SEIU Trouble coming to Indiana?]

For your information in case you aren't already aware. However, of course, this doesn't impact in any way the absolute need to defeat Mitch Daniels. However, it does speak to struggles and tactics in SEIU that are good to understand.

SEIU Trouble coming to Indiana?]

The problem with the Service Employees International Union 'SEIU' (Jill Long Thompson's largest contributor) just got bigger.

This is an issue that has ramifications for Indiana tax dollars beyond the organization of State Employees.

SEIU has taken to making agreements with Long Term Care institutions that receive Medicaid monies from State tax dollars.

Their agreement with the management of LTC facilities is simple: you let us organize and we will get more for you from the State in tax dollars in the form of Medicaid and other monies. Thus, SEIU establishes 'special' relationships with Governors, as they have with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

This 'special' relationship is to organize the lowest paid workers in the state, while not representing the worker but representing their employer to the Governor and State Legislatures.

SEIU'scommitted to LTC management is evident in California as they push higher paid health care workers out of their bargaining units in favor of lower paid workers who fit into the guidelines of their agreements with the LTC management.

Trade unionist have a difficult time with this agreement with management and government against the individual worker.

" don't know what they're doing because they have a lack of trust and appreciation of workers," Rosselli says. "They really believe that they're smarter than workers, better than workers. The battle going on is between those who believe the collective power ... can be better used by a few people in Washington, D.C., as opposed to those who believe in bottom-up democracy."
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/83168/state_of_the_union:_seiu_faces_dissent_in_the_ranks/

SEIU is doing its best to usurp health care workers and those who have been usurped are fighting back. Watch the video "Keepin' It Real: UHW Members Rock SEIU's Sham Hearing" that includes interviews with member leaders and the rally where "more than 6,000 union members raised their voices to unite all healthcare workers in California, rather than divide us and weaken our strength." http://seiuvoice.org/index.php

At any rate this appeared this morning in the LA Times... more trouble.

Tony


From the Los Angeles Times
LA TIMES INVESTIGATION

Union, charity paid thousands to firms owned by official's relatives

The video production and day care companies are owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the head of the SEIU local, which represents low-wage home healthcare workers.

By Paul Pringle
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 9, 2008

California's largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's president, documents and interviews show.

The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president's brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union's U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.

Most of the 160,000 people represented by the union, a local chapter of the nation's fastest-growing labor organization, the Service International Employees Union, earn $9 an hour or slightly more tending to the infirm and disabled in private homes under taxpayer-funded programs. The workers, whose dues fill the local's coffers, often are described as "the poor caring for the poor." In its Labor Department filings, the local, headed by Tyrone Freeman, has reported more liabilities than assets for each of the last three years.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-union9-2008aug09,0,7561842.story



The following quotes from article below:

Organizing nursing homes proved more difficult. In 2003, Local 250 and another local of long-term care workers signed on to an experimental organizing agreement that SEIU International had negotiated with the Nursing Home Alliance, a group of nursing home operators. Alliance companies agreed that if SEIU successfully lobbied for higher state reimbursements to operators, they would be neutral when the union organized selected facilities.

But in 2007, when the agreement came up for renewal, UHW criticized many of its components. The deal had pushed for "template" contracts that barred strikes and limited collective bargaining rights. The pact also gave Alliance operators control over which facilities could be organized, limited economic gains to a fixed share of what the union won politically, prohibited employee criticisms of nursing home operations (except when they were legally obliged) and required the union to back the industry's plan for tort reform -- thus going against the union's community and patients' rights allies.

SEIU International and Tyrone Freeman -- who heads what is now United Long Term Care Workers, Local 6434 -- wanted to extend the agreement, for as long as even 20 years.

"The red thread that runs through this is that a growing approach is to ask the employer, 'We want to represent your employees. What is it that you want?' " says UHW policy director Paul Kumar.

Brown says the international increasingly tries to win neutrality agreements by becoming the company's partner.

"The international has centralized power to get the boss to defang himself, but the international is also defanging the members. They're selling workers' ability to self-determination."

" don't know what they're doing because they have a lack of trust and appreciation of workers," Rosselli says. "They really believe that they're smarter than workers, better than workers. The battle going on is between those who believe the collective power ... can be better used by a few people in Washington, D.C., as opposed to those who believe in bottom-up democracy."


A renewed labor movement needs imaginative leaders, smart strategies, coordinated efforts and progressive values. But the future of SEIU and the labor movement ultimately requires keeping faith with its members.
"We shouldn't start the debate with how do we centralize power," says Jerome Brown. "The central issue ought to be how do we build a 21st century union with members having the democratic right to run it, to strike or not to strike. Members have a right to make decisions. They may be right or wrong, crazy or brilliant. But that isn't the test. It's their decision, their job and their union."

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/83168/state_of_the_union:_seiu_faces_dissent_in_the_ranks/