One Man's Open Letter to SEIU

From the Facebook crew...

MY LETTER TO SEIU--- After celebrating today’s NUHW victories I wanted to thank the people I felt were most responsible for our success. So, here goes.

I would first like to thank Elesio Medina for being the most unqualified person to lead a Trusteeship. You...r lack of leadership, vision, and compassion are what motivate me... every day to lead and support NUHW.

Next I would like to thank the second least qualified person to lead a Trusteeship, Mr. Dave “stake thru the heart”, “old school ass whooping” Regan. They certainly broke the mold when they made you (thank God). Lucky for you that you were born without a conscience, otherwise the disgusting and despicable things that you do and say might actually bother you. Must be a real asset for you.

Next I would like to thank Gerrald Hudson for being a stupid, lying idiot, and a total suck up to Andy Stern, that helps us a lot.

That brings us to Mary Kay “back stabbing liar from hell” Henry. The only person in my life I have ever met that happily dips bullshit in chocolate and covers it with colorful sprinkles and serves it to you with a smile. You should open your own store in the mall, Mary.

And Anna “I wish I had a penis” Burger. Your disdain for members actually wanting to participate in their own future is so written on your face. You cringe at the mere mention of member democracy. Your lust for power and control consumes you the way the power of the ring consumed Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings. And you look like that contorted, bug-eyed freak too.

Ah but the Granddaddy of them all. That’s right, the Grand Poobah of Tyranny himself. Mr. Andrew “control at all costs” Stern. Your obtuse and narrow thinking have brought SEIU and the labor movement to the brink of collapse. Your desperate quest for relevance has blinded you to the reality that surrounds you. You are a small and pitiful man. I want to personally thank you for calling workers, myself included, selfish during our bargaining with our employer. I don’t know what world you live in, where workers who fight to get other workers who have no benefits, health insurance and vacation time are deemed selfish. It must be in a world outside your $300,000 a year Ivory Tower.

Oh, and Andy, thank you very much for mocking us at last year's convention and treating us as insignificant. That really helped us more than you’ll ever know. Again, thanks one and all. Your leadership created NUHW and you should be proud of that. You fucked up SEIU but you brought about the makings of a new and vibrant Labor movement in NUHW.

P.S. Here's your sign

Preach, brotha!!!

"Member Democracy," SEIU-style...

This is what we in KaiPerm and CHW have to look forward to over the next year and a half, as Zombie UHW busily tries to ram through some (or any) contract that will lock the workers and the dues up for years at a time, while they can give gobs of money and benefits back to the employers, cheat us out of our years-earned pension benefits, and then turn around and beat their collective chest about how they have achieved a Great Victory for Member Democracy.

Y'all just remember that when your wages are going down courtesy of SEIU, especially in a time in which, because of increased taxes on the federal and state level combined with inflationary pressures due to 8+ years of deficit spending, meaning that the actual value of the dollar is going to be going down-down-down, and it'll take more of them to maintain your current economic level.

This, in SEIU World, is called "Member Democracy."

Over the past few days, SEIU leaders carried out a campaign of secret negotiations, sellout deals and rigged membership votes in an effort to impose a top-down contract settlement on hundreds of nursing home workers in Northern California.

The actions - which affect workers at seven nursing homes operated by for-profit Foresight Management Services - are an example of precisely the kind of undemocratic behavior that SEIU-UHW was fighting prior to the trusteeship. The recent events also underscore the key philosophical differences between SEIU's leaders and the tens of thousands of rank-and-file workers who have formed NUHW.

Here's what happened: On Friday, twenty members of the nursing home workers' elected bargaining committee arrived at SEIU-UHW's Oakland office for scheduled contract negotiations with the company. In the previous negotiating session, which took place before the trusteeship, the elected committee had rejected the company's proposal on wages and benefits, which was far lower than the standards already won by other SEIU-UHW nursing home workers. Following those negotiations, workers terminated a temporary extension of their prior contract and began preparing for a strike.

