Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Arizona Workers Bolt SEIU


More than 700 city workers in Tempe, Arizona are the latest to leave SEIU, according to this article in the The Arizona Republic. The workers bolted SEIU Local 5 to join an independent union called the United Arizona Employee Association. The decertification represents a serious blow to Local 5, which only had 3,794 members at the beginning of the year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Tasty hears it’s a ‘chickens-coming-home-to-roost’ moment for Scott Washburn, SEIU’s Arizona State Director. Washburn and his staff are supposed to actually kinda help SEIU’s members in Arizona, but instead have been raiding other workers’ unions in California and Phoenix.

In 2009, Washburn famously deployed himself and many of his staff to California to help put UHW’s members under SEIU’s martial law of trusteeship. And in another big distraction, Washburn directed Local 5’s staff to wage an unsuccessful raid against UNITE HERE at Phoenix’s Sheraton Convention Center Hotel.

Then, last summer, Washburn and his staff spent many more months in California working on SEIU’s law-breaking Kaiser campaign. Washburn even sent his own union-employed offspring, Simon and Hannah, to illegally threaten and intimidate Kaiser workers in California.

Well… Washburn’s unfortunate adventures left Local 5’s members a bit shorthanded back in Arizona. And now, the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak, and Washburn is working overtime to clean up the proverbial chicken poo.

Anyone got a shovel for Scott? On second thought… scratch that. The workers at Catholic Healthcare West, who just lost their defined-benefit pension plan thanks to SEIU’s trusteeship, say that Washburn’s dirty hands can easily handle some Arizona chicken sh*t!