Labor Day, the Kaiser Permanente Elections and the
Fight for Democracy 

Faith Simon, RN, FNP and Cal
Winslow interview Ed Sadlowski 

By Cal Winslow

Monday, September 06, 2010

Znet
http://www.zcommunications.org/labor-day-the-kaiser-permanente-elections-and-the-fight-for-democracy-by-cal-winslow

Labor Day Weekend, Oakland, CA:

We spent several hours with Ed Sadlowski, this Labor
Day weekend.  Sadlowski is the former steelworker
rebel, the man who at age 38 almost dethroned the
incumbent president of the United Steelworkers Union
(USW), then 1.4 million members strong, an industrial
workers' powerhouse since the thirties.

Sadlowski , a third generation Chicago mill worker, a
product of what was once the vast steel center at the
heart of US industry, a working class fighter, began
mill work at 25. Still in his twenties, he was elected
president of the huge US Steel South Works USW local,
then 11,000 strong. Then he was elected USW District 31
Director, 80,000 strong. Sadlowski became perhaps the
best know leader of the rebellion that began in the
sixties and ran through the seventies, more than a
decade of working class rebellion, strikes, and
rank-and file movements. He is now retired, of course;
he has not left the trenches - still fighting, and this
Labor Day is no exception.

He's in California - he still lives in Chicago - on
loan to the new National Union of Healthcare Workers
(NUHW) in their challenge to the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) to represent California's
healthcare workers.

"I'm here doing the lord's work" he says with a wink.
"I'm here to see that no more people are harmed by
what's going on. No more working people hurt by other
working people.

"I've been in southern California for two weeks; I came
up here this week. I've been working with healthcare
groups here, Kaiser Permanente workers, the supporters
of the new union, NUHW, just wonderful workers, trade
unionists and then go from there.

"Some of these workers, I like the young workers,  some
of the younger people, some of the women, they are just
as tough as any steelworker or dock worker I've  seen
in my life, You're not going to push them around, not
going to browbeat them, you're not going to bullshit
them. We're very fortunate here"

This NUHW-SEIU conflict, increasingly bitter, is rooted
in SEIU's trusteeship of United Healthcare Workers-West
- the January 2009 hostile takeover of SEIU's once
powerful, progressive 150,000 member local union, the
takeover itself the result of a long standing conflict
stemming from fundamental disagreements on internal
democracy, worker empowerment, and militant trade
unionism.

Trusteeship backfired; the local's members immediately
petitioned to decertify SEIU, perhaps the largest
decertification drive ever. They set out to build a new
union, really, to rebuild their union. SEIU responded
with "shock and awe" - thousands of staff were sent
into California; tens of millions of dollars were
spent. "It's like Iraq," quipped an SEIU headquarter's
man. They succeeded in stalling National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) elections fully eighteen months
- but not forever. This summer Kaiser Permanente's
workers, the single largest division within
California's healthcare workers, petitioned again.
Successfully. The NLRB set elections. The ballots will
be sent out September 13 and 14. Results will be
announced in October.

This election will be the biggest, most important union
election in decades, indeed since the thirties. It is,
thus far, ignored, certainly as far as the media is
concerned. Labor Day, the story goes, was established
as an alternative to May Day - the traditional workers'
day. May Day, the day, in the aftermath of the
Haymarket Affair, the bloody massacre of workers in
Chicago, that would  become a day of international
working class solidarity, a celebration of struggle, a
display of power.

Not here. In that, certainly our masters' succeeded -
May Day is long forgotten; Labor Day is chiefly an end
of summer respite. This year, as in others, the press
will notice, if anything at all, that the trade unions
continue to shrink, now to perhaps a bit more than 7 %
of private sector workers, and that the recession will
if anything accelerate the decline - the result of
layoffs and prolonged unemployment. California's
unemployment rate remains well above 12%. Millions more
workers face foreclosure.

Ed Sadlowski came to California to help; so, by the
way, have others, scores of organizers, volunteers
committed to NUHW and to what it has come to stand for
- most immediately, the right of workers to a union of
their choice.

"And that's at the heart of it," says Sadlowski.
"What's happening here in California in the healthcare
industry, particularly at Kaiser, is shameful,
something that you find only in the annals of the
corporate world. It's the devil's work. It's shameful
that here you find an outfit that calls itself a trade
union putting the dogs on other workers. I've never
seen anything like this in the 50 years I've been in
the movement. It's the worst I've ever seen, as
deceitful as any of the worst bosses.

"The song sung here by the SEIU chorus is 'Stop this
movement', stop this progressive movement at all costs.
SEIU has lost all scruples, all morals. They've come in
here hungry for battle, they're hungry to displace
people, they fabricate lies, lies after lies, believe
me, just look at their handbills, distortion after
distortion. And the thuggery, the bullying. I've seen
it firsthand. They even tried it on me. What a joke. I
thought we got over that. We don't need it.

