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Not to be too crass, because I've got a lot of friends who are nurses who work hard in a tough environment, but this article misses the main problem with craft unions: they organize the most skilled workers and leave the most vulnerable workers out to dry.

Does having the California Nurses Association or another nurse craft union at a hospital make it more or less likely that the service and certified staff will get a union or be paid more? I'm ready to be wowed by CNA boosters ready to show how nurse contracts benefit janitors and Nurse Aides, but I don't think it'll hold water. Nurses have hard jobs where they work long stressful hours but so do nurse aides. The difference is that nationally, the mean hourly wage for RNs in a hospital is $30.64, while for a nurse aide it's just $12.09 - who needs a union more?

Unions have more success organizing RNs (which is exactly why the CNA and SEIU both want them) because the RNs have the power in a hospital. While Mr. Parker lets the CNA off the hook by saying they use that power to fight for single payer health care, I'd be more impressed if they used that power to help SEIU or another union organize the rest of the workers in the industry AND fight for single payer.

And lets not just get hung up on Labor Notes crush on the CNA. Craft unions are bad for the construction industry too. By not even attempting a full scale organizing drive on the national construction companies, the building trades let the residential housing boom with its tens of thousands of jobs get built non-union. Residential construction is almost exclusively non union and national companies exist, that if organized could have move unions into the south and southwest. Because the trades only had to worry about getting their members jobs that were getting public financing and spent their time and political energy enforcing prevailing wage laws, the labor movement lost that opportunity. Imagine what 30,000 or more construction union members in Georgia, New Mexico and North Carolina who just got fired because of the housing bust and are about to lose their union sponsored health insurance could have done for advancing single payer.