Now I come in. I wonder whether unions can sustain this. Can unions continue to organize new members, deliver contracts, and better their lives? In the grand scheme of union affairs, organizing is one of several competing interests. In 2005, seven unions broke out of the AFL-CIO on the grounds that the labor movement was too white, stale, and male. More importantly, organizing wasn’t important enough among the AFL-CIO members. These seven renegade unions, if you want to call them that, said they were going to make union organizing the priority – that everything they were going to do was going to be done to recruit new members.

Things were going okay for these seven renegades, who called themselves the Change to Win Coalition. But all was not well within the union that led the charge out of the AFL-CIO.

The Service Employees International Union isn’t your father’s union. They are dynamic. They are huge. They are diverse. They are innovative. They are politically powerful – and aren’t bashful about it. But they’ve got problems, and that begins in Oakland.

Oakland is home to the headquarters of SEIU’s third largest local, United Healthcare Workers-West. The proper name is SEIU-UHW. UHW staff are all SEIU staff, but locals typically enjoy a level of autonomy from the international, much like a Chipotle franchise operates semi-independently from Chipotle international.

UHW did just that and overtime had its own culture and contract standards. The staff there said they had a real democratic union where rank-and-file members – hospital technicians, translators, and staff – elected their representatives in the workplace and in the union. Everyone did a fine job and poured a lot of themselves into tasks and assignments.

Labor experts will tell you that ‘union democracy’ is a tricky subject. They’d say, “it’s kind of a myth.” It’s a myth along the lines of “America is the best democracy in the world.” There is a level of democracy within international and local unions, but as SEIU President Andy Stern says, “Democracy is an ugly picture sometimes.”

In January, SEIU placed UHW under trusteeship. Leaders from the Washington D.C.-based international union took control of the Oakland local. International staff fired the elected leaders of UHW. The next day, the former leaders created the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

This new group, with no money, political power, or really, any kind of support besides the exiled former UHW leaders, has cast itself as the defender of union democracy. Advocates say they are trailblazers on a mission to build a better union. They believe the best way to raise wages is by having a mass-healthcare union where everyone with a healthcare-related job belongs together in the same union.

Well, that last idea runs contrary to SEIU doctrine. SEIU believes in robust locals. To achieve big, strong locals, SEIU usually moves whole sectors out of one local and into another. Sometimes locals merge and a new local is born. In fact, that’s how UHW was formed. It was the combination of a Southern California and Northern California healthcare local. No one objected when the two merged.

The die was cast when SEIU wanted to move UHW’s homecare workers, or one sector of healthcare worker, out of UHW and into a new homecare worker local. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. SEIU advocates said they had the democratic authority to do so – that this move reflected a platform that members ratified and supported at the international convention in the mid-2000s.

SEIU called in a neutral arbiter, Jimmy Carter’s secretary of labor, to settle the dispute. He recommended SEIU take control of UHW if UHW leaders did not agree to move the homecare workers. UHW held the line, SEIU took over, and the former leaders of UHW founded NUHW.

Okay, so I think we’ve covered SEIU and NUHW. UHW is still, depending on where you sit, under SEIU’s control or under SEIU’s thumb.
I say depending on where you sit, because, well, SEIU and NUHW are at open war with each other.

The war just rocked Fresno where the biggest battle recently ended. SEIU-UHW kept the rights to represent 10,000 homecare workers. These workers petitioned California government to vote to join NUHW, remain in SEIU-UHW, or opt for “No union.” SEIU won by about 200 votes with an above average turnout. NUHW, the nemesis, has claimed SEIU spent $10 million to win Fresno. Ten million seems like an extraordinarily high mark – it would mean SEIU spent $1,000 on every eligible vote.  Either way, SEIU did what it had to do to win. NUHW has alleged voting irregularity and SEIU malpractice and has filed a lawsuit and appealed for a re-vote.

So Fresno hosted what seems to be a traveling circus. NUHW is also seeking decertification votes (where union members choose to leave SEIU-UHW in favor of NUHW or “no union”) up and down California. NUHW supporters say the next votes are scheduled in what they say is friendly territory in Sacramento and San Francisco.

While SEIU carried the day, all is not as well as it should or could be in Fresno. The County Board of Supervisors disregarded two neutral fact finders’ conclusions and voted to cut homecare wages and benefits by one dollar. As one homecare worker said to me, “can you live on $10.25 a day?” Now, he’ll have to make do with about $9.25 an hour. Both unions blame each other for the outcome.

Why are SEIU and NUHW fighting over, exactly? The prize are the 150,000 UHW members. These members, whether they like it or not, are paying dues to SEIU. Some want to stay in SEIU-UHW. Others want NUHW. If NUHW can pick up some wins and more members, it could sustain itself in the long-term. If it can survive the next few months, it could win big in a series of elections at Kaiser hospitals across California. It could stop fighting for its old members and instead begin to sign up new and previously un-unionized members. For SEIU, it could see a mass exodus of its California members, which home to 33 percent of its 2.1 million members.

Employers everywhere are smiling. The Chamber of Commerce, the largest business assocation in the U.S. is passing itself off as a defender of union democracy. I wish I was lying.

There are two things happening in Fresno and both reflect uncertain times for the labor movement in a hyper-partisan economic recession. One, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors votes Tuesday whether to reduce wages for 10,000 long-term home-care workers. And two, these home-care workers have just wrapped up a two-week mail-in vote to determine which health-care union will represent them.