On Friday, when the bargaining committee arrived for its next negotiating session, SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry and other SEIU leaders prohibited them from attending the negotiations by literally locking them out on the sidewalk in front of the union's office.

Meanwhile, inside the office, SEIU leaders were meeting with company executives and a few workers who had been hand-picked by SEIU leaders to take the place of the elected bargaining committee. These few workers represented only three of the seven nursing homes. Workers had gotten wind of two of SEIU's hand-picked members, and 70% of their co-workers had signed a petition expressing no confidence in them as bargaining committee members.

Locked out on the sidewalk, the elected bargaining committee began picketing the union's office. After TV news cameras showed up, SEIU officials quickly invited the committee inside, and members believed they were finally going to be allowed to participate in their own negotiations.

Instead, SEIU officials took the bargaining committee to a separate room and told them they could not attend negotiations unless they signed a loyalty oath to SEIU's leaders and also rescinded their signatures on NLRB petitions requesting to join NUHW.

Horrified, the bargaining committee was back on the sidewalk, picketing and chanting. Workers eventually left, but hours later they delivered an even stronger message by serving their employer with a ten-day notice for a 24-hour strike at all seven nursing homes.

Inside the negotiations at SEIU-UHW's Oakland office, SEIU leaders accepted the exact company proposal that the elected bargaining committee had rejected in January. The deal includes wages that are 30% lower than those won by other SEIU-UHW nursing home workers before the trusteeship.

With a strike notice hanging over their heads, SEIU leaders rushed to conduct a rigged membership ratification vote on their secretly negotiated agreement. How was the vote rigged?

SEIU failed to provide any advance notice to members about the vote, which was held the following day (Saturday). SEIU misrepresented the details of the proposed agreement and also barred large numbers of workers from casting ballots. For example, when workers from the afternoon shift arrived at work and attempted to vote, SEIU announced that the polls had closed. And at the conclusion of balloting, SEIU officials refused to count the ballots in front of workers, as is common practice.

Workers immediately began circulating a petition to demand that SEIU re-run the ratification vote in a democratic and transparent fashion, with full disclosure of all of the terms of SEIU's substandard agreement.

SEIU has yet to announce the results of Saturday's profoundly flawed vote. Given SEIU's behavior, many workers fear that union officials may have stuffed the ballot box so they can implement a contract that, by all accounts, will be applauded by company owners and widely opposed by SEIU-UHW's own members.

Peer-elected negotiators locked out. Union-selected "bargaining representatives" bussed in. Intimidation. Vote fixing. Rushed negotiations. Givebacks.

That is "Member Democracy," SEIU style.

And THAT, my friends, is why SEIU can never allow an up-or-down vote on its conduct of the Trusteeship - they know they'll get their asses kicked to the street.

Mary Kay Henry Speaks!!!

Our Glorious Maximum Crown Princess has deigned to come out to California, and she was silly enough to get herself taped and posted to Youtube saying the following:

"Here's what's key from my perspective: The Southern California rank-and-file leadership is going to lead this state back to unity."

(The passage referred to above is about five minutes in).

Having heard the above passage, only the very cynical mind could think that the merger between Local 399 and Local 250 which created UHW could indeed have been a set-up from the start, as a means by which the SoCal union could effectively take over the NorCal union.

Then again, that is precisely what I thought when I voted "no" on that merger.

Anyhoo, I haven't seen any SoCal staff union folks come onto my site yet, but my response to them would be precisely the same response I would have to any Purple Plague representatives from DC - "Get bent."

What those dunderheads in that video apparently do not understand is that people followed Sal Roselli not because he was a part of SEIU, but because he and his staff were actually in the facilities or had recently come out of them, and that he and his staff actually listen to what the rank-and-file actually think.

Looking at the video up above, there is no way in hell that Ms. Henry or any of the Purple Plague give a good G-d damn about any of the rank and file, save for that monthly "contribution" that we are required to provide them for the privilege of having people like them "support" us.