Sal Roselli informed the convention that by 2010 they would be representing an additional 56,000 members as a result of successful electoral victories. This is despite the ferocious legal battle being waged against them by SEIU, which Roselli and other NUHW leaders describe as frivolous, yet extremely costly for both sides. CNA, NUHW AND SEIU Before the SEIU-UHW conflict spilled out into the public, a battle between the California Nurses Association (CNA) and SEIU has been fought over the last two year, a dispute which has been incredibly heated. The conflict between the two unions in fact goes back about 15 years. In a narrow sense, it was over who should be organizing nurses. A few years ago the CNA formed the National Nurses Organizing Committee to organize on a larger scale, thus spurring a flare up in the fight. But a key part of CNA’s strategy was to make their struggle with SEIU a broader one by counter-posing itself as social movement union that placed union democracy and militant struggle at the core of its practice (similar to what UHW and now NUHW has done). As already noted, a chief criticism CNA and NUHW share is of the deals SEIU has been cutting with employers around California and nationally, which it claimed were not only undemocratic (which they were and are) but also detrimental to nurses, patients and all healthcare workers more broadly. Without reviewing the details of these deals, which has been done elsewhere, it is hard to disagree with the CNA’s assessment. However, their argument for the need for a single national craft union of nurses is far less convincing. So, while other unions throughout the country were putting the bulk of their resources, including an incredible number of staff and members, into getting Obama elected President and passing the Employee Free Choice Act SEIU was splitting its resources up between the prior and fighting first CNA, and then UHW, and now NUHW. However, in March the CNA and SEIU signed an agreement to end all hostilities. Since its emergence, the CNA has been a crucial ally of NUHW. The financial support provided by CNA included paying the healthcare premiums for NUHW staff. Unfortunately, a key stipulation of the CNA’s agreement with SEIU is that they suspend all support to NUHW. In exchange, SEIU has ceded to them exclusive jurisdiction over all nursing issues in nursing practice and with the exception of a select number of locations SEIU has conceded all nurse organizing to CNA. However, according to one of NUHW’s leading organizers Angela Glasper, who works as an optical services clerk at Kaiser Antioch, while they no longer receive institutional support from CNA every CNA nurse at her job contributes $100 a month to the new union and remain supportive of their co-workers to build a new union. Nothing in the agreement prohibits CNA members from providing this kind of support.
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In the latest issue of Labor Notes, Deborah Burger, one of the co-presidents of CNA, told Mark Brenner that ending hostilities with SEIU will allow CNA to use it’s much more limited time and resources for organizing and fighting employers, rather than another union. It will also, she hopes, allow the two unions to wage a more united fight against employers in facilities where they both represent workers and also in the fight for single payer government funded healthcare system. On the last issue SEIU has only agreed to push single-payer with CNA and others in a few states. Burger claims that this agreement will not lead CNA to compromise any of their “core” principles when it comes to how they fight employers, how the engage in politics, and their advocacy of single payer healthcare. However, isn’t turning their backs and cutting off such crucial support to NUHW the very definition of compromise? THE BATTLE IN FRESNO Some have dubbed Fresno, California ground zero in the battle between SEIU and NUHW. From June 5th to June 15th, 10,000 homecare workers there will have voted for the union they want to represent them – NUHW or SEIU. These workers are part of the 65,000 current UHW members that SEIU is planning to put in a separate local divided from other union healthcare workers at hospitals and clinics across California. Workers are not happy about this. According to Cal Winslow many of these homecare workers in Fresno believe that they have greater bargaining power when they are in the same unit as hospital and clinic workers. “This is an important issue because most homecare workers believe, as the Fresno example indicates, that their bargaining pressure increases by inclusion in the same unit with hospital and clinic workers. Stern believes each craft should essentially be divided into separate units” (CounterPunch, 5/15/09). In the United State healthcare industry, homecare is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry. Consequently, this has made it a key organizing target for SEIU. Yet, as healthcare historians Jennifer Klein and Eileen Boris write, “Despite such socially necessary labour the homecare workers’ wage is lower than all other jobs in health care with the exception of janitors.” Winslow adds that because of their importance as an organizing target, “home health care workers are often at the center of the wheeling and dealing back-room bargaining of SEIU President Andy Stern and his regime of appointed lieutenants.” According to one Fresno homecare worker and NUHW supporter, Florence Furlow, “The thing that made me most proud of the union we built was that it was based on a fundamental value we learned from our friends in the disability rights movement: Make no decision about us without us.” In our union, we elected our own representatives from neighborhoods all over Fresno County, and we made the decisions about our own futures. The era of dignity and respect for homecare workers had begun. We won our current wage of $10.25 an hour and lifted thousands out of poverty.