The SEIU, Service Emloyees Internal Union, headed by Andy Stern has decided to concentrate its effort, not on the goals and the benefits of the union members, on usurping parts of the UNITE HERE union. SEIU represents over 100 occupations in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The main divisions are health care (around 50% of the union's membership), including hospital, home care and nursing home workers, public services (government employees), and property services (including janitors and security officers). UNITE HERE represents predominantly in the hotel, food services employees with a very strong division of the gaming industry (e.g. Las Vegas).

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, Scienceblogger Ethan Siegel reminds us that an important contribution to our nation's history was made by a person of Mexican heritage and goes on to write of the importance of Unions, and the Employee Free Choice Act.

And then he knocks down the bogus argument that unionization causes unemployment. OK, that part's rather geekishly wonky. But I love it.

Unionization: ¡Sí se puede!

The gall of this Fox guy is shattering, but listen to this man, Virgil Bernero, standing up for working Americans.

The Swamp's Mark Silva has a piece online -- complete with a picture of Joe Biden at President Obama's elbow carrying a caption mocking the President's introduction of Biden -- describing the first steps the new President is taking in an effort to undo the damage of the last eight years to our economy. Go read that first. I'll wait.

Don't miss the way Silva undermines the unions in the opening graf, either.

President Barack Obama, creating a "Task Force on the Middle Class'' today, also signed executive orders aimed at strengthening labor unions - this on a day when the nation's Gross Domestic Product suffered its worst slide in three decades.

Oh, hai. You're back early. The M$M, the Corporate Media, the shills for big money, the cheap-labor conservatives' mouthpieces, will harp on this meme -- unions bad, corporations good -- until the world looks level. They're lying. You'll need to remember that.

No doubt that's one of the more spinnable statements of the young administration. But.
What if that's really what the men mean? What if this administration really sees organized labor as part of the solution?
That's such a huge turnaround, right there on its face, from the Reaganomics BS we've been force-fed since 1980 -- 28 years of slops -- that I'm nearly in tears with joy.
Meanwhile, I'm making a statement here of my own and backing it up with some fair use quotes -- from Silva and other sources, below the fold.

Go read his editorial, The Union Way Up. Fifty years ago, the nation still thought Unions (or organized labor) were good for the economy, good for the nation, good for the middle class, good for the working man and his family.
Excerpt from Reich:

The way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do this is to expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.

Tax rebates won't work because they don't permanently raise wages. Most families used the rebate last year to pay off debt -- not a bad thing, but it doesn't keep the virtuous circle running.

The President (or the President-Elect) won't think you don't love him if you get out in the streets and demonstrate. Sometimes he needs that "pressure" to get Congress's attention and action. When the AFL and CIO asked Roosevelt for what became the Wagner Act, he said "Go in the streets and make me do it." And they did. When Martin Luther King asked Kennedy for the Civil Rights Act, JFK said "I have an election coming up. I can't initiate this Act. Make me do it." So King and his people went to Birmingham and got busy. We all love Obama to pieces, but he might appreciate a little heat from us now and then. Walter Ebmeyer. www.richaredifferent.wordpress.com.

Your intrepid reporter spent the morning in downtown Pittsburgh working the Labor Day parade on behalf of HR 676, along with other members of the Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare. The local letter carriers had kindly allowed us to march with them; as they were at the tail end of the parade, we had plenty of time to leaflet before hand, and we handed out the last of what we had as we marched. It was kind of fun playing carnival barker, calling out "Single payer, single payer, universal health care, everybody in, nobody out!" and shoving leaflets at people.

I'm being glib in the title of this post, but if I've ever felt the need to use "slaughtered" and "destroyed" in a sentence after reading a blog post, this is it. No, silly, not physical violence, but in the intellectual sense: I think NO's comment at the bottom sums it up best:

...why in hell should any politician deliver for unions? implied "ever again?"

One will have a very difficult time defending some decisions and leadership in the unions after reading this devastating post. Don't read it as about Edwards. Take out his name and insert the candidate of your choice; it could've happened to any of them.

Unions in America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than 15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly the same percentage as it was in 1930 before FDR took power and encouraged the growth of unions. The first crucial battle the unions lost came after FDR died, when over Truman's veto the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947. Truman called the Taft-Hartley Act a "slave labor bill".

Since then unions have lost critical battle after battle

To me, Ellen has always been the gay world's version of Hillary. I don't think she's very funny, I found her comedy of errors with that bi-curious actress depressingly plebeian, and I've never understood or accepted the construction of her as the "face of the New Lesbian," and the symbol of how we are accepted by mainstream society today. I didn't know she had a talk show, but it seems she's no friend to unions either. I'm alll for lesbians breaking the glass ceiling, but this seems like a classic case of "fuck you, I've got mine." Way to help out your fellow artist, grrl. Not.

I know I'm the big anti-TeeVee blogger here, but I thought I'd take this moment to say that I do actually care to see the writer's come out on top in this strike. When I'm Queen of the World, creative people will be the ones paid the most for the work from which others have been making billions. The Suits are the reason TeeVee sucks so badly today; I just heard a piece by some director talking about media consolidation, and he was saying that basically 6 corporate entities are responsible for everything that is shown. Worse, it's no longer acceptable to use "out of house" production companies; if you're part of the Disney Borg, you'll find other Mouseslaves to write, tech and act in your show.

Media integration is a great evil, and for that reason alone, I support the strikers. I hope many of them realize that it's still somewhat free on the Intertubes, and they've got the know-how to skip the corporate trap and just produce material for distribution here. I already pay for Netflix so I can watch what I want commercial free and at my lesiure; I would do the same for material from a production house headed up by say, Joss Wheadon.

Irony, it's what's for dinner. Heh, how funny is it that a story about declining American automotive groups (for the unions and GM are both technically in decline) is opened with an ad by one of their more insidious competitors. That made me giggle.

More seriously, you should pay attention to the strike. You're going to see more of this sort of thing, and it could even someday include you and the people you work with. The bottom line is the question of which promises are going to be kept.