Progressive, social movement trade union, or employer-groomed company union?

By CNA/NNOC_prez
OpenLeft
April 24, 2008

I'm Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN, one of four members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's Council of Presidents.  I have been a direct care nurse for over thirty years, currently in the post-anesthesia unit.

Thank you to OpenLeft for sponsoring this debate between CNA/NNOC and SEIU.  We've come to a turning point in the labor movement: a choice between a progressive, democratic, feminist social movement committed to single-payer healthcare reform, as represented by CNA/NNOC, or  company unionism based on corporate partnerships, as represented by Andy Stern of SEIU International. Forward or back? 

CNA/NNOC_prez :: Progressive, social movement trade union, or employer-groomed company union?

This debate is happening in a historical moment.  Stern has just sent 200 staff members to California and paired them up with several hundred local staffers, with the goal of an unprecedented two-part takeover of CNA and United Healthcare Workers-West of SEIU, his harshest internal critics.  Moreover, it comes in the aftermath of a humiliating display of thuggery by SEIU in Michigan, repeated episodes of CNA/NNOC nurse leaders being followed and harassed at their homes and nursing stations by SEIU staffers, and a fortunate victory in Ohio over an unprecedented, company-sponsored worker election. 

First, a bit of background: CNA's current staff-nurse leadership assumed office 15 years ago, with 17,000 members. CNA/NNOC was formed three years ago as a national union and now counts over 80,000 members in every state and big city in the country, with bargaining units from Texas to Maine. We are the fastest-growing union in the country, and for the first time, America has a national nurses' movement.

The creation of a national nurses' movement matters for many reasons. Nursing has long been viewed as a traditionally feminine profession, and the lack of unionization in this industry has long hamstrung the feminist movement. In addition, RNs have never had a voice in the healthcare debates in this country- just look where that's gotten us. Finally, from a labor perspective, when RNs are unionized, they can work closely with ancillary staff and spread unionization throughout the industry.  We work at hundreds of hospitals with other unions from AFSCME to the United Steelworkers to United Healthcare Workers-West to, yes, SEIU itself.

CNA/NNOC has progressive values at its core because we nurses gave our organization the same charter as our professional obligation: patient advocacy. RNs have an ethical and legal duty to "advocate in the sole interest of [our] patients," and we have charged our union with the same thing. There is no chance of this directive being lost, as our board is composed of thirty-five working direct care nurses elected by our members every two years. As patient advocates, we fight for single payer health care, patient care protections, and the right of every nurse to speak out. We believe that RNs cannot act exclusively in the interests of their patients if their union participates in a partnership with their corporate employers. We believe that RNs should choose and control their union.

By contrast, SEIU forms partnerships with employers based on the company's business interests and political agenda. The result: less regulation of the healthcare industry, diminished representation of members, gag clauses on nurses and other workers, bonuses for denials of care, closed hospitals and sweetheart deals. To workers, it looks more like an outsourced HR department than a union. Like many others, we wish SEIU's actions matched its progressive rhetoric, at least in terms of labor and healthcare issues... but it doesn't.

Stern has not been shy about this focus on corporate partnerships. On Jan. 22, 2007 he told the Wall Street Journal, "We want to find a 21st century model that is less focused on individual grievances, more focused on industry needs." In 2006, he told the McKinsey Quarterly, "Employers live in a competitive environment and have to meet certain shareholder expectations, and labor can play a role in helping to meet them." In his own book, "A Country that Works," Stern argued that "unions must be experts in...assisting employers in overcoming necessary legislative and political obstacles."

With these words, Stern sets himself against RN professional practice and ethical obligations. RNs cannot be focused on industry needs, shareholder expectations, or assisting employers. We are singularly focused on patient care, and can never compromise that.

SEIU's model does not work for RNs.

Andy Stern's record at SEIU shows the devastating results of this philosophy. Stern created corporate partnerships with nursing homes that gagged nurses from speaking up about patient safety violations. In California, Stern met with Arnold Schwarzenegger and brokered a deal with nine of the ten largest insurers to subvert single payer reforms in favor of a "mandate" system that would have guaranteed billions in new profits and public subsidies to those very insurers who broke our healthcare system (fortunately, CNA/NNOC, along with most other unions, was able to defeat this deal). In fact, Stern recently appeared before AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans-the insurers' lobbying group), and told them what they want to hear: "I don't think the country is going to go to a single payer system right now... I don't think it's willing, I don't think it's able." They cheered his news.

In state after state, Andy Stern's partnerships with our employers, the hospital industry, has led him to fight against RN-to-patient safe staffing ratios. RNs across the country know that ratios- how many patients they are assigned each shift- are a baseline for the level of care they can provide. We at CNA/NNOC are proud to have passed the most important patient safety legislation in this country over the last decade, the law guaranteeing a safe minimum ratio of patients to nurses. This law has literally saved thousands of lives since it was passed, has improved California's RN retention rate by tens of thousands, and has been the backbone of our rapid unionization.

The dangerous philosophy of corporate partnerships was very nearly taken one step further by SEIU's deal with Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) in Ohio. NNOC nurses did not stop the employees from choosing a union at CHP, we stopped the employer from choosing one, and only after employees had shown a distinct lack of interest.

