SEIU gives up workers’ pension and health benefits at Daughters of Charity
My name is Suad Husary and I work at Seton Medical Center, a Daughters of Charity hospital in Daly City, just outside of San Francisco.
Late Saturday night, SEIU-UHW agreed to major takeaways with Daughters of Charity that will eliminate our defined benefit pension, eliminate our fully employer-paid PPO plan, increase our out-of-pocket healthcare costs and implement a “wellness program” that financially penalizes workers if we don’t personally meet our employer’s health standards.
You can read more about SEIU’s lousy deal at the always informative blog Stern Burger With Fries.
These takeaways will affect nearly 2,500 SEIU-represented healthcare workers including workers at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, St. Francis and St. Vincent in LA County, St. Louise Hospital in Gilroy and my hospital, Seton Medical Center.
If you are a healthcare worker represented by SEIU-UHW, especially if you work at Kaiser Permanente, please take a close look at the list of takeaways SEIU has agreed to at Daughters of Charity below:
- Eliminating workers’ defined benefit pension plan and replacing it with a substandard 401(k)-style plan
- Elimination of workers’ 100% employer-paid PPO plan; workers will now have to pay 25% of the premiums
- Implementation of a “wellness program” that forces workers to pay 20% of our premiums if we don’t meet the employer’s health standards
- Significant increases in out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions and doctor visits
In violation of their own Constitution and Bylaws, SEIU-UHW approved these cuts at 9:35 PM on Saturday night and began the ratification vote on Sunday morning, just twelve hours later. My co-workers and I hadn’t even had a chance to read the Tentative Agreements before SEIU began to rush through a vote to ratify a contract that will gut retirement and healthcare benefits that we have won over years of struggle.
We know that Kaiser Permanente has proposed similar retirement and health cuts to healthcare workers, and SEIU has given every indication that they won’t say “NO” to Kaiser’s cuts. In fact, SEIU has already announced that they expect to settle a Kaiser contract on May 10th.
If you are a Kaiser worker there’s something you can do.
Print out this email about the cuts at Daughters of Charity and then ask your co-workers to sign our petition to “Just Say NO” to cuts at Kaiser.
Sincerely,
Suad Husary, Respiratory Therapist, Seton Medical Center
National Union of Healthcare workers