Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow makes all the right inferences from this CNN story on SEIU’s wanting to organize employees of banks involved in the $700 billion bailout: "The powerful and innovative Service Employees International Union is trying to unionize bank workers, saying that if the banks are going to get a public bailout, workers should have a seat at the table."
SEIU’s brilliant move was to realize that most service-industry jobs can’t be shipped overseas; employers at, say, janitorial firms can’t simply avoid unions by shipping their facilities off to the first tinhorn dictatorship they could find while they themselves stayed in their gated communities in the good old US of A. Likewise, while the financial industry can, has, and will continue to try to offshore as much as of its workings as possible, it can’t offshore everything.
Organizing the workers at the lower rungs of the white-collar ladder will help make a lot of these folks realize that we’re all in this together. Furthermore, getting the denizens of the pink-collar ghetto into the SEIU orbit will bring some much-needed female representation and insight into the traditionally-male-dominated union movement. It’s all good.
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“brilliant move” “innovative” indeed.
I LOVE Andy Stern
and was completely unaware of this move. good on ‘em !
Pictures at 27 here
This is huge! I love it. The undercurrent is causing rip tides if this keeps up!
Oh Boy is this a doozy of an idea… Imagine workers sharing in the company’s profits.
That’s communism!
Wells Fargo stripped their employees of literally all their full-time status and benifits years ago. They are going to be spitting teeth if this works.
Go Andy!
Actually I think that all these banks should be busted up and nationalized and all lending should be at a fixed rate.
The stock market should be closed and brokerage firms put out of business.
Insurance should be offered ONLY by the government, to anyone at fixed rates.
All lending for capital improvements should be government bonds.
Shrink Wall Street until it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Thanks PW.
Thanks Oliver Wolcott for opening the digg
Gee, I’d like to see some organizing competition. Why shouldn’t other unions try organizing these workers?
I’ve had the displeasure of working as a representatived when SEIU made a hostile corporate takeover. All staff employed prior to SEIU were driven out. They are a top-down organization. They DO NOT walk their talk. They are continuing to bust my former union UAW 2350.
I am happy to hear of and support efforts to organize, but I’ve got good reason to be suspicious of SEIU and Andy Stern.
That stunt they pulled with the teacher’s union in Puerto Rico put me off of them. That and the nurses in CA.
There are new unions springing up that are plowing much the same field.