"This will only harm people; the damage will last a
long time. Whoever wins, you can't stop and then expect
people to forget."

This week NUHW members, staff and volunteers, Sadlowski
among them, prepare for the next invasion. SEIU has
announced it will send an additional 2,000 full-time
staff into California. This will include apparently,
the entire organizing staff of 1199 United Healthcare
Workers -East, a behemoth of local unions, the 350,000
member conglomeration built upon old New York 1199,
long adored by "progressives."  The campaign,
grotesquely dubbed by new SEIU President Mary Kay
Henry, "World War III", will cost literally millions
(salaries, airfares,  hotel rooms, rental cars, per
diems), this on top of tens of millions already spent,
including on lavish remittances to a small army of
venal lawyers. Millions, the source of which is found
in deductions from the paychecks of typically poorly
paid working members.

"To be honest, my health has not been all that good
these last couple of years. And by the way, I have to
say I'm also filling in for my kid, Ed Jr., a good
union man, driven out by SEIU.

"This is the best medicine personally I can take -
being with these people trade unionists, real trade
unionists.

"I think people are learning that victory is possible. 
I'm not being naive here, or romantic, so I don't think
SEIU is going to roll over and die - but this is the
whole David and Goliath thing, the kid with the
slingshot and the stone.

"The SEIU spends tens of millions on this campaign, in
the courts, they bring in the big organizers - and
against just pennies, literally pennies. Oh, I know
they're very slick, they've got some talented people, I
know many of them. But it's not going to work.

"We were up against the same thing in the seventies,
when I challenged the hierarchy - staff dominating the
union, the no strike pledge, secret deals with the
employers."

The seventies saw the last significant upsurge of US
labor. Rebellious miners, truckers, postal workers,
teachers, public sector workers - black workers, women,
farmworkers  - participated in movements for democracy,
inclusion, militant resistance to the employers'
offensive. Sadlowski's 1977 Fightback campaign for the
presidency of the USW became synonymous with the
rebellion in steel. Sadlowski was well-known as
supporting civil rights, as an opponent of the war.

"We may have lost that fight, but we won a lot. We had
the same issues, lack of democracy in our own locals, a
top-down, authoritarian international leadership. You
know, we changed a lot, I brag about that, we turned
our union around, we really did.

"One regret - I've spent nights thinking about this,
the civil rights issue, the war, we didn't do enough.
Why I didn't do more, I try to rationalize, as we all
do - yes we all make mistakes, still we know we should
have done more. I know it's a long time ago but I
didn't do enough.

"Many of the internal problems within the union are
still there, but many of the unions have cleaned up
their acts.

"I don't want people misunderstanding what I'm saying.
Is the labor movement corrupt, I don't believe that -
the corruption is when you take into account weakness
in the human spirit.

"There are corrupt unions. Andy Stern never did
anything to root out corruption in the SEIU - guys
walked off with millions. He needs to be held
accountable.

"But that's nothing compared to the banks, you can't
say the unions are as corrupt as Wall Street. You can't
say that.

"But even if we're just only 1% corrupt, that is too
much as far as labor is concerned. We should expect
labor to meet standards that are well higher that those
other institutions.

"Why am I saying this?

"The labor movement belongs to you and to me and every
other working person in this country. It made this
country; the good things that exist in this country
come from labor and its actions.

"I love the labor movement. It's been everything for
me, for my family. We could change the world, change
the distribution of the wealth we create, we can do
this democratically - and the labor movement can play a
big part in this."

We asked Sadlowski about the key issues today:
"Democracy, participatory democracy that in itself will
correct many of our problems. We need participatory
democracy, social democracy; democracy that we need to
carry into the very households in which we live, then
into the world.

"A Victory at Kaiser, I think, it will be a big marker,
when they call in the chips, it will be a victory in
healthcare, and this is a big industry, and rich.
According to the papers, Kaiser did pretty well for
itself last year - in excess of $2 billion in profits,
not bad potatoes in my neighborhood.

"I think it will be done. I like being with the young
people, they're going to make their mark. It's getting
harder to bullshit them. I think it was easier when my
grandpa came over from Poland. It ain't  easy now to
bullshit the kids. I got a lot of respect for these
kids, yeah. They're the real McCoy."

Faith Simon, a supporter of NUHW, has been a nurse in
Africa, the United Kingdom, and in many US hospitals.
She is a Family Nurse Practitioner in rural Northern
California.
Cal Winslow is author of Labor's Civil Wars in
California and a co-editor of Rebel Rank and File:
Labor Militancy and the Revolt from Below in the Long
Seventies.

_____________________________________________

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