I am one of the people who organized a letter to Andy Stern, president of SEIU, urging him not to place the 140,000 member California UHW "local" into trusteeship.  (The local is headed by Sal Roselli, who had been a central figure in SEIU, and resigned from a national position because of stated disagreements over the direction SEIU is taking.)  The letter, signed by an invited group of over 100 people, including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, as well as many of the leading labor researchers, was sent to Stern on May 1, and late in the afternoon of May 2 he sent a response.  Then on Saturday May 3 the letter was run as a half-page ad in the New York Times, without informing any of the signers in advance.  At that point national SEIU leaders became very unhappy, as did some of those who had signed the letter.  

Many readers are probably mystified about the explosion of competing union ads on a host of major blogs, especially since the ads involve groups going after each other, with national SEIU at war with two other groups (CNA/NNOC and UHW, a dissident local within SEIU).  This posting provides a guide to what’s been going on and what is at stake.