The defeat in Ohio of CHP's hand-picked union should have a lasting impact. Company unions were banned by New Deal labor laws because, starting in the Ludlow mines where the modern US labor movement began, employers have attempted to undermine workers' self-organization by setting up fake unions that owe their allegiance to the company. No progressive trade unionist in the world would ever support a union created by the company, or a union election called by an employer.

American law, although hardly labor-friendly, outlaws company unions. But there are loopholes, and in Ohio, CHP and SEIU found one. After SEIU was unable to organize the RNs there due to a lack of interest, and while the AFL-CIO was still in talks with CHP, the hospitals chose SEIU in a secret, back-room deal, and they called a surprise election. SEIU was unable to meet the "showing of interest" threshold of 30 percent of workers signing up, so the company itself called and filed for the election. The company manipulated the election so no other union could be on the ballot. They imposed a gag order on both hospital management and SEIU staffers, so that nurses had no one who could answer basic questions.

RNs around the country saw this scam for what it was: a threat to our rights and to our professional practice. RNs from California and Ohio went to the hospitals, and stood in the snow outside, passing out flyers to CHP nurses, warning them about the deal, and publicizing their rights. Within a few days, the election collapsed as the workers heard the whole story.  Hospital chains around the country should know that they will face similar problems if they attempt to impose fake representation on their workers.

Since that time, Andy Stern has declared war on CNA/NNOC, vowed to "steal" our members, and break up our drives for new members, as he is currently doing at St. Agnes Hospital in Fresno, where he has put a significant, nurse-led organizing drive at risk.

Stern will ultimately fail in his attempts to bust CNA/NNOC nurses,  but his despicable tactics will be remembered long after he leaves California: nurses are being followed in their cars, approached at their hospitals, harassed at their homes, and even their families are being brought into it.  RNs around the state and across the country have received multiple phone calls and pieces of attack mail. Nurses really are outraged.

Stern and SEIU went way too far in Michigan on Saturday, April 12, by using violence at a peaceful labor conference. Labor Notes is a non-partisan, highly respected journal, and they describe the melee as such: "Other conference-goers- members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen's Association, and SEIU itself- were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed to the floor."

Two busloads of SEIU staffers, all burly men, stormed the room and broke through security in an attempt to disrupt the proceedings. SEIU members and their children, in additional buses, were shamefully put in harm's way as they followed. The account of the violence has been documented by Labor Notes and by multiple eyewitnesses, many of whom have no relationship to this CNA/NNOC-SEIU conflict. Go here to watch a video from some of the nurses who were eyewitnesses to the attacks, and here to read 20 first-person accounts.

The use of that sort of violence is never okay.  In the wake of these events, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney wrote "there is no justification- none- for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference in Detroit. While there may well be multiple sides to any dispute, violence is any form is reprehensible. Violence in attacking freedom of speech must be strongly condemned. Any attempt to deny the right of free speech threatens the foundation of our movement and the future of working people. No union should understand the corrosive effect of violence better than SEIU, which was founded by courageous janitors in the face of employer violence in the 1920s and 1930s. I call on the leaders of SEIU to condemn what happened in Detroit."

Andy Stern bears responsibility for this violence directed at female RN leaders of CNA/NNOC. We will never forget SEIU's attempts to physically intimidate, harass, and disrupt our home and work lives. It should be noted that the only people at the gathering who thought SEIU might actually sink to this low were the RNs there... which should speak volumes about why SEIU has such a poor reputation among RNs nationally.

On the heels of Detroit, Stern has sent 200 staff members to California- and this is where it gets complicated- to attack both CNA and United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU).

Over the years in California, we have had peaceful relations with UHW. We organized together and, as we both grew, we worked collectively in the hundreds of hospitals we have unionized together. Apparently SEIU International has a plan to destroy UHW, and began having meetings here with their nurse alliance about organizing nurses in California and destabilizing our base.

We now see Stern's national staff in our hospitals, attempting to discredit UHW and to disrupt and take over their local. Obviously, if SEIU is successful in their attempts to take over UHW, CNA is a secondary target. They want to be in the hospitals behind us, using the ex-UHW to launch an unprecedented statewide decertification effort against CNA. Stern's plan is nothing less than audacious: to de-certify and take over the two largest health care unions in California, who also happen to be his most prominent critics, both from within and outside his union.

Let's be clear: we did not go into SEIU hospitals in California until they brought 200 people nationally, joined with hundreds from California, into trainings to go in and try to raid CNA hospitals. While they were in training, we sent our folks into their hospitals, and found significant unrest among their nurses, all of whom have heard about the Detroit attack and were disgusted to be associated with a group who would direct such actions. We  were at peace in California until SEIU International declared war on UHW and CNA. SEIU embarked on a comprehensive raiding strategy in the state- and while we don't know how things will turn out with UHW, we are confident that California RNs want nothing to do with SEIU, and do want to continue building their own progressive, democratic, and feminist social movement union.

My apologies that this is so long-and thanks to those who've read this far. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. Feel free to visit our Web sites, www.CalNurses.org and www.ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.org.