Talk:Service Employees International Union: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively

← Previous edit Next edit →

Content deleted Content added

VisualWikitext

Inline

Revision as of 12:25, 22 September 2012

Organized Labour Start‑class Mid‑importance

	Organized Labour portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Organized Labour, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Organized Labour on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Organized LabourWikipedia:WikiProject Organized LabourTemplate:WikiProject Organized Labourorganized labour articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been selected for the Organized Labour Portal Article Of The Day for April 25^th.

March 2010 (UTC)

ATTN: All

To the joker who keeps putting ACORN, please stop without citing things, thanks again! --Cleave and Smite, Delete and Tear! (talk) 01:15, 6

Criticisms of unionizing tactics

I came here looking for info on some of the tactics alleged by SEIU, something about not wanting the workers to be able to vote. There is no information here. Time to put it in? QuilaBird (talk) 21:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Time to put what in? You have no information.Spartan2600 (talk) 07:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spartan, are you kidding me? A 5 second searce yielded this website: http://www.seiuexposed.com/

If you objectively look at the website, you will see links to neutral media sources. Thus, I too am shocked it is not covered and there is PLENTY of information (for those without an agenda). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.76.113.51 (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spartan2006 - out of respect for the Wiki project you need to seriously consider the damage you are doing to the idea of this site. You are blatantly ignoring and removing any content that may suggest that SEIU is anything less than a completely benevolent organization. What if someone did the same thing on the George W. Bush or Glenn Beck pages...? This page as it stands DOES read like an advertisement for SEIU, and if I knew how I would add the advertisement tag to it every time someone took it down untill this was resolved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tanker2000 (talk • contribs) 16:57, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I also took the opportunity to add some CITED criticisms of SEIU, but Spartan (or some other editor with a pro union agenda) will no doubt delete them anyway... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tanker2000 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kenneth Gladney

Added information about the altercation between members of the SEIU and Kenneth Gladney in St. Louis, MO. I think this helps with the neutrality of the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.20.78.230 (talk) 12:26, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is what I came here to see, and it's gone, so apparently someone didn't like it despite it being clearly a factual, SIEU related incident -- arguably the one that made them (in)famous. 72.86.42.38 (talk) 12: 25, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Vagabras?

What's a vagabras?... I search google and dictionaries and find nothing even similar. Sorry, just floated across this page looking at unions. Maybe change to 'division'? Or sections? Departments... I dunno. I'm not gonna edit it myself cause I just don't know if there's a meaning for vagabras in the Communist Manifesto or something.

hide* (btw, if it really does have a meaning, I'd recommend creating a separate article for it and explain it for newbs like me) Nuriko (talk) 08:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Puerto Rico

The sentence about Rivera working with Puerto Rico's governor to organize teachers is basically contradicted by the article it references. Rivera worked with the governor to break an already existing union in Puerto Rico. 141.140.6.181 (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stand for Security

Is anyone capable of writing an NPOV article on the SEIU's latest efforts under the "Stand For Security" organization? I'm afraid that I'd be POV on the subject. Pyrogen 21:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ordering Locals List

Any suggestions on how to make sense of the list? Some ideas: by primary jurisdiction (as many locals represent workers in multiple jurisdictions), geographically, by date chartered (would be hard to research, complicated by mergers), or numerically (entirely arbitrary). - -Fcendejas 01:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that although arbitrary, I would find a numerical order the easiest to use to find a specific local. Also, as you mentioned, any other order has inherent complications because of overlap. --Syndicalista 02:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1199

I just fixed the separate references to Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union and Local 1199 as they refer to the same thing. Right now the entry is under Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union. I am going to move the entry to Local 1199 as that is the name by which everyone refers to the union. Nspeelman 23:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Lusty Lady

By no means is this intended as a slight to the sex workers of the world... but does it strike anyone else as odd that one shop should have more content than the mergers of entire national unions? I am going to create a "Trivia" section and move the Lusty Lady bit down there. Nspeelman 23:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

