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BeyondChron: Unite Here Local 2 workers and NUHW in struggles against Kaiser

By Randy Shaw

In the largest internal hotel protest in San Francisco history, nearly 300 UNITE HERE Local 2 workers walked off their jobs and marched through the Hilton lobby on July 13 after Kaiser President Gregory Adams violated the union’s hotel boycott. The hour-long lobby takeover shut down dining facilities including the hotel’s Starbucks, and left Hilton management scurrying to block workers from reaching Adams, who was speaking at a Health Care Leadership Summit. According to Ingrid Carp, a Hilton cook and thirty-year member of Local 2, “workers were outraged when they heard that Adams was violating the Hilton boycott. It provoked the lobby takeover.” While Local 2 battles hotel owners over steep health care premium increases, Kaiser Permanente used the millions it gets from Local 2 and other unions to help generate a 64% rise in net income in the first quarter of 2010 alone. Meanwhile, Kaiser continues to do everything in its power to prevent Local 2’s ally, NUHW, from winning upcoming elections against SEIU-UHW. Kaiser is even allowing a violent thug employed by SEIU to roam their facilities, as it puts the defeat of NUHW ahead of worker safety.

Federal government will protect Kaiser workers’ right to vote

On a conference call held Wednesday by the National Labor Relations Board, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) won an agreement that ensures workers’ right to vote by mail in the privacy of their homes, in a government-protected election to join NUHW. Up to this point, SEIU had insisted that Kaiser workers be forced […]

Federal government will protect Kaiser workers’ union election

Workers win important victory on terms of election for 44,000 to join NUHW

WASHINGTON, D.C. —On a conference call held Wednesday by the National Labor Relations Board, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) won an agreement that ensures workers’ right to vote by mail in the privacy of their homes, in a government-protected election to join NUHW.

Until Wednesday’s call, the embattled incumbent union SEIU had insisted that all employees should be forced to vote in the workplace, where Kaiser managers and SEIU staff have exclusive access and have worked to prevent voters from hearing both sides. NUHW refused to agree to those terms, and advocated for a protected mail-ballot election. The federal government has agreed to set the date for such an election as early as next week.

Providence Tarzana votes NUHW as 13,000 CHW workers launch new campaign

Nearly 600 caregivers at Providence Tarzana Medical Center voted yesterday to join NUHW. Although SEIU delayed the ballot count by asking the labor board to review an earlier decision, an absolute majority of Providence Tarzana workers signed a public statement pledging their votes for NUHW. “We’ve taken back our union,” said Julie Sidrow-Thompson, a monitor […]

Majority of 600 hospital workers at Providence Tarzana vote to join NUHW

Victory at union’s second Catholic health system also marks beginning of campaign by 13,000 workers at Catholic Healthcare West

Tarzana, Calif.—Nearly 600 caregivers at Providence Tarzana Medical Center voted yesterday in an election to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) and quit the scandal-stained SEIU.

“We’ve taken back our union,” said Julie Sidrow-Thompson, a monitor tech at the hospital. “For a year and a half, SEIU has stood in our way and left us without a voice. Now that we’re united again in NUHW, we have the strength we need to stand up for our patients and ourselves.”

Providence is the second Catholic hospital system where workers have organized with NUHW, after St. Joseph Health System workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital joined last year. Starting today, the 13,000 caregivers at Catholic Healthcare West—the largest non-profit healthcare provider in California—are collecting signatures to call for their own election to join NUHW once they are eligible to change unions next year.