Your account of the Tenet situation is very revealing.

By your own admission, because CNA and SEIU were in “a competitive situation” that lead to “a sort of stalemate,” both unions were forced to compromise with the employer. This proves my point. By competing instead of cooperating, both unions lost ground that management was only too happy to claim.

While you plead extenuating circumstances for CNA in the Tenet situation, you permit no such wiggle room for SEIU in Ohio.

I don’t know for sure what happened in Ohio, and it seems that you don’t either. Your account is based on third hand information (a Labor Notes interview) followed by speculation “it is more likely,” “based on past performance” and “it seems highly likely.” I expect more solid evidence from a union that launched an assault on another union to “save the labor movement from destruction”!

Your comments confirm that CNA and SEIU are locked in competition for members and dues. Instead of cooperating to build the strongest possible unions, they are carving up the labor force: As you state, “SEIU agreed not to organize RNs, CNA agreed not to organize other hospital workers, we agreed to support each other’s organizing within our respective spheres.”

That’s turf-building, whether it takes place cooperatively (Tenet) or antagonistically (Ohio).

The Tenet situation was more complex than you are likely aware.

SEIU had made that agreement with Tenet. We were in a competitive situation with them in which we ran each other to a sort of stalemate. A very complex 3-way negotiation among CNA, SEIU and Tenet took place, mediated by a senior AFL official. The end result was that – for California – SEIU agreed not to organize RNs, CNA agreed not to organize other hospital workers, we agreed to support each other’s organizing within our respective spheres and CNA took over the terms of the agreement that SEIU had negotiated with Tenet. Not an agreement we would ever have made on our own, but accepting it was a part of the path to ending that conflict.

Re: the Ohio situation, the SEIU narrative is that their long fight had finally forced the employer to give them this organizing agreement.

An alternate view, which I think is supported by some evidence, is that their long fight had failed and had largely been abandoned. This quote, from a recent Labor Notes article, would tend to support that view: “At some of the hospitals no organizing committee existed, and no contact with workers had taken place in years, according to Colleen Gresham, an Ohio nurse and top supporter of SEIU. She discovered that SEIU was formally seeking to represent her when her employer, Cincinnati’s Mercy Mt. Airy hospital, sent her the election notice. “We were actually surprised by the secret vote,” Gresham said. “We didn’t know it was coming.”

In our view, it is more likely that the increased level of activity in Ohio in the last few months by CNA/NNOC had made the employer re-think their fight with SEIU and consider there might be advantages for them in a deal with a more compliant union.

As you know, SEIU has been willing to give up an extraordinary amount of worker rights and the public good in order to win organizing rights in other places. Based on past performance, it seems highly likely that was a part of the deal here, and surely not a part in which the workers involved were consulted.

I completely agree with your rejection of Andy Stern’s let’s-get-cozy-with-management strategy for building SEIU. However, CNA is not innocent in this regard. Four years ago, CNA signed a union election agreement with Tenet Healthcare that traded restrictions, like agreeing not to strike until 2010, for organizing jurisdiction of Tenet nurses.

CNA did impose its view on the workers in Ohio, by “stopping the deal.” By mailing “VOTE NO” literature to nurses in the hospitals seeking SEIU certification, it broke the union drive. CNA may have thought it was attacking Stern and his strategy, but it severely hurt SEIU activists who had struggled for three years to build that union.

Instead of “saving the labor movement from destruction” (how patronizing is that?), CNA destroyed a union and generated intense hostility between workers in both unions. How does this benefit the labor movement?

CNA’s turf war with SEIU is not based on ideology, it is being justified by ideology. If you really believe in worker-controlled unions, then invite SEIU activists to a series of discussions on how best to organize in any particular area. Apologize for what CNA did in Ohio, and make it clear that you have learned your lesson – that workers have the right to make their own decisions and to learn from their own mistakes.

Such a process would be slower than swooping in to “rescue” workers from a bad deal, but it’s the only way to generate the rank-and-file solidarity that we sorely need to rebuild the labor movement.

Thanks for the thoughtful post on the CNA/SEIU conflict.

I do think the basis of the conflict is more fundamental, more ideological and less about mere turf than you would indicate.

The Stern model of unionisation, taken to its logical conclusion would effectively destroy the ability of all unions to organize based on real worker power and would make collusion with the employer the only useable strategy for organizing.

Given the recent past history in which SEIU international has chosen to give up nearly every possible worker right and public good in return for organizing rights, one has to assume that the sudden turnaround of the employer in Ohio had been bought at a similarly high price – a price in which the workers had no choice and of which they had no knowledge.

We have seen multiple instances in which organizing rights have been bought by giving up the right to bargain for a pension, to bargain for healthcare benefits, in which management has been pre-guaranteed control over salary levels and in which SEIU has agreed to use its political power to reduce public health and safety regulation on the employer.

The Ohio arrangement raised the bar to a new level by inducing management to file for the election. It is my firm belief that the success and future spread of this model of “organizing” would spell the effective end of the labor movement as we know it.

CNA’s action in stopping this deal was not an attempt to impose anything on the workers there, but was essential to save the labor movement from destruction.

Note: I am a registered nurse and a volunteer board member of CNA/NNOC