Houston Unions vie for health care workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/4980283.html

July 18, 2007, 10:42PM
Working
Unions vie for health care workers

By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The SEIU hadn't even reached a deal for the city's 5,300 janitors when it began setting its sights on the thousands of health care workers in Houston.

Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, discussed the union's interest in health care organizing when he visited the Chronicle's editorial board last November.

The union, which had signed up a majority of the city's janitors a year earlier, was in the throes of a strike that included blocking traffic, nightly marches and chaining protesters to the doors of major downtown office buildings.

And he was hardly the only SEIU leader to talk up the union's next target.

Health care workers are a natural fit for the organization that calls itself the nation's largest health care union. Of its 1.9 million members, 900,000 work in health care.

So where are they?

FULL story at link.