Kaiser demands cuts in nursing staff and wages--despite $5.7 BILLION profit since 2009 (and so does Sutter Health San Francisco with $200,000,000 profit in 2012)

What's more important than consumer health? A 20% profit rate by a "non-profit".

Who helped punish nurses for forming a new union? Lawyer Emma Leheny, who is now head counsel of CTA, California Teachers Association (see below).

"The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable."
--Cal Winslow

An Alliance in Healthcare
By Cal Winslow
Zcommunications.org
January 05, 2013
Cal Winslow's ZSpace Page

In a giant step forward for California healthcare workers, two of the nation’s most militant unions have joined forces in the battle against Kaiser Permanente, the giant California based healthcare corporation. It is a battle of enormous proportion, one with implications for the entire industry, almost certainly beyond.

The alliance joins the California Nurses Association (CNA) with the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW); it was formally announced January 3, at CNA headquarters in Oakland, CA. It comes in the face of a set of interrelated challenges, each crucial, first of all of healthcare workers of course, but equally important for patients, for workers nationwide, for us all.

“This is an affiliation whose time has come,” NUHW president Sal Rosselli told the assembly of healthcare workers, union staff and members of the press. “Employer attacks are on the rise, nowhere more so than at Kaiser Permanente. NUHW members at Kaiser, with RN co-workers from CNA have already engaged in repeated statewide strikes to stand their ground against threatened reductions to wages, benefits and job protections that other unions at Kaiser have already agreed to in spite of four years of record profits for Kaiser.”

Other unions? Here, already, the plot thickens, for this alliance is not just to battle Kaiser; it is also to fight Kaiser’s incumbent union, the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) California affiliate, United Healthcare Worker West (UHW). Zenei Cortez, RN, who chairs CNA’s Kaiser bargaining team, also CNA co-president, explained, “Uniting together, CNA and NUHW are taking a huge step forward in achieving our joint goal of upholding standards for workers and patients.” She made it quite clear, however, that the fight was also with SEIU’s UHW. “We will have to fight Dave Regan /UHW’s imported, thug extraordinaire president/ as well. We will fight Reagan and his cronies, it is disheartening to say that he has undermined our fight, but we will fight him every step of the way.”

It will be an uphill fight. California healthcare workers face an employer’s assault unprecedented in recent history. The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable. Kaiser, the country’s largest healthcare corporation, has made $5.7 billion since 2009; it pays its CEO George Halvorson $8 million a year (along with a dozen pensions). Kaiser has twenty top executives who receive annually more than $1 million each.

Sutter Health, another huge Northern California hospital chain, last year alone made 200 million dollars at its San Francisco complex, an astounding feat – as Bay Area labor writer Carl Finamore points out, it presents a profit rate of 20%, far above industry averages. In the past year Sutter RNs have repeatedly struck, defying demand’s for concessions, most recently December 24. Sutter, like Kaiser, sits on huge reserves...


California’s Health Care Wars
Counterpunch
by CAL WINSLOW
June 19, 2012

California’s healthcare workers’ wars continue, in the streets, in collective bargaining and in the courts, at a level of conflict not often matched in the US today. More, in these California conflicts, healthcare workers and their unions are as often as not on the offensive.

The new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) has struck the huge healthcare chain Kaiser Permanente four times now in the past year, twice with support from California Nurses Association (CNA-NNU) RNs. These two walk-outs (in September 2011 and January 2012), involving 20,000 strikers plus each, rank as the largest but one (the Verizon strike) on the table of recent strikes. At the same time, this spring, the NUHW has won first contracts – with wage increases and no concessions – at hospitals including Keck Medical Center, University of Southern California; Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital; the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital; and Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo.

At Kaiser, NUHW members are refusing to accept demands in deliberately stalled negotiations for concessions by a (non-profit?) corporation that “profited” $2.1 billion last year and pays its CEO George Halvorson $9 million annually (eight pension plans thrown in). And they are doing this while the rival Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has caved in to Kaiser yet again, this time signing a backroom deal that includes concessions demanded by Kaiser in particular in healthcare benefits. The union has agreed to a “Wellness Program” that commits members to (among other things) “holding down the costs of care at KP” and “enhancing the effectiveness and productivity of the organization” –an agreement that sets a very dangerous precedent for unions in California and a primary reason the Kaiser nurses have already been out – in solidarity strikes, supporting NUHW – twice. All this comes as NUHW members prepare for the upcoming rerun of the big Kaiser election (43,000 service and technical workers) of 2010 – the results of that election, won by SEIU in collusion with Kaiser, having been thrown out by an NLRB judge, based on evidence of widespread misconduct by SEIU.

