Former Nova Southeastern University Janitor Elirose Pierre-Louis, who was sacked due to organizing e

http://unionreview.com/heroic-haitian-sister-s-florida-who-lost-her-job-due-organizing-campain-screaming-affordable-health-

Some people who come to Union Review, who are not in a union or understand the reason why many of us are so passionate about workers' rights, can now look no further than my backyard in South Florida.

Throughout the year we have published news regarding a situation at Nova Southeastern University, a school that sits on beautifully groomed grounds in Davey, Florida - less than 15 minutes from Fort Lauderdale.




The workers at the university organized and joined SEIU Local 11. They were fighting hard for all the things they deserve: Affordable health care, fair wages, greater respect. My concern is that we see these words "health care," "fair wages," and others every day of the week in newspapers around the country - but for a lot of folks, they don't realize how important these things actually are, especially for underpaid workers.

The background of what we've shared on Nova can easily be found using the search bar at the top of the site, simply type in Nova or NSU, and up come all of the articles. The long-short, however, is that the university pulled some clever union busting moves early in 2007 and with the one swoop of a decision, sacked every worker employed in this division. Then they told the workers that they can re-apply for their jobs at whatever the new starting wage was. Then they failed to bring aboard more than 100 of those workers for one "reason or another." That reasoning is because those 100-plus workers were the most active in the initial organizing campaign. To add insult to injury, the university then censored any email coming to the school from SEIU - in other words, they did not deliver any of the emails that had anything to do with SEIU communications, nice, huh?

I am writing about this again today to not only remind folks that this is an ongoing issue and if they can support this cause, they should. I am driven to write more on this because today, Friday September 28th, 2007 - our community will be going to the funeral proceedings of one of our NSU workers, one of the 100-plus that was not hired back, one of the workers with no HEALTH CARE.

FULL story at link.