Author(s):
Chris Kutalik and Mischa Gaus

Excerpt:
Leaders of the Service Employees International Union launched what appeared to be a carefully crafted plan on April 12 to disrupt parts of the Labor Notes conference, where contingents from a dissident SEIU local, a new reform caucus within SEIU, and a competing union were in attendance. . . .

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SEIU protesters attempt to storm the banquet at the 2008 Labor Notes Conference. Photos: Jim West. Click for pop-up

Leaders of the Service Employees International Union launched what appeared to be a carefully crafted plan on April 12 to disrupt parts of the Labor Notes conference, where contingents from a dissident SEIU local, a new reform caucus within SEIU, and a competing union were in attendance.

On the second day of the conference a number of SEIU staffers—some of whom had registered with false names—interrupted four workshops by heckling and attempting to shout down speakers from the California Nurses Association and its affiliate the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

SEIU and CNA have long been at odds, often in direct competition to represent the same workforce and disagreeing vehemently over single-payer health care legislation, labor-management partnerships, and neutrality agreements that allow a union to recruit members without employer opposition. Their latest skirmish was over health care workers in Ohio (see Labor Notes April 2008).

The largest, most ambitious, and ultimately violent part of the planned disruption occurred later that night at the conference banquet.

“The crowd of SEIU members and staff trying to force their way into the banquet served to confirm and emphasize the need to turn the International away from the path they’re on,” said Joe Iosbaker, a member of SEIU Local 73’s executive board who witnessed the incident. “The thunder and noise about the CNA rallies people around the International in preparation for the internal fight that’s happening [between SEIU reformers and International officials].”

BANQUET INVASION

As the banquet was beginning, 200-300 chanting SEIU members and staffers rushed through a double set of exterior hotel doors. The locked doors were opened from the inside by SEIU staffers attending the conference.

SEIU protesters attempting to storm the banquet at the 2008 Labor Notes Conference. Photo: Jon Flanders.

Most of the demonstrators wore the signature SEIU purple T-shirts; some carried signs denouncing the CNA. CNA’s executive director, Rose Ann DeMoro, had been scheduled since November to address the banquet on single-payer health care, although her cancellation had been announced earlier in the day.

About 15 conference volunteers and Labor Notes staff were acting as security at the banquet hall doors. When the chanting protesters entered, waving noisemakers, they and other conference attendees in the foyer of the banquet hall quickly formed a double line in front of the doors, linking arms to block the way.

A number of participants were thrown to the ground by larger SEIUers, some of whom were wearing bandanas around their faces. One protestor broke through the first line and, finding himself trapped between the two lines, flailed wildly.

Protesters continued to try to advance toward the doors, some nonviolently and others more aggressively. Inside the hall, attendees barricaded the doors with chairs to prevent entry.

Former Labor Notes office manager Dianne Feeley, a United Auto Workers retiree from American Axle, was knocked over by one protester and fell, cutting her head. She was treated at an emergency room. Several conference-goers who had their arms linked on the line received minor injuries from blows by protesters attempting to force open the banquet doors.

Hotel security and Dearborn police eventually made their presence felt. After chanting “we’ll be back,” the protesters returned to their six buses, some of which had come from Ohio.

MISLED MEMBERS

Many of the protesters were African-American members drawn from SEIU’s Michigan health care unit, Local 79. David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked some of these rank-and-file members milling around the edges of the protest why they had come.

Cohen said one responded, “They told us just to get on the bus.” Cohen added that protesters he talked to were simply told that the conference was a group of “people looking to break their union.”

The mobilization of Black members for the banquet invasion drew an angry response on April 17 from four leaders of the union’s national Black caucus, AFRAM. Two of the leaders are officers in United Healthcare Workers-West, a key local in the SEIU reform movement.

“SEIU members and their children were led into the hotel where violence erupted at the initiation of SEIU staff,” stated the leaders in a letter to their caucus president. “Why weren’t they told the truth about their presence at this conference? “Why were only African Americans and their children invited, with the exception of the SEIU staffers? Why would SEIU create an environment of hostility rather than encourage and participate in the debate over differences?”

The four noted the tragic death of Local 79 member-organizer David Smith, who collapsed outside the hotel.

STORM OF CRITICISM

Shortly after the protestors left, SEIU’s national leadership issued a press release titled, “SEIU Members Stand Up For The Future Of The Labor Movement And The Interests of All Workers.” SEIU Vice President Mary Kay Henry praised the demonstrators. Five subsequent press releases from the union’s leadership gave conflicting accounts of what happened, ultimately blaming conference-goers themselves for the violence.

The action, however, drew criticism of SEIU’s national leadership.

“There is no justification—none—for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney April 15. As the former president of SEIU, he called on a lesson from the union’s history, stating: “No union should understand the corrosive effect of violence better than SEIU, which was founded by courageous janitors in the face of employer violence in the 1920s and 1930s. I call on the leaders of SEIU to condemn what happened in Detroit.”

Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove also called on SEIU President Andy Stern to condemn the attack, in an open letter.

Another letter was circulated by members of the SEIU reform group, SMART, who were present at the conference.

“We believe it was precisely open debate and discussion that were the target of this hostile attack,” it said.

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