527-group cat

Maybe this is just picky, but aren't all unions 501(c)5's, not 527s? Wouldn't it would be more correct to note that SEIU (and other unions) have affiliated 527s', e.g. COPE, but are not classified as such? Fcendejas 04:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. SEIU is NOT a 527. It is a 501 (c)5. It should not be categorized as one. Nspeelman 00:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POV-check nomination

I'd like to hear others' thoughts on the NPOV of this article, including a fair way to sort the list of locals. -- 66.159.216.215 05:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems ok to me as is. Anybody mind me getting rid of the neutrality box at the top? Thereisnowhy 21:44, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I took the tag off.--Bookandcoffee 05:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update for SEIU NV

I do not know how, but can someone update SEIU Local 1107's web address to:

www.seiunv.org

Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.241.56.58 (talk) 21:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Is 1107 linked anywhere on this page? --ChrisHamby (talk) 15:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edits

In the sentence referencing "Purple Ocean", I removed "- the first organization of its kind.". The AFL-CIO created Working America in 2003-- it never amounted to anything, but it was first. And other unions like the IWW have allowed at-large members for many years, as have coalitions like Jobs with Justice. Even before the IWW and the old AFL existed, the Knights of Labor long ago started as an organization mostly of at-large members (or at least membership wasn't necessarily organized around a particular workplace or employer). Then there was De Leon's organization after the Knights. And there were similar organizations around even before the Knights. I know SEIU people like to think the history of the labor movement started with them or only the historical figures the leadership chooses to acknowledge, but come on now.

Also, regarding the Lusty Lady, I changed "successful union drive" to read "union drive to result in a collective bargaining agreement". Saying it was the only successful union drive makes two assumptions, at least one of which is inaccurate or at least thoroughly subjective, and the other unlikely in my opinion.

1. It presumes the only "successful" union drive is one in which a majority of bargaining unit members authorize a union as their exclusive bargaining representative then achieve a first contract. If that's the only measure of success, then you'd have to dismiss most of the history of union activism in America prior to 1936 as nothing but abject failure, as well as dismiss the victories won by minority unions in the U.S. today and most of the rest of the world where exclusive bargaining representation is not the norm and collective bargaining agreements may or may not be concluded despite a constant presence of union activity.

2. It assumes there has been no history of minority union activity in strip clubs that have won any gains for the dancers. Considering how long strip clubs have been around and the long history of minority union activity in this country, that's a HUGE assumption to make.

--Nicky Scarfo 19:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Organizing in the south

I did some research to check on the statement regarding renewed organizing efforts/successes in the four southern states mentioned, because someone had flagged that statement as needing a citation. I added some details for two of the four states mentioned, and I'll try to do the other two when I have additional time to contribute. But I certainly won't mind if anyone else wants to take a stab at it. --Syndicalista 02:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SEIU Local 503, OPEU Adult Foster Care Home organizing

"This is the first time adult foster care providers were able to form a union in the United States.[citation needed]"

Since you do not allow "original research," I can cite an indirect confirmation for this statement -- "[Les] Smith adds, 'In 35 years of practice in labor relations, I have never heard of a situation where a group of employers have been pulled together to become "employees" and find a union to bargain on their behalf.'" (http://oregontaxresearch.com/fosterhome.htm), where Smith is a (management) labor attorney hired by opponents of organizing adult foster care providers. While he and I disagree on the appropriateness of organizing adult foster care providers, we agree that it has not happened before, at least in the US.

Because this is the first successful union organizing campaign for adult foster care providers -- and perhaps the first attempt, but failed attempts are harder to research -- and has only recently occurred (in fact, some aspects of the organizing are still ongoing), there are few references to it, and none placing it in a broader context of long-term care organizing. In the case of the similar homecare organizing, it took several years before "neutral" studies began appearing.

