Are you really in favour of building working people’s power on the job? – or is that just the old rhetoric of the 1990’s SEIU – lost now in one too many corporate deals, inter union battles and divisive raids.
The truth is few workers on the ground have even heard of SEIU, Sectoral Organising or global unions in the companies like Sodexho and Compass where SEIU claim to be building power and creating a “new paradigm of corporate partnership”.
Often the first these workers hear of the SEIU is from their boss.
“We must not be anchors on our employers” say SEIU. “We must focus on increasing shareholder value”. Tell that to the worn out Hospital porter finishing another 12 hour shift on the minimum wage – or the Janitor who is forced to clean an entire office block ina 4-hour shift.
And what's the answer of SEIU and their client unions to this massive gap between their talk and their walk?
Short cut fixes cooked up in the boardrooms over dinner with the bosses aimed at delivering workers into their hands:
- 'Fair Share' deals that put the boss in control of the unions dues;
- demands that employers publish names and addresses of all workers;
- demands that recognition and bargaining is awarded over the heads of workers and behind their backs – so bureaucrats can control the agenda.
With their great, but empty speeches, obsessive intolerance of dissent and paranoid control freakery of their own people - what they can’t or won’t see is what they are becoming – the corporate worlds favourite union – helping Sodexho, Compass, Aramark, Accor, G4S and so many others police their workforce, keep them in line and manage their expectations downwards.
While these companies get to parade their new ethical credentials – and have their own pet attack dog to set on any union that looks like it might cause them trouble – AFL-CIO, UNITE HERE ….. the list of unions to feel the heat of the SEIU witch hunt gets bigger every day.
That is whay the Tribune report of the fringe meeting on SEIU sounds so interesting. Especially the close involvement of UNISON and UNITE with SEIU that was reported. UNISON/SEIU people seem to confirm our worst fears by their response over on UnisonActive website .Talk about protesting too much!
We all know that there are no shortcuts to union power or even just to recruiting new members. And certainly not through deals done with the bosses – who, shall we say… ahem…. are not really our friends.
As a bloke called Andy Stern once told the TUC in a lecture on organising he gave the UK in 1998: “The power our members seek over their daily lives at work cant be bought from politicians, borrowed from the media or begged from the bosses. It has to be built.”
I wonder if this Andy Stern would get an 'Organiser in Training' job with SEIU these days?
I checked this out and heard through a colleague at Head Office that UNISON have taken on some special advisors from SEIU including a person called Mike Crosby. Apparently his advice is that drop un-productive members from our union like schools staff! Instead we should put all our resources into this "Big 3" camapaign targetting Sodexho and Compass. is this beacuse this will help SEIU with their campaign in America - or is it good advice that would genuinely be in our members interests?
ReplyDeleteSo the rumour I have picked up from the TUC is interesting. Apparently the GMB say they were offered big money from SEIU but turned it down. There is a suggestion that UNITE may have taken about a cool $million from SEIU though. Does anyone out there know anything about this?
ReplyDeleteThere have certainly been a lot of SEIU people involved in appointing new officers in UNITE recently, and we get told to go to all sorts of meetings these days where young aggressive Americans shout at us and tell us were shit.
And we do tend to jump at their command and run campaigns to support their members in America - in hotals and cleaners for example. Mayeb like in UNISON this is because they just want us to do their dirty work for them because they won't or can't do it themsleves. A bit like the lads used as cannon fodder by the American generals at Anzio maybe?
Why else did we run the yellow bus campaign?
Who knows what though? And has this American take-over been worth it maybe to see our union become committed to fighting back?
ScruffM31 - interesting information about Mike Crosby - in this interview he fails to hold the SEIU to account for their divisive actions in the US:
ReplyDeletehttp://workers.labor.net.au/features/200510/a_interview_crosby.html