SEIU’s national leaders are coming
under sharp criticism by the former director of SEIU International’s
Occupational Health and Safety Program.
Why?
“As of July
1,” according to an
article published in an online newsletter about workplace safety and
labor issues, “the two-million member union will no longer have a health and
safety program as it lays off its last health and safety staffer, Mark Catlin, who has been SEIU’s lone
health and safety staffer for many months.”
Here’s what Bill Borwegen, the former director of
SEIU’s Occupational Health and Safety Program, said:
‘Healthcare for All’ is a meaningless jingoistic slogan if unions aren’t willing to fund even the most meager of efforts to reduce workplace hazards that lead to preventable injuries, illnesses and deaths. And with the release of the most recent troubling latest BLS statistics demonstrating how – if anything-- unions need to be redoubling their efforts at this time. Wow. Tragically this is a symptom of what happens when union leadership becomes thoroughly and utterly disengaged from the day to day workplace realities of those they get the privilege to serve.
Sharp
language, right? “A union leadership that’s thoroughly and utterly disengaged
from the day to day workplace realities of those they get the privilege to
serve.”
Why is Borwegen
-- who worked at SEIU for 30 years and was a well-known staffer there -- so
critical?
It turns out
that SEIU’s members work in industries, like health care, with skyhigh injury rates. In fact, injury rates among healthcare workers are higher than in the manufacturing industry. According to
OSHA,
More workers are injured in the healthcare and social assistance industry sector than any other. This industry has one of the highest rates of work related injuries and illnesses. In 2010, the healthcare and social assistance industry reported more injury and illness cases than any other private industry sector -- 653,900 cases. That is 152,000 more cases than the next industry sector: manufacturing… Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants had the highest rates of musculoskeletal disorders of all occupations in 2010.
Musculoskeletal
disorders refer, for example, to the back and shoulder injuries that nursing
home workers suffer from having to lift and turn bed-bound patients.
OSHA goes on
to describe other workplace dangers confronting healthcare workers:
Healthcare workers face a number of serious safety and health hazards. They include bloodborne pathogens and biological hazards, potential chemical and drug exposures, waste anesthetic gas exposures, respiratory hazards, ergonomic hazards from lifting and repetitive tasks, laser hazards, workplace violence, hazards associated with laboratories, and radioactive material and x-ray hazards.
SEIU’s
elimination of its Health and Safety Program is even more troubling given the
rivers of money that Andy Stern and Mary Kay Henry diverted away from local
unions and poured into SEIU’s DC-headquarters over many years.
As part of
their effort to centralize control and power in SEIU’s DC headquarters, Stern
and Henry pushed through changes that required local SEIU affiliates to send
more and more of their dues money to the national headquarters. In one episode,
they even passed a measure to divert millions of dollars from SEIU’s national
industry strike fund into SEIU International’s annual budget.
With all
that money, why are SEIU officials shutting down a program that should be a
core job of unions?
Like Borwegen
said: it’s because of officials who are thoroughly and utterly disengaged from
the day-to-day lives of their members.
