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Salinas Valley Hospital workers choose NUHW as their union, move to dump SEIU

Salinas, Calif.—An overwhelming majority of caregivers at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital have filed a petition to choose the National Union of Healthcare Workers as their union and end their membership in the SEIU.

They have become the latest to join an exodus of more than 100,000 SEIU members across California who are fleeing the troubled union. The movement began last January, when SEIU officials from Washington, D.C. took over the local chapter, forced healthcare workers from elected positions, and put themselves in charge.

“We’re bargaining our contract next August, and we need a union we can count on,” said Esther Nuñez, a cashier and chief union steward at the hospital. “We’ve seen the takeaways SEIU has agreed to at Kaiser and at other hospitals this year, and we’re not going to let that happen to us.”

KPFA Evening News on elections at Kaiser and Santa Rosa Memorial

David Mallon, a psychiatric social worker at Kaiser Norwalk and a member of NUHW’s elected executive board, talks about our movement to join NUHW. Source: KPFA

Catholic News Service: Union wins plurality in election at California Catholic hospital

SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) — A union seeking to represent service and technical workers at Catholic-run Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in northern California won a plurality in a hard-fought election.

In three-way balloting Dec 17 and 18, the National Union of Healthcare Workers received 283 votes versus 263 votes against forming a union. A second union on the ballot, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, received 13 votes.

North Bay Business Journal: Memorial union election decision next week or later

SANTA ROSA — A series of ballot challenges to determine who was eligible to vote in the Dec. 17-18 union election at St. Joseph Health System’s Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital has delayed a final tally and certification of the election by the National Labor Relations Board until after Dec. 29, according to Tim Peck, assistant regional director with the NLRB in San Francisco.

A preliminary count found 283 workers voting to be represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers and only 13 favoring the Service Employees International Union – United Health Workers West. But 263 of the 675 service and technical workers voted to have no union at all.

Empire Report: National Consequences for Memorial Hospital Union Vote

Despite an administrative campaign defined by misinformation and scare tactics, and a competing union’s million dollar anti-union efforts, Memorial Hospital employees vote to unionize with National Union of Healthcare Workers. Why is their victory expected to have national significance?

Six years after a single employee initiated a campaign to unionize Memorial Hospital caregivers, and months after a rival union began efforts to prevent their election, employees seeking to unionize with National Union of Healthcare Workers earned a hard fought victory.