Health-care workers' labor leader is CU pre-Labor Day speaker Aug. 28

By Linda Myers

Monica Russo, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Florida local 1199, is this year's pre-Labor Day speaker at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. SEIU represents 1.5 million service workers, many of them health-care support staff.

The title of Russo's public lecture, partly derived from a saying in Haitian Kreyòl, is "Many Hands Can Shake the Earth: Immigrant Labor Organizing in South Florida." It will take place Thursday, Aug. 28, at noon in 105 Ives Hall on the Cornell campus and is free and open to the public.

Russo's SEIU unit represents 5,000 health-care workers, many of them Caribbean Americans, at 75 nursing homes across Florida. Accompanying Russo will be Pauline Clarke, A Jamaican rank-and-file leader of SEIU in the Miami area.

Over the past six years, Russo has led the most successful service-union organizing campaigns in the state, achieving victories despite employer opposition that was cited by Human Rights Watch for interfering with workers' freedom of association rights, among other human rights violations.

When management at one Miami nursing home accused workers of using voodoo to scare co-workers into voting for a union, Russo countered that anti-immigrant tactics and stereotypes aimed at Haitian workers were being used. The National Labor Relations Board agreed and threw out management's charge, leading to union certification for the workers, who had earlier voted to unionize.

Among Russo's achievements at SEIU 1199 Florida was mobilizing health-care workers to lobby the Florida legislature to pass quality-care legislation that increased staffing levels at the state's nursing homes. Previously below the national average, staffing levels at Florida's nursing homes are now among the highest in the nation.

Also under Russo, SEIU 1199 Florida played a central role in the grass roots campaign to place on the ballot an amendment to the state's constitution to limit class sizes in Florida's public schools (the issue went on to win at the polls). And following the 2000 elections, Russo involved the SEIU local in partnership programs to educate members of immigrant communities about their voting rights and encourage them to vote.

Russo is a founder and board member of Unite for Dignity. The organization develops leaders within the state's immigrant community and encourages them to speak out on issues important to them, such as health care and immigrant rights. It has played a prominent role in the campaign to pressure the federal government to release Haitian refugees seeking asylum who are being held in U.S. detention centers.

Russo is an advisory board member of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition and the Haitian Women of Miami and an executive committee member of the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP. She grew up in Oxford, Pa., and graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University.

The talk and other pre-Labor Day events are part of an annual ILR School celebration of the holiday honoring U.S. workers. Classes are suspended to permit students to attend the talk, meet with the speaker and take part in the picnic that follows.