In a move that's fascinating if you're at all into union inside baseball, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) have agreed "to pursue a formal relationship between our two unions and to work toward a potential future affiliation."
NUHW has its roots in an SEIU local; when the local's president, Sal Rosselli, and other leadership came into conflict with then-SEIU President Andy Stern, they created NUHW as an independent union in 2009. It has been organizing new workplaces and battling the SEIU to represent workers who had been part of the SEIU local once led by Rosselli. That has been a bitter battle, with the election to represent the largest block of workers initially won by SEIU but then overturned by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge due to misconduct by the SEIU and the employer, Kaiser Permanente.
While NUHW has seen some organizing successes, it still has relatively few members and, as an independent union that broke away from and is locked in a struggle with a large, powerful union, its status within the broader labor movement has been unclear—it has garnered support from some unions at some times, but many others question its legitimacy or tactics. Affiliating with a large, longstanding union like the IAM, then, would a major step forward for NUHW in terms of resources and perceived legitimacy. It's less clear what the move offers the IAM, though the two unions' joint press release suggests it's not just NUHW that bears some animus toward the SEIU. A fact sheet (PDF) NUHW has posted on the IAM emphasizes the range of occupations represented by the IAM, its commitment to internal democracy, and its recent work organizing unemployed people; the union also won a victory at an Ikea Swedwood plant in Virginia last summer.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.
10:45 AM PT: Saying it wasn't clear why the IAM would do this was something of an overstatement—I should note that the IAM is surely interested in NUHW as a union that's been doing a lot of organizing and represents an industry with growth potential.