Labor Notes Conference gets heated as CNA Executive Director cancels appearance "amid security conce

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/8325

By Doug Cunningham

California Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro canceled her keynote speech appearance at Detroit's Labor Notes conference amid security concerns. DeMoro addressed the conference by video instead.

: Regrettably our leaders, many of our leaders in the California
Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, were personally targeted by some very bad actors in this labor movement Ð going to their houses, harassing them, looking in their windows, screaming in their yards, treating them like the corporate bosses, which is just Ð itÕs such a disgrace and an outrage to this labor movement.

CNA's Bonnie Castillo acknowledged that security is a concern for CAN members in California, and was a concern as well at the Labor Notes conference. Castillo says DeMoro and other CNA leaders have been targeted for harassment by SEIU.

: She has received threats as well as our leadership have received threats.

As the Labor Notes banquet was getting underway, hundreds of SEIU Healthcare Michigan members stormed into the hotel and tried to push their way into the banquet.

: Chant: Hey, hey, ho, ho, union busting has got to go!

They were stopped by hotel and conference security and police responded to the scene.At least one woman was reported injured when the SEIU protesters pushed their way in to the Labor Notes conference. We asked Alex Schulman of SEIU Healthcare Michigan, who was helping lead the SEIU protest, what they were doing disrupting a labor conference.

: We have workers here from Ohio who had their right to vote to join a union destroyed because Rose Ann decided she wanted to send her organizers out to Ohio to disrupt their union election. They worked for three years to get a fair and free election, and then Rose Ann decided that it wasn't good enough for her. And these members are here to say that she should stay home and stay in California and stay out of Ohio

DeMoro says SEIU and the CNA are at war over organizing nurses in Ohio and around the country.

: We're in a war with SEIU; the SEIU International to be clear. And that's not the workers of SEIU and I want to make that distinction.

The dispute is over organizing and bargaining philosophy, strategy and tactics. SEIU says all healthcare workers should be organized under one banner and says it tries to eliminate employer impediments to organizing by working out neutrality agreements with employers. CNA says nurses need their own union chosen by them and not through any "top-down" deals between union leaders and employers.

---