At the same time, NUHW’s fight with SEIU has gone through another round in the courts. On Wednesday, June 13, in a San Francisco courtroom packed with NUHW members and supporters, NUHW lawyers presented oral arguments in the appeal of sixteen former United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) elected officers and leaders and the NUHW. They appealed damages awarded in the 2010 civil suit brought by the SEIU.

The 2010 San Francisco civil case was a sordid episode, another low in SEIU’s most recent low road adventures. SEIU, to the surprise of few, had trusteed its militant, progressive, 150,000 member California local, UHW.

SEIU seized the assets of UHW, fired its officers, removed its elected executive board and purged its stewards. Not content with trusteeship, SEIU was determined, in the words of its then vice president, “Wall Street” Dave Regan, now UHW president, “to drive a stake through the heart” of the new union, and, more, to see that the former, elected, UHW leaders and staff would “never again work in the labor movement.”

SEIU’s goal, then, was not just to wreck UHW (which it now has done), but to punish its leaders and staff. In the extraordinary trial in Federal Court, 28 NUHW leaders were sued for “damages” – SEIU, in a civil lawsuit, demanded of the defendants $25 million. It was astonishing, an assault on a group of working class organizers, all the more vicious given lifestyles of SEIU’s top leaders (Regan: salary $300,000 plus), not to mention their millionaire lawyers. It charged that these people, all union men and women, had “conspired” (for “personal power and profit”) – for years and all on “company” time – to leave SEIU and found a new union. It claimed they were responsible for an array of alleged offences including alleged illegal actions. They were charged with “theft, violence, and sabotage;” they “left contacts open,” “neglected grievances,” were guilty of “fiduciary malfeasance.”

But all these were dropped, and the pursuit of damages was reduced to $4 million. The case essentially came down to the charge that the UHW leaders were working – for two or three weeks in January, 2009 – against SEIU while still on the payroll. The judge, William Alsup, clearly agreed and the he instructed the jury to fix awards accordingly.

The jury – which included not a single union member – found against sixteen of the defendants, all former UHW leaders and held them liable for $725,000. NUHW was also found liable for $725,000, though this too was extraordinary; NUHW had no “fiduciary duty” to SEIU and did not exist in the weeks at issue.

$1.5 million, nevertheless, was awarded, a far cry from the $25 million first demanded, but cruel punishment for sixteen working men and women.

The appeal was argued before a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Oakland attorney Dan Siegel contested the awards in the 2010 trial. Siegel challenged the basis for these findings, focusing on the alleged “fiduciary malfeasance.” –the charge that the UHW leaders had defied “fiduciary obligations” to SEIU leadership. In addition, he argued that the judge had erred in his instructions to the jury. In the 2010 trial, Alsup had repeatedly hectored the jurors, explaining at one point that this case – this conflict between a national union and its members in a local – was analogous to a dispute between the Bank of America and a branch office. A sort of corporate affair, an internal conflict within a corporation. He prohibited any discussion of any of the issues in the dispute within SEIU. No one on the jury was a union member.

Siegel insisted that the then elected officers and leaders of UHW had the right to contest the trusteeship, including the right to oppose the SEIU national leadership’s forced transfer of 65,000 long-term care workers from UHW to another local California, the key issue at the time, the one that ultimately was decisive in SEIU’s case for the trusteeship. The then UHW leadership had insisted that these workers had the right to decide the local of their choice – including the right to vote on the transfer.

Siegel argued that these officers’ responsibilities, then, were not simply to the SEIU‘s national leadership, led at the time by Andy Stern, but also to the members of UHW (including the 65,000), the people who had elected them, who determined the local union’s policies and paid the bills. Indeed they had an obligation to abide by the member’s decisions.

He contended that this fact invalidated the award of damages – these officers and leaders, even as SEIU members, had every right to explain to the local union’s members what rights they had in the weeks between to decision to transfer the 65,000 and, three weeks later, the imposition of the trusteeship when they were all summarily fired.

They were exercising protected speech, free speech, Siegel argued, when they organized meetings to inform UHW members of these rights and choices – including their right to dissent, to decertify, even the right to form a new union. SEIU lawyers had responded that the UHW leaders had no such rights and the case was essentially reduced to charge that the UHW leaders were working against SEIU while still on the payroll.

Siegel also argued that there were larger issues, issues just as important in the long run. What were the responsibilities of local union officers, not just to national leaders but to their members, again, the workers who elected them, set policy, etc., in particular when these members were in disagreement with national policies?

SEIU lawyer, Leon Dayan, repeated that there was a long-term conspiracy, something the jury had not found in 2010, and argued that the duties of the UHW officers and staff to the national and the local were one and the same – hence asserting that the elected local union officers and leaders were essentially no more than an administrative arm of the national union.

