June 17th, 2010
Labor board to throw out bogus claims made by SEIU, paving way for thousands to vote and join NUHW
After 16 months in legal limbo, workers will finally get elections to join NUHW
WASHINGTON—The federal National Labor Relations Board’s Office of Advice has issued a directive to the NLRB’s four California offices, recommending the final dismissal of charges that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has used to block fair union elections for more than 16 months. As a result of this decision, long-delayed elections may now be scheduled within a matter of weeks for thousands of California healthcare workers.
In early 2009, tens of thousands of healthcare workers signed petitions to quit the scandal-plagued SEIU and join a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). However, federal authorities failed to schedule elections until charges brought by SEIU could be reviewed.
“It should be a crime that SEIU has been able to take away our right to vote for so long,” said Helen York-Jones, a cashier in food services at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. “You can’t have fair elections when one side gets to choose who can and can’t vote. We’re voting NUHW to bring back democracy and member control in our union.”
June 16th, 2010
The Nation: the SEIU Andy Stern leaves behind
By Max Fraser
In the late 1990s and early 2000s the union began to embrace new strategies to meet Stern’s bold growth targets, seeking deals with large employers in which they would agree to remain neutral in unionization drives in exchange for a quid pro quo from the union. In some cases, this involved the union’s collaborating with nursing home operators to improve patient care or lobby statehouses for increased Medicare payments. In others it meant ceding the union’s ability to strike; or providing national hospital chains with economic relief in the form of substandard wages and benefits; or agreeing to organize certain subcontractor facilities but not others, even if workers there wanted to join SEIU. In a number of instances the more debatable aspects of these agreements were hammered out at the highest levels of the union, with little or no direct involvement on the part of the workers.
Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner has studied these “employer neutrality” deals extensively, and notes that SEIU is not the only union to use them to grow. “The question is not whether you are using neutrality agreements; it’s about what you give up to get them and how you go about using them,” she says. “If you want to have a lasting union afterward, you have to involve the members. Unions are most likely to win any kind of organizing campaign when they combine top-down leverage with bottom-up organizing. SEIU has had some very effective agreements with employers that have combined the two approaches, but in recent years they started to back off from the bottom-up approach.”
June 10th, 2010
Labor board could overturn union elections over hospital’s illegal interference
Management gave SEIU full access to campaign while threatening the jobs of NUHW supporters if they discussed election
San Jose and Gilroy, Calif.—The National Labor Relations Board has impounded more than 500 ballots in a contentious union election at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose after workers reported that management violated federal labor law by allowing only side to be heard. At Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy, similar charges will be filed after management interference affected the outcome of a close election between SEIU and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
“It’s our decision which union is best for us, and it’s against the law for management to take sides like this,” said Susan Reddell, a respiratory therapist at Saint Louise. “We want the labor board to protect our right to a fair election and let us choose without intimidation and threats of discipline.”
Hospital workers say their employer, the Daughters of Charity Health System, preferred the incumbent union because SEIU had agreed to a wage freeze and healthcare takeaways, and that the employer illegally interfered with their legal right to organize with the new union, NUHW.
June 8th, 2010
Green 960 Labor Report: Kaiser IBHS filing
Green 960 Labor Report interviews Kaiser Permanente IBHS Chapter member Emily Ryan about IBHS chapter members’ filing of majority petitions to leave SEIU and join NUHW June 3 at the NLRB. Source: Green 960AM
June 8th, 2010
ZNet: The Battle for Kaiser: SEIU calls for WWIII
By Cal Winslow
SEIU has already rushed through a sweetheart deal, a tentative contract with Kaiser. It has agreed to a 3% increase in wages for two years, but this is what workers were guaranteed in the current contract – they would have received this next year even if they had simply walked away from bargaining. It marks the lowest wage settlement in fifteen years. SEIU has also left the door wide opened for healthcare concessions – a committee will be convened next year to review Kaiser’s proposed cuts. This is in line with SEIU-UHW’s healthcare concessions policies in California – sign anything, keep NUHW out. This new “national” agreement was cut and rushed through by SEIU-UHW trustee “old school” Dave Regan – breaking long standing precedent, there will be no local bargaining. The agreement, clearly settled with the NUHW Kaiser campaign in mind, comes as Kaiser reports record profits – $2.2 billion in 2009, $600,000 in the first quarter of 2010.