Were it not a violation of the Wiki rules against original research, I would offer myself as a source. I was (am still) the lead organizer on this campaign, myself did initial research looking for other similar campaigns, had follow-up research done by one of our staff researchers and by SEIU International's legal staff (looking for legal precedents for this), and none of us could find any previous example of adult foster care providers being organized. But none of the research we did was -- or is ever likely to be -- published. We did find that there was organizing of adult foster home caregivers (ie, the employees of providers) in Michigan, but that is significantly different from organizing the providers.

BTW, the second such campaign is in the state of Washington, where it is now certain that there will be an adult foster care providers union, although it has not yet been determined which of two labor entities (AFSCME/WFSE or an independent union) will represent them. Expect to see more of these provider unions emerge across the US in the next few years.

Bill Kelsey, SEIU Local 503, OPEU kelseyb@opeuseiu.org 64.122.196.98 21:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for trying. If you can ever get quoted in say, the Statesman Journal or The Oregonian, that would be ideal. I suppose in a few years as this movement catches on, the news stories will say that Oregon was the first. Anyway, I just looked to try to find something to back up this statement. (which I don't doubt is true, but it should be cited) I couldn't find anything, but I did find this piece from 2003 that might be used to flesh out info about the earlier campaigns. http://www.paraprofessional.org/publications/Victories_for_home_health_care_workers.pdf Katr67 22:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

11/13/07 - Citations added from 11/11/07 Statesman Journal article re: this is first adult foster care union in US; SEIU 503 is now largest union in Oregon; organizing of commercial and relative adult foster care providers. 64.122.196.98 20:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Groups joining and leaving?

There are several sentences here about groups of a few thousand joining or leaving at particular points in history. Most of these moves are not significant for an encyclopedia. Shall we start a push to remove them, to make the text more coherent and interesting? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 19:36, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removing "Opposition to volunteerism and community service"

I'm removing the "Opposition to volunteerism and community service" section, since the entire section stems from one obscure incident, doesn't provide any context, and it doesn't even say why the SEIU would be against community service in general.Spartan2600 (talk) 07:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Removing "Opposition to volunteerism and community service"

I'm re-introducing it, with more details. How Spartan2600 can consider a statement from a president of a chapter of SEIU as obscure is beyond me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.203.162.120 (talk) 07:20, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can figure it out. For a student who "mostly makes grammatical changes" s/he sure goes out of their way to make sure nothing negative about this group gets posted here.

Please assume good faith and sign all your comments. [[1]] Spartan2600 (talk) 09:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why No "Controversies" Section?

Among a lot of other things, SEIU's president Andy Stern is one of the President's most frequent visitors, a White House guest well over 20 times this past year. How would it look if some corporate president or CEO had that kind of access to the President? There're a lot of other controversial things about this union; I'd hoped to read about them when I looked up this article, but like the Wiki box says, it's written like an advertisement. Somebody who knows more might try adding a "Controversies" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DAC1956 (talk • contribs) 16:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should there also not be some mention of the incident where Kenneth Gladney, an African American, was beaten up and called an "Uncle Tom" by SEIU members for selling anti-Obama merchandise? That certainly seems like a noteworthy controversy. 98.91.4.96 (talk) 22:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hate SEIU but the controversy people the right-wing stoked around that issue was total hyperbole and a case of playing politics. Even if the Tea Party narrative on the issue is 100% true we're talking about one incident involving a few rank and file members acting on their own authority out of an organization of over a million. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.38.150.146 (talk) 07:17, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent Vandalism

