We Deserve a Real Union at Corizon Prison Health Services
I am proud to announce that last week, the 140 caregivers at Corizon Prison Health Services in Alameda County filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board signed by me and more than 75% of my co-workers to leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW. As registered nurses, social workers, licensed vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants and other healthcare workers, we believe that we deserve to be represented by a union that is willing to stand up for healthcare workers.
In our last contract negotiations, SEIU-UHW allowed our employer to impose huge cutbacks in health insurance, and then after the contract was settled their reps were nowhere to be found. Calls to the union go unreturned, union representatives are unresponsive and management is never challenged even when they violate the terms of our contract.
We and other healthcare workers deserve better. And with NUHW, we know we will be in a union that we can trust to stand up for us. We’ll have better representation and our dues will be lower than they were in SEIU.
We are greatly encouraged by the recent victory of workers at Mission Neighborhood Health Center in San Francisco. Like us, in their last contract negotiations under SEIU, they were forced to accept huge concessions in health insurance while their day-to-day representational issues were ignored. After voting to leave SEIU and join NUHW, the MNHC workers just unanimously ratified a contract that includes improvements in retirement and job security, wage increases of 6% over the term of the contract and not a single takeaway. If the NUHW members at MNHC can do it, so can we.
In solidarity,
Zeny Gutman
Registered Nurse
Corizon Prison Health Services