March 12th, 2010
Solidarity: A new type of union in the USA?
By Kim Moody
Last year, US unions lost 771,000 members, enough to wipe out the slim gains of the previous two years. Simultaneously, organised labour’s political agenda, highly dependent on an Obama Administration in disarray and a crippled Congress, collapsed as big business put up $380,000 to undermine Obama’s already lame healthcare reform and $80 million to gut labour law changes that would make it easier to win union recognition. The escalation of the war in Afghanistan will drain further resources that might have gone to create real jobs or fund healthcare. None of this was helped by the ‘civil war’ (see Issue 25) among unions provoked by the incessant raiding of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Yet, out of this chaos and defeat has come something new that holds promise for American unions should they chose to follow. This is not so much a trend as an experiment, one, like so many experiments, brought on by necessity. Last year as reported here, a new union of healthcare workers was formed when the SEIU tried to put its big California branch, the United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW), into trusteeship. The new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) faced the daunting task of winning back its 150,000 members, who due the fact that the national SEIU legally held the agreements covering these workers could not switch to the new union without a new recognition election. There is little doubt that the vast majority of former UHW members feel loyal to the new NUHW, whose leaders had won some of the best agreements in the industry. But NUHW faces some 100 representation elections this year to win them for SEIU. The new union has already succeeded in winning an important unit of 2,300 professional employees at the giant Kaiser Permanente California healthcare chain, despite all manner of intimidations by SEIU officials.
March 12th, 2010
Judge verifies NUHW landslide vote at Doctors San Pablo
SEIU kept workers from bargaining a contract for ten months by crying unfair; judge rules SEIU, not NUHW, had unfair advantage
San Pablo, Calif.—Almost a year after workers at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo voted 158-to-24 to quit SEIU and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers, an independent judge has determined that California’s labor board should certify the landslide vote and make the switch official.
Workers at the hospital have been prevented from bargaining a contract since last May because of the reckless actions of SEIU officials, who filed fraudulent objections to the election that have now been rejected.
March 10th, 2010
150 Kaiser workplace leaders meet to chart a path to victory
On Saturday, March 6, Kaiser workplace leaders from across California met in Fresno to discuss strategies to win our upcoming Kaiser election for 45,000 of us to take back our union with NUHW. We heard inspirational speakers and presentations by our co-workers sharing stories and experiences from our workplaces. We also launched our new weekly […]
March 8th, 2010
KPFK’s Strategy Session interview with Sal Rosselli
Source: KPFA https://nuhw.org/storage/media/kpfk_100308_160030strategysession.MP3
March 5th, 2010
Times-Herald: healthcare unions await board’s ruling
By Sarah Rohrs
The battle over which union will represent nearly 6,900 workers at 51 health care facilities in California is heating up.
A major labor board ruling may clear the way for union elections at the facilities., including Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo.