There are two battles involving SEIU these days.

One is the long-standing battle with the California Nurses Association. That struggle has reached a new pitch of intensity and the results are not pretty: the anti-CNA website (http://www.shameoncna.com/) and the anti-SEIU site (http://www.servingemployersinsteadofus.org) run by the two sides show what jurisdictional warfare looks like in the internet age. As I said, not pretty.

Both sides claim the high ground, and both say they are "at war." The latest confrontation was at the Labor Notes conference, where SEIU staff and members disrupted the conference. (See the account on the Labor Notes website www.labornotes.org)

The other involves a struggle within SEIU over the direction of the union and the rights and powers of the members, the local officers, and the International Officers and staff. While the debate is heated, the websites are a far cry from the "--- Sucks" sites being run by the CNA and SEIU. The ugly in that struggle is not the debate but the threat of trusteeship of UHW-W by the SEIU International. See the www.seiuvoice.org site and www.seiufactchecker.org for that struggle.

No need for us to ratchet up the recriminations, nor to lump these struggles together and say, "wouldn't it be nice if the labor movement spoke with one voice?" It doesn't and never has, nor should it. In any movement there are many voices, always. In a democratic movement, one that practices democracy and builds it, we encourage and support debate and discussion. We especially support the free speech and free association of the "anderesdenkenden" -- those who think differently. I saw a great line on a rank-and-file website recently: "If we are all thinking the same thing, then someone isn't thinking."

So, we need to watch the CNA-SEIU dispute carefully and keep our eyes on the issues, not get caught up in the vitriol and flaming. And, we need to distinguish between that struggle and the one between SEIU UHW-W and the leadership of SEIU.

Are there any spaces on the web (aside from here) where there's actual discussion/debate going on about the relative merits of SEIU and NNOC as opposed to mutual attacks? If not, is there an organization out there willing to host such a discussion in a forum that would be acceptable to both sides?

Fights over jurisdiction are never going to go away, and I think the AFL/CtW split is going to tend to result in more of them in the future. Andy Stern's grand strategy is to reorganize the labor movement into 7 or 8 "mega-unions", and I'm pretty sure CNA isn't one of the ones he has in mind.

I have mixed feelings about the SEIU/CNA fight (from what little I know about it). CNA strikes me as the more democratic - or at least more decentralized! - of the two unions, and I've always been a big fan of the Mass Nurses (check out Sandy Eaton's seachangebulletin.org) and of Ed Bruno, former chair of the Mass. Labor Party and now on the NNOC organizing staff.

I do think SEIU can make a good argument that it's better for all hospital workers to be organized in a single union, rather than have the nurses in one union and the remaining workers in another. But while that might be the best thing in theory for the labor movement, I don't think most nurses see it as the best thing for them. So if we've got a hospital where the majority of nurses want to be in the MNA, but the majority of workers overall want to be in 1199, which majority rules?