Mary Kay Henry has had a rough time in her first few days as SEIU's president. After repeatedly telling the press that she wants to help SEIU make peace with the rest of the labor movement, she caused a stir when she talked about SEIU organizing in the retail food (aka Grocery Stores). SEIU's P.R. team quickly issued this press release to try to calm the nerves over at the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), one of the few unions still left in Andy and Anna's Change to Win!
"Despite a recent media report," says the press release, "SEIU has no intention of organizing grocery workers. SEIU fully recognizes the food sector as a core industry of sister union United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents more than a million supermarket workers."
Yeah well... not exactly. The press release neglects to mention that SEIU leaders have drawn up plans to organize tens of thousands of restaurant workers. Check out this excerpt from an internal plan to organize fast food workers prepared by SEIU's Property Services Division. The plan was presented to SEIU's Executive Committee (which includes our girl MK) in December of 2009.
According to the document, by December of 2009 SEIU had already researched the restaurant industry, mapped restaurant chains across Southern California, and conducted "initial probing" of fast food workers in LA.
The memo recommends a "post-labor law reform" organizing plan with the following one-year goal: "Organize 15,000 food service workers in LA County and thousands of additional workers in an east coast market in the first 6 months."
Hmm... Mary Kay simply forget about this plan when she issued the recent press release saying that "SEIU fully recognizes the food sector as a core industry of sister union United Food and Commercial Workers International Union?" (Tasty wonders what other industries SEIU is secretly planning to organize...)
Kinda funny how SEIU has forgotten its own urgent pleas for OTHER unions to focus on their core industries. Last time Tasty looked, there were 9 million unorganized healthcare workers across the US. Perhaps SEIU's recent election experience in California has convinced SEIU leaders that healthcare workers are more interested in joining NUHW, so SEIU needs to search out more fertile organizing pastures in banking and fast food?
And here Tasty almost believed that MK would be different...Welcome Mary Kay, the new Burger Queen.