The opening statement originally state it represented "about 7 or 8 employees" and characterized SEIU as "Socialist," which I accordingly fixed and cited correctly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.206.50.74 (talk) 03:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Politically friendly leader of faction of President's support base visits White House frequently. News at 11. Lothar76 (talk) 03:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We got ACORN bots round here. As a passing through editor, I'll help --Cleave and Smite, Delete and Tear! (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

can someone with more power/accessibility that i have please change "Just Ice for Wallabees" to "Justice for Janitors", which is what I presume was the original intent of that phrase. it is simply childish to change actual facts with silly, useless farce. Incidentally, "wallabees" is not even the correct accepted spelling of "wallabies". 67.170.183.113 (talk) 04:20, 27 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article might have been written by SEIU people. There is NO meaningful history beyond 2007, and NO mention of any of the myriad current news stories that accuse SEIU people of assault, fraud, rigging union elections, and so on. The SEIU is in the news, and has been, for two YEARS!! I haven't been a Wiki contributor for very long, but I've used Wiki as a source for quite some time. Articles like this make wonder. Are we seeing the formation of "Craigswiki?" Tbone0106 (talk) 02:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"news stories that accuse SEIU people of..." You've explained why those things aren't on the page- they're *accusations.* Wikipedia is not for posting gossip, rumors or accusations. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources, While the reporting of rumors has a news value, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should only include information verified by reliable sources. Wikipedia is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." Spartan2600 (talk) 07:22, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But they're not just rumors. There's been actual news coverage, including video of SEIU intimidation tactics, particularly at some Townhall meetings and Teaparty demonstrations. Blooddraken (talk) 19:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And let's not forget the way they terrorized a teenaged boy at his own home. Blooddraken (talk) 19:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you have reliable sources, I will ask that you please stop libeling SEIU. As with every Wikipedia article, you must obey policies and guidelines. If something is unverified and irrelevant, you cannot put it on the article. Spartan2600 (talk) 05:52, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Radical Associations

Should SEIU controversial relations with radical groups be added? DC march on 10/02/10 and May Day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dunnbrian9 (talk • contribs) 07:32, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism section

It appears the criticism section consists mostly of things cited from a generally anti-union perspective, but includes little criticism of the organization from the labor movement itself and SEIU's own members. These sorts of criticisms have been well documented in Labor Notes and other independent labor journals, newspapers and websites. For example: Only a passing mention of a massive rebellion by SEIU's members on the West Coast, NO mention of SEIU's assault on the Labor Notes Conference, NO mention of forced national mergers of locals into mega-locals largely responsive to the national leadership rather than the rank-and-file and local leadership, NO mention of SEIU's raids of other unions, NO mention of SEIU's raid on the Puerto Rican Teachers Union and the assistance they provided in breaking their strike, nor the violently suppressed demonstrations by that union against SEIU's convention in Puerto Rico, NO mention of SEIU "corporatizing" of grievance handlings by replacing stewards with central call centers, NO mention of Ivy League staffers with little to no experience working in the industries SEIU represents being appointed to officer positions, NO mention of the general lack of democracy within SEIU.

Now given that I think it unlikely that no one has ever tried to include such criticisms in this article, given the number of critics SEIU has within the labor movement and its own ranks out there, I can only conclude the lack of mention is because SEIU operatives, in their true Stalinist thug form, have succeeded in purging this article of any such criticism, but have not succeeded in keeping out the ideologically anti-union criticism.

I mean, what are the standards here exactly? The NLRB has to slap SEIU on the wrist before anyone is allowed to include criticism of their undemocratic practices here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.38.150.146 (talk) 07:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal

I propose that Since Sliced Bread be merged into Service Employees International Union. The article has already been tagged for notability; the material in the article can easily be covered in the SEIU article; and as mentioned on the talk page, the contest domain name is for sale. Don't see any reason to keep it as its own article. Duttler (talk) 23:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 Added information about the altercation between members of the SEIU and Kenneth Gladney in St. Louis, MO.  I think this helps with the neutrality of the article   <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/70.20.78.230|70.20.78.230]] ([[User talk:70.20.78.230|talk]]) 12:26, 18 April 2010 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
+; This is what I came  here to see, and it's gone, so apparently someone didn't like it despite it being clearly a factual, SIEU related incident -- arguably the one that made them (in)famous. [[Special:Contributions/72.86.42.38|72.86.42.38]] ([[User talk:72.86.42.38|talk]]) 12:25, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 ==Vagabras?==