On Feb. 25, SEIU staff disrupted a group of healthcare workers and union supporters meeting peacefully in the cafeteria of Garden Grove Hospital. This video shows SEIU staffer Lisbeth Castillo yelling at a hospital employee and spouting obscenities before lunging at an NUHW volunteer and striking him.

SEIU President Andy Stern appointed Ray Marshall to act as a “hearing officer” to help him take over California’s healthcare union last year.

SEIU paid Marshall to hold a hearing and write a report that tried to justify the trusteeship with claims about UHW’s finances, so they could hide their real purposes.

But new documents reveal that:

• Marshall received money more than half a dozen times from SEIU and SEIU’s lawyers—and more than $190,000 just for his role in the hearings.
• Marshall shared his initial decision with SEIU, and then changed his report to address SEIU’s concerns.
• Parts of Marshall’s report were actually written by SEIU’s lawyers.

Click here for a leaflet to share this with your co-workers.

Transcript of Ray Marshall’s deposition on Jan. 21, 2010:

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Following a months-long investigation, the National Labor Relations Board has charged six SEIU staff members for illegally threatening and intimidating NUHW supporters and violating their rights under federal labor law.

Among the Board’s charges against SEIU:

• An SEIU staffer “implying that he wanted to engage in a physical fight” with a healthcare worker for supporting NUHW.
• “Yelling obscenities” at healthcare workers because they supported NUHW.
• Reporting workers to managers in an effort to have them removed from their own workplace for supporting NUHW.
• “Threatening an employee with discipline, including termination,” if the worker “did not stop distributing NUHW literature.”
• “Threatening not to represent an employee if she were discharged or otherwise disciplined… for engaging in support of NUHW.”

All of these actions are illegal and these SEIU staff will be held accountable in a trial scheduled for April 12, 2010.

Click to view the complaint full-screen

SEIU told Daughters of Charity workers we were voting for full retroactive pay, no cuts in healthcare, full parity in benefits, and no management rights when we ratified our contract. So why won’t they give us a copy of our contract?

See for yourself. Click here for a full-screen view.

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Immigrant and disability advocates spoke out at a protest yesterday outside the Fresno office of the labor union SEIU. SEIU came under fire last week for allegedly tampering with ballots and making illegal threats against its own members—including threats that immigrant workers could be deported—in this summer’s controversial union election for 10,000 Fresno homecare providers.

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Fresno workers spoke out about SEIU’s tactics during the controversial election in June.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that SEIU engaged in illegal threats, ballot-tampering, and other serious violations of election rules during a June union election for 10,000 homecare providers in Fresno, according to voters and union staff who worked for SEIU during the election and have now come forward.

A sworn declaration from an SEIU whistleblower says that senior SEIU officials instructed organizers to violate election rules during the mail-in, secret-ballot vote, and then destroyed evidence of the violations. Statements from two former SEIU staff and several homecare providers were recently submitted to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) as evidence accompanying a request to overturn the election results.

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SEIU officials used security guards, voter suppression, and a misleading summary to force homecare workers to ratify a secret agreement with the County. Here’s why they had to fix the vote:

• Instead of raises, the contract provides for a $2/hour wage cut that is virtually guaranteed when federal stimulus money runs out next summer.
• The contract allows workers to be switched out of their current health plan with Kaiser Permanente into a different, undefined plan.
• The contract allows sharp increases in workers’ out-of-pocket payments for doctors visits, prescriptions, and other medical services. Under the previous contract, many of these costs were fixed.
• The County is no longer required to provide workers with protective supplies like gloves, masks, and disinfectant wipes.
• The County is no longer required to provide on-call relief services to care for seniors and people with disabilities when providers are called away by emergencies.
• There are no improvements at all in the contract, only takeaways. This is the first contract in California history that moves homecare workers backward, widening the gulf between long-term care and hospital workers.

How could SEIU get workers to vote for a contract like that? Click the link below to read the rest of the story, hear Sonoma County Supervisors condemn SEIU’s behavior, and see the contract for yourself.

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SEIU recently announced they “saved” 150 pharmacy jobs they had previously agreed to give away. But the deal Kaiser struck with SEIU gives away workers’ security in favor of “flexibility” for management—a concesson Kaiser has been trying to get for years. SEIU had side conversations during bargaining with no workers present. Here’s what SEIU agreed to:

• Up to a full third of the current benefitted Pharmacy employees have to give up their guaranteed hours. This is many more employees than were affected by the job eliminations.
• Current Full Time Employees may be required to take 24+ positions. When the Pharmacy is busy they will work their former full time schedule but when work is slow they can go down to 24 hours a week.
• Pharmacy workers will be required to travel to other facilities.
• Pharmacy workers will have their start times changed whenever it suits the Employer.
• On-call employees won’t be needed as before because the benefitted workers have taken their place. Before, a part-time employee could say no to additional hours. Not anymore.
• The agreement is full of loopholes that are easy for Kaiser to interpret to its advantage—and disputes are not subject to the grievance procedure but are sent to a “committee.”

Click here for a leaflet to share this with your co-workers.

Kaiser’s Northern California senior vice president for human resources told the Sacramento Business Journal that—despite SEIU-UHW’s claims that picketing has brought management back to the table— Kaiser has no intention of renegotiating the backroom deal SEIU made in secret on Aug. 3.

The union is mad that Kaiser sent out job elimination notices … and claims picketing has brought management back to the table. A bargaining session on the proposed job eliminations in Northern California will be help Sept. 30, union officials said.

Kaiser management will attend the Sept. 30 meeting to “discuss and share information regarding the implementation of the agreement signed by SEIU-UHW on Aug. 3,” [Kaiser HR VP] Westfall said in an e-mail Tuesday.

“We believe that this unique agreement and the intensive engagement that led to it more than fulfilled our bargaining obligations. Kaiser Permanente has honored the agreement and expects SEIU-UHW to do the same,” she said.

Click here for the details on SEIU’s backroom deal, or click the link below to read the full news story.

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SEIU officials signed this layoff agreement with Kaiser in secret, before workers were informed of the planned layoffs. SEIU agreed to set aside the Kaiser contract’s Employment and Income Security Agreement in order to allow the layoffs—and the “Dispute Resolution” language on page five limits grievances to the language of the agreement itself, giving away workers’ ability to enforce their contract.

Download the PDF of the layoff agreement

Click the link below to see a leaflet comparing SEIU trustees’ secret deal with the agreements negotiated by healthcare workers and NUHW leaders.

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