As we reported last month, Mary Kay Henry was protested against at the national Fight for $15 convention for not allowing her own employees (Fight for $15 organizers) to join SEIU’s Staff Union. The irony continues with the fact that none of these organizers are paid $15 an hour. One Wall Street Journal article takes SEIU’s hypocrisy even further by paralleling SEIU’s organizers with McDonalds’ franchise employees.
Over the past year, SEIU has vehemently proclaimed that McDonalds and other franchises should be considered joint employers over employees at their franchisees across the country. We disagree. The franchise model is a staple of small business development. Nonetheless, this is what’s so interesting about SEIU’s attempt to not take responsibility for the Fight for $15 organizers who are employed by the worker centers established and funded by SEIU. These worker centers are essentially SEIU “franchises.”
What SEIU has accomplished here is making it clear that they don’t want to be held to the same standards they’re attempting to force on American businesses. And that their only motive for pushing joint employer status on franchises is to be able to organize all McDonalds workers instead of having to go from small business to small business.
In other SEIU news, Dave Regan is being as sleazy as always. SEIU-UHW has been working since the beginning of the year to negotiate a new contract with Dignity Healthcare. Late last month, they officially announced that they’d finally “won” a new contract for the members.
The last time Regan won a contract with Dignity for his members, pay and health benefits were both cut. This time, members aren’t allowed to see a copy of the agreement until they are “inside the voting room on the day of voting.” And there’s only going to be one copy to go around.
This sort of boss-friendly, “neoliberal” style of unionism that Dave Regan and Andy Stern are so well known for is exactly why two leaders of UNITE HERE spoke out against the merger with SEIU in Jacobin Magazine earlier this month.
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