the corrupt
Teamsters of old, the “S.E.I.U. makes them look like choirboys.”



Ms. DeMoro said her comments had been made in the heat of battle. She said
her union would work with the nurses from the service employees with a goal
of creating a single, nationwide union for registered nurses.



“We have a moment to seize,” she said. “We have to show hospitals that
health care reform is the right thing to do.”
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