CU Pre-Labor Day speakers discuss unionizing for health-care workers

Following her Pre-Labor Day talk Aug. 28 in Ives Hall, Monica Russo, left, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union in Florida, gives contact information to Cornell junior Jason Lee, while Pauline Clarke, center, a rank-and-file leader of an SEIU Florida local who also spoke, looks on. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Linda Myers

"Today, health-care workers can't afford health care for themselves," Monica Russo told students and faculty at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Aug. 28, in 105 Ives Hall as part of her pre-Labor Day talk. Russo, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union in southeast Florida, brought with her Pauline Clarke, a Jamaican rank-and-file leader of SEIU local 1199, whom she introduced as a "true resistance worker."

Clarke described working two jobs and 20-hour days to pay for family health care out of her own pocket because her main job, at a nursing home, offered no benefits. Despite 13 years in the industry, she earns only $8.60 an hour now, she said. After workers voted for a union at the nursing home -- a drive she helped organize -- employers tried, but failed, to prevent her from joining by claiming her position was managerial.

Miami has some of the wealthiest residents in the country, yet the highest poverty rate of any large urban city in the United States. In Florida, 40 percent of the workers earn less than $9 an hour, Russo told the audience. The overall unionization rate for the region is 5.8 percent, and 2.8 percent for the private sector (compared to about 25 percent overall in New York state), she said.

She faulted weakened national labor laws and anti-union measures such as "right to work" laws adopted in Florida, which she criticized as "right to work like a dog" laws. In addition, in Florida there are laws that favor one immigrant community over another, she said.

Such tactics can only be fought by employing an organizing model that is deeply rooted in the community, seeks broad coalitions and promotes social and economic justice beyond the union and industry it represents, Russo argued.

While the immigrant community is especially vulnerable to workplace exploitation -- "They're considered unlikely to vote, on the margins and they don't get calls from pollsters," Russo said -- she predicted that in Florida, "in the upcoming election, we are going to be the margin of victory." She ended with the Kreyòl saying that was the title of her talk: "Many hands can shake the Earth."