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Hi disappointed, Thanks for taking the time to write in, and for reading what I had to say so far about the convention. I hope you will keep coming back and checking out reports as I post them. I am trying to have everything done by Saturday. I had to give up on real-time reporting each day precisely because I don't want to be flip and dismissive about everything (although there is plenty to ridicule, and I'm not going to hold back when the ridiculousness rears its ugly head). There are big questions, that SEIU takes seriously, under discussion at the convention and mocking everything about the event would be too easy of an out.

Take the call centers that SEIU is setting up and which you asked about specifically. I got a lengthy tour with some of the people involved in the roll out, as well as a chance to sit down with some stewards who've worked with them and who talked about their experience with reporters. Just knowing all the difficulty we have here at Labor Notes keeping up with address changes, new phone numbers or email addresses, I was fascinated by all the ways the call center could be used to systematize information gathering and maintenance (not to mention actually analyzing where problems are happening and using that to inform our strategies, develop contract proposals, organize in different worksites, etc). I can immediately see how the call center could be useful with a home-based workforce, too.

The rub is that the call centers could easily become a substitute for a good worksite leadership structures, or regular member contact. I am not confident the atmosphere inside the union is open enough to ensure that they'll work they way you describe and not become a shortcut to building a real organziation.

I am going to write more about my tour of the call center tomorrow so I hope you come back, check it out, and keep up the discussion.

As for the international stuff, you are right SEIU had a lot of international folks at the convention, and was squarly raising the need to build a global movement. As the Puerto Rican teachers situation illustrates, however, these are not simple issues, and SEIU sure didn't give enough of a picture of the work they are doing building connections with unions around the world for me to draw any conclusions. The one thing that did seem to be true, however, is that SEIU is not prioritizing connecting rank-and-file workers here with rank-and-file workers in other countries.

From every indication SEIU's international work seems to be cross-border meetings of high-level staff, working out the fine points of their strategic campaigns. I am all for being strategic (you can check out some thoughts on organizing in logistics that we put together in our recent pamphlet on the logistics industry http://www.labornotes.org/cargochain). But developing a potentially winnable strategy in some room with 15 people, even if they are from 15 different countries, isn't the same as building connections and solidarity with workers at the grassroots. Why have sister Torrant, the president of the Australian service workers union speak? Why not have a member organizer who went to Australia and worked with that union for three months or six months give a report? (Assuming there are members getting plugged into their international program)