The Health Care Union War

As more than 1,000 labor union activists gathered in Dearborn, Mich., last weekend for the biennial conference organized by the magazine, Labor Notes, a passionate argument between competing health care unions coursed through the meeting. But by evening, the dispute turned ugly and physical. And the stakes in the dispute cranked up another notch.

On one side were nurses and leaders from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CAN/NNOC); on the other, staff and nurses with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU ).

SEIU supporters condemned CNA/NNOC for distributing leaflets on the eve of a representation vote for roughly 8,000 hospital workers at a chain of Catholic hospital in Ohio last month. After Ohio hospital workers received the leaflets attacking SEIU and the arrangement the union struck with management for an election, SEIU called off the vote.

"What would ever possess a union, CNA, to come to Ohio and destroy something we'd worked so hard to build?" Cinncinnati nurse Susan Horn asked plaintively.

But CNA argued that the election -- formally requested by management, not the union, as part of a deal to guarantee management neutrality -- was so flawed that it deserved to be challenged. And if SEIU really had support from workers, CNA argues, it could have won the election despite the leaflets.

"When a union election is called by the hospital, you have to question what that means," says Geri Jenkins, a member of the CAN/NNOC Council of Presidents. "Is it a deal to do business, or a voice for workers? Fundamentally, what we'll lose [with such deals] is the right to advocate for our patients."

The debates over neutrality agreements -- and the propriety of CNA's actions -- are the kind of heartfelt discussions over labor strategy that often occur at the conventions called by Labor Notes, which often irks union leaders by supporting rank-and-file opposition groups that push for more militancy or democracy.

But as the Saturday night fundraising banquet was about to start, a crowd of purple-clad SEIU staff and members gathered outside the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn. SEIU claimed there were around 800. Other observers estimated as few as 150 to 200. But someone from inside the hotel let them through the locked doors, and they rushed past hotel security to try to enter the banquet hall. CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro had been scheduled to speak, but she had cancelled earlier in the day, citing the need to stay in California to deal with what she called the "harassment" and "stalking" of CNA leaders at home and work by SEIU staff.

According to eyewitness accounts, the most aggressive leaders of the group -- some with purple bandanas on their faces -- hit and kicked some of the Labor Notes staff and supporters who were blocking the doors. But another line of conference attendees locked arms to hold back the rest of the crowd. At least one woman, a retired auto worker, fell as an SEIU protester tried to slip past her and cut a gash in her head.

Bill Fletcher, former assistant to the president of SEIU , witnessed part of the standoff. "Nothing I saw leads me to believe the intent [of the SEIU people] was to harm, but the intent was clearly to disrupt the gathering by almost any means necessary," he says. "This was not just a protest." He was troubled to find that some protesters seemed to have no idea why they were involved in the action. And he argues that SEIU -- which other unions criticize for raiding their members, just as several health care unions criticize CNA for its raids on nurses -- lost much of the support it may have had.

"I'm against raids, and I was kind of uneasy about what CNA was doing in Ohio," says Fletcher, who also was assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "But whatever sympathy SEIU had was gone, evaporated like dew in the morning, and replaced by a disgust that this would have happened."