What a breath of fresh air.  I've gotten so used to the pervasive disrespect unions receive, even on the left, that I almost began to take a reflex opposition to organized labor for granted.

From what little I know, SEIU is a breath of fresh air in an American trade union movement (I use the word deliberately, in your sense) that in many ways had been vitiated by the response to McCarthyism and a narrowed focus on wages and only wages.

I've worked for unions and seen their downside (see, I have cred!) and supported them and seen the promise, and continue to hope for their continued revival.

I like the way she articulates the need for unions.  "We're here to help" should be the union motto.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm very supportive of unions and they are definitely allies.  I want more, much more of the workforce unionized.  But your description of the Local 199 seems a little naive, even though everything in your post is true.

I was a Teamster back in the early seventies, working at a soda bottling plant in Milwaukee.  I loaded and unloaded trucks.  The union had been at the plant forever.  The workers' attitude was, "they take 12 bucks a month out of my paycheck and negotiate sweetheart contracts with the management.  But what can you do?"  

The higher-ups in the union definitely had more in common with the company bosses and politicians than with us.  Their kids all went to the same schools, for example, and they all seemed to to play golf and vacation in Florida.

Democracy in the union was a joke.  The last thing the leaders of the local wanted was an invigorated, active membership.

At election time we, of course, all voted for Democrats, since we all knew that Republicans hated workers and wanted to help the company screw us even worse.  But this was just the Milwaukee working class tradition.  Our local did nothing to mobilize or educate us.  It didn't even remind us to vote.

It just kept taking that 12 bucks a month and was happy with that.  In a lot of ways our union reminded me of the D.C. establishment and the consultantocracy Jerome and Markos wrote about in Crashing the Gate.

Nurses battle in CA and the example of the Iowa nurses is the health care problem in a nutshell.

The "health care industry" insurance, drug and hospital corporations vs. doctors, nurses and other health care providers.

The "health care industry" is setup to provide as little service as possible and get the most money for doing it.

The doctors and nurses are set up to provide the best medical care possible for the least money.

Best political action for doctors and nurses is legislation setting up doctor/patient ratios and nurse patient/ratios as CA did.  This gets to the heart of a the union negotiation between hospitals and nursing staff.

More and more, I think the best answer for the US is everyone goes on Medicare as a way to provide universal health care.  Trying to create some new system or trying to modify the current system is only going to create some kind of Frankenhealth system.  I hope that's a lesson Hillary Clinton learned in 1993.

You wrote: "Cathy knew nothing about unions prior to joining one in 1999.  Since she's joined, her attitude about empowerment and worker rights has changed dramatically."

This says it all, and it's why progressives should put a very high priority on getting more private-sector employees in labor unions. Once people are in a union they have a different working experience and, crucially, a separate channel of information about labor issues than what the mainstream media provides.

This is the single biggest reason that I decided to support John Edwards for president this time around (I was for Kerry during the last set of primaries). Edwards has been putting his time and energy behind the fight to make it easier for service-industry workers to join unions. We simply must do better on this front.

Matt Stoller has seen the light.

I am joking here, but only a little bit.  I went through the same revelation in 2004.  I was a eastern liberal arts college grad, who went directly to DC to work after graduation.  Then I got sick of talking about doing something around the 2004 presidential election. So, I decided to hop on a plane and go back to Pittsburgh to do whatever was needed.  I ended up being hired by the PA SEIU State Council did canvassing along side local janitors, nurses from 1199P and dealt with all of the data they were collecting.  The program was called Heros and that they were.  That was my first introduction to labor and much of my work since has been for union members.

There is so much potential for labor and the netroots to work together and I am thrilled to see so much movement in the last year.

I am in the tech sector, and unions that serve my sector as you state up here in the SEIU, do not exist.

Programming jobs have gone to india at an alarming rate, and those that haven't are usually filled by people who come over here.

I am Indian (calcutta) and have been able to fend them off but the idea of a union helping me out is so alien I couldn't begin to see the parallel.

What would they do? Could they convince anyone to help improve my position. What would my dues, pay for? To protect my job, they would have to find a way to firewall the internet from companies. This is as far as I can tell, an impossible task.

Also, Matt, it is annoying to have so many youtubes in a single post. I simply could not work through them all. One youtube is fine, but I am not here to watch TV. Are you?

When you try to organize a union, the first move the management makes is to bring in an expert on intimidation, a unon-busting, high-priced lawyer who plans the battle against the workers. Think of it. The workers are planning a democratic and legal organization that votes for its representatives and holds meetings. The employers are planning to get rid of employees who want a union and defeat a union election. Democracy or Authoritarian rule.

Employees need a level playing field and it's called card check. This is how it works. Want to join?  Sign up and get a memberhsip card. When a majority of employees sign up, there's your union. There's no time or opportunity for employer intimidation and firings. With card check you don't even have to inform the employer until you have your majority.

When I helped organize our non-profit, we had to keep our meetings secret. Employees were threatened with job loss, reduced health benefits and pay, and were pressured in mandatory meetings. It was very disruptive to staff relations with workers taking sides over a long period of time before the election. People would no longer acknowledge me in public, and some wanted to end our friendship. After we won, the bitterness was still there and the non-profit employer took it's own sweet time meeting with our new union, as provided for in labor law.

Thank God for RNs like Cathy who have the right idea. She makes the United Steelworkers Health Care Workers Council look like a high school football team playing in the Superbowl. Keep up the good work and I will try to garner as much support as possible for your efforts. The patient must always come first and the staff who directly care for them come a close second. I never met a patient who asked who the CEO was, they always want to know who their nurse is.

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