As part of its effort to narrow a budget gap, Fresno supervisors are considering reducing overall compensation for home-care workers by $1 effective July 1. Currently, workers receive $10.25 and hour with 85 cents in benefits.

“It’s reprehensible what’s being considered now just because of a few dollars and cents problems, ” Lisa Brown, a home-care worker said. “We’ve got to find a way to put everything on the table including generating revenue so that we don’t pull the safety net from people that can’t even fight to protect themselves.”

With a wage reduction, home-care workers like Jackie Peppars might have to find another job.

“I don’t have any kids and one day, I want the quality I give to people to come back to me,” she said. “I’ll face a choice… to get another job.”

Peppars provides care for Mikesha Martinez. Martinez was struck by traumatic brain injury after diabetic complications. Her husband, Carlos Martinez, saw a click as soon as Peppars walked into their home.

Mikesha “was very serious and didn’t smile,” Carlos Martinez said. “[Jackie] came to the house and just like that, wow. Jackie came the second time and made a joke and Kisha started laughing. I tried so hard to make her laugh and she’d look at you like her mind wasn’t there. Jackie would come around and Kisha would talk more. There are no gold or diamonds, I am so grateful in that Jackie’s given that to Kisha.”

Carlos Martinez had previously been caring for his wife 24/7. “I did that for a year and it was hurting me psychological and physically,” he said. Through California’s home-care program, he was able to recruit a few more home-care workers. If Fresno County goes through with the wage cuts, “I’m afraid they’ll look for another part time job,” he said.

Undermining the fight against wage cuts is a union civil war that dates back years. In one corner is the massive and politically powerful SEIU, known for its aggressive grassroots activism. In the other corner is NUHW, a new union led by the former leaders within SEIU. The dispute broke open in January when the larger and powerful SEIU expelled leaders of United Healthcare Workers-West, its third largest local and a longtime critic of the international. The UHW leaders created a rival healthcare union, NUHW, and began to sign up its old members.

Workers had been voting which union to join while simultaneously standing against wage cuts.

“These people are crying out about the budget and they’re having to deal with these ugly issues that are being thrown to us by NUHW,” Michelle Collins, a SEIU member from Los Angeles, said. “We’re trying to focus on what is important, which is keeping their money, trying to better their contract, trying to do things that will go on for years to better their families and their lives.”

Some labor experts predicted NUHW to hold an initial advantage in the Fresno election. Home-care work is decentralized and historically has low turnout, circumstances that favored NUHW because of its relationships as leaders of UHW. Not to be outdone, SEIU brought in 900 outreach workers to expand the electorate. Randy Shaw, a respected labor observer, reports that as of last week 6,500 ballots were submitted out of 10,000 arguably the largest per-worker outreach effort in the history of the labor movement, Shaw said. Shaw expects an SEIU victory because it got new and low-profile members who, for the most part, had little or no connection with the former leaders of UHW to choose SEIU.

That shouldn’t be surprising, and Shaw says as much. SEIU did what it had to do to win an election. NUHW estimates that SEIU spent $10 million in the campaign, Shaw reports. The $10 million figure would mean SEIU spent $1,000 on each eligible worker and the likelihood is that estimation is inflated. Conversely, there is no denying SEIU made serious investments to retain its home-care workers.

Ballots are scheduled to be counted June 19 in Fresno.

What’s happening in Fresno is in some ways, a fight for the status quo. The 10,000 workers are already in a union and enjoy the benefits that come with union representation. These two unions are fighting over members as part of a years-long dispute that exploded in January when the massive international service employees union put its third largest local under trusteeship. Former leaders, depending on where you sit, were thrown out or left with dignity to create NUHW, a new healthcare union. The new union’s first order of business is to get all of its old members from SEIU-UHW into NUHW, which is precisely what’s happening in Fresno.

The dispute has undermined organizing campaigns up and down California. “We’ve been abandoned,” one ununionized worker said.

While the rival unions make their case in Fresno, victims in the form of ununionized workers are speaking out. These are nurse assistants, technicians and translators who were on the cusp of attaining a union contract and watching it vanish. They say resources were diverted away from the crucial negotiations with employers and into battles between former allies.

“We were starved for oxygen,” said one former union organizer who worked on a scuttled effort to organize a hospital in Southern California. “The help I needed wasn’t available. All the help I was supposed to get was directed towards saving UHW.”

Strategy and coordination were lost in the fog between SEIU and UHW. Each organization worked behind the scenes, sometimes allegedly colluding with management, to poison the other’s position.

“During the time we’d be hitting the gas, there was all this crazy stuff going on in different parts of the state where SEIU had sent people,” the organizer said. “Everytime there was a contract that was open, they tried to decert” the union, a process where members vote yes or no on union representation.

The scenes from Fresno are dramatic and SEIU leaders there seek to “bury” the rival NUHW, and NUHW has made a number of accusations that undermine the labor movement broadly.

Fresno is the first in what could be a mass exodus out of SEIU in California, which is home to about 33 percent of the union’s nearly 2 million members in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The battle over dues-paying union members in Fresno and elsewhere undermining labor’s legislative goals. More tragically, it is seriously and adversely affecting the very workers whose lives unions are supposed to better - especially the union brothers and sisters without a union contract.

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