Student organizers pissed at SEIU/UNITE HERE coalition; are SEIU & UNITE HERE company unions?

Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has been at the centre of several controversies within the U.S. labour movement in the past few years (Change to Win Coalition, SEIU vs California Nurses Union, et cetera), has been accused of abusing the trust of some student volunteer organizers on several U.S. university campuses. Jack Stripling wrote an article about the students concerns for Inside Higher Ed that’s pretty interesting; I would encourage you to check it out. The students, who had been helping SEIU organize service workers (mostly food services + janitorial), feel SEIU has treated them as ‘pawns’. They have released an open letter detailing their problems with SEIU at several campuses and listing a series of demands for SEIU to do: improving internal union democracy, fight for better contracts with Aramark, stop using students and campus workers as pawns in corporate campaigns.

Framework for Fairness Agreement (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

‘Framework for Fairness Agreement’: Certainly sounds very nice, perhaps conjures up images of long-outstanding wrongs finally righted, through civil and polite negotiation. However, since it is supposed to apply to the rough-and-tumble world of ‘labour relations’, i.e. front lines of the class war, it’s a bit useless (to the point of being a major fuck-up for the labour movement in general).Luckily, Bruce Allen (VP of CAW Local 199) has written an analysis of the recent Framework for Fairness Agreement (FFA) between the Canadian Auto Workers and Magna International for New Socialist website that bears reading. I, of course, have my own list of criticisms of the garbage agreement.