Workers at Children’s Hospital Oakland Vote to Bolt SEIU and Join NUHW
OAKLAND – Three years after petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for an election to leave the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), about 450 employees of Children’s Hospital Oakland (CHO) finally belong to the union of their choice.
In a decisive vote yesterday of 183 for NUHW to 135 for SEIU-UHW (with 7 votes for “No Union”), CHO caregivers chose NUHW as their union.
“For three years, we were trapped in a union that ignored our problems on the job, gave away our hard-fought contract standards to management, and only cared about collecting our dues,” said Ruth Kees, a Clinical Lab Assistant III at Children’s. “Now, finally, we belong to NUHW, a union that workers control and that’s willing to stand up to management. It took a long time to get here, but we couldn’t be happier with this outcome.”
Children’s Hospital workers include Housekeepers, Certified Nursing Assistants, Licensed Vocational Nurses and Respiratory Care Practitioners.