Kindred Hospital Workers Vote to Join NUHW!

Kindred Hospital Bay AreaJanuary 8, 2011

Happy New Year to workers at Kindred Hospital, NUHW’s newest members!

Today the vote count was completed for an election between NUHW and SEIU at Kindred Hospital in San Leandro.  Kindred workers voted 46 for NUHW to 25 for SEIU, close to a 2-to-1 victory.

“Finally we’re united again in a union that we control and that puts our interests first,” said Maurice Banks, a Licensed Vocational Nurse at Kindred for over 4 years. “With NUHW, we’ll be able to win a contract that gives us a voice in staffing, workload and patient care at Kindred. We can’t wait.”

The election at Kindred is the third in two months in which caregivers voted to leave SEIU for NUHW. In November, in two elections covering 1,500 mental health professionals and optical workers at Northern California Kaiser hospitals, workers also chose NUHW over SEIU.

“SEIU tried to scare us out of voting for the union we wanted, but we stuck together. Now we have a member-driven union again, which is how it should be,” said Edna Renslow, a Certified Nursing Assistant at Kindred.