This is sickening. The SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, invaded a conference at which members of another union and dissidents from their own union were present and physically attacked them:
Representatives of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on Saturday night physically attacked supporters of the California Nurses Association (CNA) and others attending a conference organized by the Labor Notes magazine in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
The SEIU, which is involved in a bitter jurisdictional dispute with the CNA and its affiliates over union representation for nurses in California, Nevada, Ohio and other states, sent hundreds of International staff and other members to disrupt the conference, where Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA, had been scheduled to speak.
According to a statement posted by Labor Notes, union members and others at the conference were punched, kicked, shoved and thrown to the floor by SEIU staff members and supporters who forced their way into the conference banquet hall. A recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground and was hospitalized. Dearborn police responded and evicted at least three busloads of SEIU supporters. No arrests were made.
The CNA said DeMoro cancelled her appearance at the event after the SEIU began sending “roving bands of staff to the homes of CNA/National Nurses Organizing Committee board members in California Thursday and Friday, stalking and harassing them” at their places of work and their homes.
What drove these SEIU goons to attack fellow unionists is unclear, but it seems to fit in a long history of anti-union bullyboy tactics employed by this “union”. As the article cited above makes clear, the SEIU is more interested in cutting sweetheart deals with employers than defend the rights of the workers they represent, while aggressively competiting with other unions for members:
Earlier this year, SEIU Vice President Dennis Rivera intervened on behalf the governor of Puerto Rico to help bust an independent union representing 40,000 public school teachers, in order to force them to affiliate with the SEIU. Shortly after a meeting between Rivera and Governor Acevedo Vila, where the SEIU leader allegedly pledged financial backing to his long-time friend in exchange for the governor’s support for the SEIU-affiliated union, Vila decertified the independent union and suspended its dues check-off. This provoked a bitter strike by teachers, to which the governor responded with riot police.
In California, the SEIU struck a secret deal with a group of nursing home chains, in which the companies agreed to drop their resistance to organizing drives in return for the SEIU’s agreement to lobby state politicians to pass a tort-reform measure that would limit patients’ ability to sue over neglect or abuse.
The decision to attack the Labor Notes conference follows a bitter turf war between the SEIU and the CNA-affiliated National Nurses Organizing Committee over organizing Catholic hospitals in Ohio. The CNA said a deal between the SEIU and Catholic Healthcare Partners to hold a snap union recognition election—excluding the participation of other unions—set “a dangerous precedent of employer-union collusion.” The CNA sent representatives to Ohio to urge nurses to vote down the SEIU. The SEIU denounced this as “union-busting” and said it led to the cancellation of voting at nine hospitals last month.
It’s clear that the increasing resistance against these tactics is threatening the SEIU and its leadership, which might be why they sent their thugs in. Shameful behaviour from any organisation, let alone a union.