Press coverage

BeyondChron: Unite Here Local 2 workers and NUHW in struggles against Kaiser

nuhw — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:53:54 +0000

By Randy Shaw

In the largest internal hotel protest in San Francisco history, nearly 300 UNITE HERE Local 2 workers walked off their jobs and marched through the Hilton lobby on July 13 after Kaiser President Gregory Adams violated the union’s hotel boycott. The hour-long lobby takeover shut down dining facilities including the hotel’s Starbucks, and left Hilton management scurrying to block workers from reaching Adams, who was speaking at a Health Care Leadership Summit. According to Ingrid Carp, a Hilton cook and thirty-year member of Local 2, “workers were outraged when they heard that Adams was violating the Hilton boycott. It provoked the lobby takeover.” While Local 2 battles hotel owners over steep health care premium increases, Kaiser Permanente used the millions it gets from Local 2 and other unions to help generate a 64% rise in net income in the first quarter of 2010 alone. Meanwhile, Kaiser continues to do everything in its power to prevent Local 2’s ally, NUHW, from winning upcoming elections against SEIU-UHW. Kaiser is even allowing a violent thug employed by SEIU to roam their facilities, as it puts the defeat of NUHW ahead of worker safety.

ZNet: Huge election for Kaiser workers, 45,000 set to vote

nuhw — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:52:22 +0000

By Cal Winslow

The new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) has filed petitions representing tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers’ decertification petitions setting the stage for the largest, most important union election in decades.

Kaiser workers, 45,000, at last have won the right to vote for a union of their choice.

Sacramento Business Journal: Kaiser workers petition for vote to change unions

nuhw — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:29:05 +0000

By Kathy Robertson

Kaiser workers launched what could be the biggest labor battle in decades when they filed petitions Tuesday calling for union elections that would allow thousands of Kaiser workers to leave Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) for a rival union started by former SEIU leaders.

The vote would cover about 45,000 workers statewide, including 4,000 in the Sacramento region. Petitions were filed with the Oakland and Los Angeles offices of the National Labor Relations Board, which will verify they were filed appropriately and schedule elections.

In These Times: California union rebels demand biggest labor board vote in seven decades

nuhw — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:28:44 +0000

By Steve Early

At the Bay Area NUHW press briefing, hosted by UNITE HERE Local 2, Kaiser workers explained why they want out of their existing union. Since January of 2009, when former SEIU president Andy Stern (now a drug company board member) put 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers (UHW) under trusteeship for challenging his heavy-handed rule, things have not gone well for care-givers in California.

Kaiser social workers Randi Shaw and David Shapiro were part of a pre-trusteeship UHW chapter that had 350 widely-dispersed members, but a strong network of 35 elected shop stewards. The social workers felt connected to Kaiser contract negotiations in 2000 and 2005 that Shapiro participated in as a bargaining committee member.

“As social workers, we believe in democracy, in electing our stewards,” Shaw said. “When SEIU took over our local, they said nothing would change. But one of the first things they did was remove stewards and other elected leaders.” Day-to-day representation has suffered as result, Shaw and Shapiro reported. Only members willing to sign an official SEIU loyalty oath are eligible to serve as stewards or negotiators.

So Kaiser management is taking advantage of the weaker, less experienced people who’ve replaced the hundreds of Kaiser stewards who have quit or been purged by SEIU because of their NUHW sympathies. “It’s very different working at Kaiser now, “Shaw said. “The culture has changed and you can feel it.”

KPFA Radio: 45,000 Kaiser healthcare workers file for election

nuhw — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:24:25 +0000

KPFA radio interviews Kaiser San Francisco caregiver George Wong as 45,000 Kaiser workers file petition for an election to join NUHW. The election will be the largest-ever private sector union in California history.

KPFA: Labor board rejects SEIU charges and prepares to schedule elections for thousands to join NUHW

nuhw — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 21:34:00 +0000

KPFA interviews Alta Bates Summit Medical Center worker Beverly Griffith about the coming elections for tens of thousands of California healthcare workers to join NUHW.

The Nation: the SEIU Andy Stern leaves behind

nuhw — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:51:14 +0000

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.”

Green 960 Labor Report: Kaiser IBHS filing

nuhw — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:25:11 +0000

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

ZNet: The Battle for Kaiser: SEIU calls for WWIII

nuhw — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:52:58 +0000

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.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Judge upholds Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital union vote

nuhw — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:31:13 +0000

By Martin Espinoza

An administrative law judge has rejected Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital’s allegations that improper election tactics were used during a unionization vote late last year.

Hospital administrators claimed supporters of the National Union of Healthcare Workers engaged in electioneering near polling places and intimidated workers. They asked that the election results be “set aside” and that a new vote be conducted.

But the judge, William L. Schmidt, in May 28 report, said there was insufficient evidence to sustain Memorial’s objections and recommended that the National Labor Relations Board certify NUHW as the exclusive collective bargaining unit for the employees.

“I am very excited. I’m very excited to move forward with organizing a union at Memorial Hospital,” said Melissa BoSanco, a Memorial care partner and NUHW organizer.