Protests Intensify Over Local Union Takeover By SEIU

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is still going ahead with its plans to perpetrate a hostile takeover of California local California Healthcare Workers union (UHW). Naturally, the local isn’t too happy to be forcefully dissolved and integrated into the SEIU national and losing their identity.

The UHW folks with their president Sal Roselli in the lead, are staging all sorts of protests and efforts to deny the SEIU its victory. Roselli has been a thorn in SEIU president Andy Stern’s side for quite a while now.

The SEIU has been trying to mount a massive take over of unions all across the country (whether forcefully or not) with the goal of becoming the biggest union in the nation. SEIU president Stern’s goal has been to create a giant union run from the top down with the locals having little power over their own areas. This is a particularly amusing plan because unions have always been about “democracy” and “local control” of its own destiny yet here is Stern trying to emulate the sort of powermongering, top down control that unions usually fight.

In any case, the UHW raised a special fund to be used on something or another, but the SEIU claims it was “illegal” and meant to be used to fight their takeover. The resulting back and forth lawsuits gave the SEIU another excuse to claim that the UHW is “corrupt” and needs to be taken over to root out the supposed corruption.

It’s a mess of a power struggle, to say the least and amusing in that the whole situation seems to go against the grain of what unions always claim to be.

The UHW has posted their point of view on the “retaliation” on their website.

From our perspective, the mess reveals the hypocrisy of unions all the way around.

____________
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.


Copyright Publius Forum 2001