January 6th, 2010
AUDIO: Voting underway for 2,300 Kaiser professionals to quit SEIU and join NUHW
Election includes 900 registered nurses at Kaiser’s largest L.A.-area hospital and 1,400 professionals across Southern California
Local audio clips and photos:
San Diego: Jim Clifford, Therapist, Kaiser San Diego
[Photo | MP3]
Los Angeles: Tessie Costales, Registered Nurse at Kaiser Sunset/LAMC
[Photo | MP3]
Inland Empire: Marty Needleman, Psychiatric Social Worker, Kaiser Fontana
[Photo | MP3]
Bakersfield: Stacy Eldridge, Registered Dietitian, Kaiser Bakersfield
[Photo | MP3]
Southern California—Healthcare professionals at nearly one hundred Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics are voting today to switch unions. They say their old union, the Service Employees union or S-E-I-U, has shut them out of negotiations with employers—and cut deals that hurt healthcare workers and their patients.
The 2,300 workers include registered nurses, therapists, dietitians, and psychiatric social workers across Southern California. They’re part of an exodus of more than 100,000 S-E-I-U members who are organizing to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers, or N-U-H-W.
December 30th, 2009
Press Democrat: Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital challenges union election
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital has asked the National Labor Relations Board to nullify the union election held at the hospital two weeks ago.
In a formal objection, the hospital claims the National Union of Healthcare Workers engaged in coercion and intimidation that prevented “the free expression of the employees choice.”
The NUHW dismissed the move, calling it an effort to discredit an election the hospital knows it lost.
December 28th, 2009
Why we’re voting NUHW
Hear why members and leaders of the Healthcare Professionals Chapter, Psych-social Chapter, and American Federation of Nurses are voting NUHW to take back our union. Have questions about the election for Kaiser professionals? Get answers.
December 24th, 2009
In These Times: Upstart Union Deals Blow to SEIU, Raises Prospects for Future Fights
The union organizing effort at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in California’s Sonoma county could be seen as a labor version of the David and Goliath story.
When the disputed votes cast last week are resolved, it seems virtually certain that the newly established National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) will have won the biggest hospital organizing election of the year, overcoming both a strong employer anti-union campaign and a large-scale effort but ultimately embarrassingly weak performance by the giant Service Employees union (SEIU).
December 24th, 2009
Salinas Valley Hospital workers choose NUHW as their union, move to dump SEIU
Esther Nuñez, Cashier and chief union steward at SVMH “We’re bargaining our contract next August, and we need a union we can count on. 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.” An overwhelming majority of the […]