Press coverage for the NUHW/Zombie SEIU trial

Most labor disputes go unreported or woefully under-reported by the LameStream media. In an effort to bring the coverage to the forefront of my readers minds here's a round up of what was covered by mostly local media. Oddly enough the New York Times had a little, very little to say about this monumental Zombie SEIU screw up.


I have decided not to list any press releases written by Zombie UHW media relations flunkie Steve Trossman since they are horribly biased propaganda pieces and I assume none of my readers care in the least what he has to say.

Obviously a lot of the coverage will be duplicative but I feel it's still worth reading to get a consensus view of the trial and it's implications.

First off are Randy Shaw's and Carl Finamore's articles on BeyondChron, followed by Randy's summary of the struggle for union democracy since January 2009.

Local coverage continues with San Francisco Business Times coverage by Chris Rauber, IndyBay, Christopher Cook at San Francisco Bay Guardian.

National coverage includes the kind of super secret teleconference attendee David Moberg of In These Times, Mike Parker at Labor Notes, Steve Early at Monthly Review and finally Stephen Greenhouse of the New York Times wrote a whole paragraph about the trial verdict.

As a blogger I would be remiss if I didn't mention the excellent coverage of fellow bloggers Perez Stern and Tasty Burger (here, here and here).

Much to my surprise the pseudo-bloggers from the trial have nothing to say, despite being ecstatic about the verdict during Friday's teleconference. Lame!

When great local unions go bad

(As per Perez Stern's direction in his Friday, March 26 entry here are the key terms in today's blog entry, and its supporting works: Huffington Post, BeyondChron, Sal Rosselli, John Borsos, Shirley Nelson, Carl Finamore, Andy Stern, SEIU, NUHW, UHW, Judge Alsup, $25 million in damages, lump sum payout pension, Alameda Hospital, Eliseo Medina, Mary Kay Henry, Tyrone Freeman and Leon Chow.) Now, on with the show (blog)!

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If occurs to me that some of my readers may be outside of the healthcare/NUHW/SEIU realm of understanding and therefore only vaguely aware of SEIU's lawsuit against the 26 union reformers now the leadership of NUHW. So I found a couple of articles that give a good summary of the trial; one from NUHW supporter perspective and one that gives an outside looking in perspective. Both are well written and will sum up this crucial trial for union democracy.

First, NUHW member and caregiver at Kaiser Redwood City Hospital Shirley Nelson sounds off with this bit about the absurdity of the Zombies attacks and why they are really suing the vanguards of union democracy.

Second is Carl Finamore's article on BeyondChron. It explains what happens when international union leadership runs roughshod over the local union's elected leaders, to the dismay of the electing members.

Perez is back...again!

All hail Perez! As SierraSpartan pointed out there is certainly strength in numbers. I can wholeheartedly understand why Perez took a breather, 451 entries for last year would make anyone want to take a break.