Wednesday, June 20th, 2007...6:02 am
SEIU: Kicking Tail Up North
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I heard from some folks up in Phoenix about SEIU’s organizing effort among state employees. The effort only started late last week, but they are already above 200 members. This is way above the union’s own expectations.
Monday, several new members of SEIU showed up at the state capitol to make the rounds with legislators. They were officially introduced to the State Senate by Tom O’Halleran, Republican of Sedona.
3 Comments
June 20th, 2007 at 8:00 am
They are organizing the heck out of the State Government workers up here on the Capitol Mall. Still havn’t seen hide nor hair of AFSCME in the 4 years i’ve been here.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I don’t know where you have been sister, but AFSCME has been representing state employees and organizing them for over 40 years. They are in state agencies three times a week, at the captiol daily, filing and winning grievances for state employees every day, and running labor/management meetings with agency heads all over the state…. SEIU statements like flatulation are usually more gas than substance. They have been approaching state employees for over 1 year, do they have 200 members? who knows… since there are no more line item deductions left for the state, we will never kn0w their true numbers. But when the rubber hits the road, lets see how they do representing state employees…. stopping abusive supervisors, keeping the state in line in regards to public employees rights, changing policy and getting terminated employees their jobs back is something AFSCME does daily. Check their website at www.azafscme.org and become educated. If you have joined SEIU, thats great for you, but don’t slam over 2500 state employees union’ they won’t appreciate it, and they know how their union does on a daily basis.
IF SEIU truly wants to represent workers in Arizona, they should FULLY affilliate with the AFL-CIO, so they can no longer raid unions like they are trying to do in the City of Phoenix where AFSCME has two locals, with full contracts for over thirty years. The real reason they won’t affilliate with the AFL-CIO is they do not want to abide by the solidarity no-raid clause article 21.
Right now, SEIU is doing more to hurt the labor movement than they are to help build it.
If SEIU is your union, making positive statements about your experience is great, but do not undermine the majority of state employees own union choice, because in the end that is what it comes down to, an individual persons right to choose their own union.
June 26th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Given limited resources, why would the unions be organizing state workers (who have very good benefits/pension) when other service workers (”hospitality” industry, e.g.,) have bad wages and meager benefits/pensions? Any ideas?
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