Instead of debating the issues in a way that will benefit all workers, the leaders of SEIU and CNA have launched a divisive turf war. If the war is not stopped, one or both unions will be destroyed, and only management will win. Taking sides keeps the war going. Stopping it requires a different strategy.

Steve Early opens his CounterPunch article by calling SEIU protestors a “rowdy, punch-throwing, rent-a-mob.” Such inflammatory language fuels the war by inviting contempt for SEIU and sympathy for CNA.

I was inside (and later outside) the Labor Notes banquet hall when SEIU members tried to break through the doors, and such tactics must be condemned. However, this was no “rent-a-mob.” Most were ordinary union members, including families with small children, most looking poor and many of them Black. I have no doubt that they boarded those busses to defend their union. If they knew they were going to be in a fight, they would have left the kids at home. One of them died, and another union militant was injured.

Let’s be clear. This tragedy was created by the leaders of SEIU and CNA, who are pitting their members against one another. Who could possibly benefit from such tactics?

Union turf wars involve more than principle. For salaried union bureaucrats, more members means more money and more power. We have seen too often how the concerns of workers (internal democracy, the ability to defend grievances and win concessions from management) are manipulated by union bureaucrats to serve their own interests.

I attended three meetings at the conference, where activists from SEIU and CNA aired their grievances against one another. I concluded that both sides have legitimate concerns. At the end of his article, Early acknowledges the same. He quotes, “Many participants, who can fairly be described as members of the labor left and generally suspicious of top union leaders, were actually very sympathetic to the SEIU’s grievance against CNA surrounding the events in Ohio.” Early then returns to his condemnation of SEIU, making no distinction between the actions of the leadership and the rank-and-file, and subordinating the concerns of workers on both sides.

We can stop this war only by recognizing the real class division that exists inside the union movement. To move forward, we must build on-the-ground unity between workers in both unions, based on common workplace concerns.

This is the link to Steve Early’s article. Seems to have been broken from what I just posted. If it doesn’t work, you can look it up on counterpunch.org for April 15; it’s work the effort if you’re interested in this topic.

This is the link to Steve Early’s article. Seems to have been broken from what I just posted. If it doesn’t work, you can look it up on counterpunch.org for April 15; it’s work the effort if you’re interested in this topic.

Industrial-based unions have more power to fight management than craft-based unions. However, as I stated, “In practice, workers organize as best they can in the particular circumstances they face. ”

I oppose labor-management collaboration, because it favors management. However, in real life, every union contract is a form of labor-management collaboration. Where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable degrees of collaboration isn’t always clear.

My point is that rank-and-file workers in any particular workplace must decide how they organize, as they are the ones who have to live with the consequences.

Right or wrong, and regardless of their intentions, no union official has the right to IMPOSE labor solutions on rank and file workers without their consent. That is just as true for CNA as it is for SEIU.

A blanket statement that “wall to wall unions are more effective” is rather simplistic. You must understand the underlying philosophies that are the basis for this “war”.

CNA has a long history and reputation for militance against employers, long oppoising labor-management partnerships that Andy Stern/SEIU and many others in the labor movement have embraced.

In that context, to say that a wall to wall “partnership” union is more effective at representing employees is a disservice to RNs (and workers in general) who organize with a clear understanding that employers will stab us in the back any chance they get.

“Partnerships” breed complacency and an organizational startegy of preserving the status-quo as opposed to pushing the envelope. If I’m in a union, I want it to be a union that fights with the employer and is not a subsidiary of it.

Workers need unions. Only by banding together can workers counter the relentless assaults of big business.

Unionized workers are more likely to have medical coverage, pension benefits, and protection from sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal. Unions raise living standards. Areas with more unions offer higher wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, better education, and less poverty.

American unions were so strong in the 1930s that Washington helped employers to crush them. By 2005, the percentage of private-sector workers in unions had dropped to less than eight percent, the lowest rate in more than a century. Most of the remaining unions have been transformed from fighting organizations controlled by workers to bureaucratic organizations dominated by middle-class professionals.

Today’s unions are cross-class organizations, that is, they are working-class organizations of self-defense and part of the management system of capitalism. While most ordinary union members are working-class (the rank and file), most union officials are middle-class professionals who help employers to manage the workforce.

Current battles to democratize the unions are extremely important and must be fully supported. They are our only hope for reversing the grotesque inequalities that dominate America.

Workers ARE the union. To build strong unions we must take collective control of them. Moreover workers in all unions must come together, as a class, to fight for all workers’ rights.