Speaking after the hearing, Siegel said the outcome was important for two reasons, first “to remove these entirely unfair judgments, still hanging over the heads of the sixteen defendants.” In this he said he was optimistic.

Second, on the larger issues, he said he was worried that the case raised issues that could prove “very dangerous for union activists. It took a law – Landrum Griffin Act, 1959 – in part designed to protect rank-and-file workers, and turned it on its head, using it as a vehicle for payback against dissenting local union officers and members.”

Back to the streets. At the same time these workers were in court – fighting for the right to have a union, one of their own choosing – nurses at Sutter Health were on strike at ten northern California hospitals. Their walkout, the fourth strike at Sutter since September, came as union officials and Sutter management continued to clash over sick leave, retirement benefits, health care payments, patient care conditions and other issues.

“Nurses at Sutter facilities are facing an unprecedented attack on their practice the scope of which we have not seen in over 20 years,” said Zenei Cortez, co-president of CNA/NNU. “Nurses everywhere are unifying to resist Sutter’s policies of unprecedented cuts in vital patient services for our communities and deterioration of patient care standards in our hospitals.”

The strike affected 4,400 RNs , as well as hundreds of respiratory, X-ray and other technicians at three Alta Bates Summit Medical Center facilities in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula Health Services hospitals in Burlingame and San Mateo, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, San Leandro Hospital, Sutter Delta in Antioch, Sutter Solano in Vallejo, Novato Community Hospital.

“We don’t believe that Sutter needs to be demanding these onerous and unwarranted cuts from nurses because they are an extremely profitable operation that operates as what I call J.P. Morgan West,” said a California Nurses Association spokesperson. Sutter Health has made over $4.2 billion in profits since 2005, according to CNA. “They’re making decisions on what provides the best return for their shareholders, not for patient care,” he said.

Following the San Francisco hearing, a delegation of NUHW members, clad in red tee-shirts, headed for a noon rally across the Bay at Alta-Bates Summit. June, of course, has not been a good month for labor in the US, particularly in Wisconsin where the electoral turn into a (predictable) catastrophe. It’s far from all over, however. The fight-back continues, including here, in California’s booming healthcare industry.

Cal Winslow is the author of Labor’s Civil War in California, PM Press, 2012 (second edition, revised and expanded), an editor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies (Verso, 2010), and an editor of West of Eden, Communes and Utopia in Northern California (PM Press, 2012). He is a Fellow at UC Berkeley, Director of the Mendocino Institute and associated with the Bay Area collective, Retort. He can be reached at cwinslow@berkeley.edu


TEACHERS versus NURSES???? See who was on the SEIU team!

Head Counsel Emma Leheny, the real decision-maker for California Teachers Association? CTA head counsel Emma Leheny represented the union that caved in to Kaiser, SEIU, allowing cuts for nurses, and affirming the power of union officials over their members. Leheny is exactly the type of lawyer that CTA's corrupt officials like to have.


SEIU v. NUHW

Click to see entire decision affirming lower court judgment

FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-15855
D.C. No. 3:09-cv-00404-WHA

SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL
UNION; DAVID REGAN; ELISEO
MEDINA, as Trustees for SEIU
United Healthcare Workers­ West
and fiduciaries of the SEIU United
Healthcare Workers­West and
Joint Employer Education Fund;
SEIU UNITED HEALTHCARE
WORKERS­WEST, an unincorporated
association and fiduciary of the
SEIU United Healthcare Workers­
West and Joint Employer
Education Fund; REBECCA COLLINS,
as a participant in the SEIU
United Healthcare Workers­West
and Joint Employer Education
Fund,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

OPINION v.

NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
WORKERS; JOHN BORSOS; AARON
BRICKMAN; GAIL BUHLER; WILL
CLAYTON; JOAN EMSLIE; GLENN
GOLDSTEIN; MARK KIPFER; GABRIEL
KRISTAL; PAUL KUMAR; BARBARA
LEWIS; FREJA NELSON; FRED
SEAVEY; IAN SELDEN; SAL ROSSELLI;
JOHN VELLARDITA; PHYLLIS
WILLETT,

Defendants-Appellants.


______________________________

SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
William H. Alsup, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted
January 14, 2010--San Francisco, California

Filed March 15, 2010

Before: Myron H. Bright,* Michael Daly Hawkins, and
Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bright


*The Honorable Myron H. Bright, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.

______________________________
SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE

COUNSEL

Jeffrey B. Demain (argued), Stephen P. Berzon, Peter D.
Nussbaum, Jonathan Weissglass, San Francisco, California,
Robert M. Weinberg, Leon Dayan, Washington, DC, Glenn
Rothner, and Emma Leheny, Pasadena, California, for the
plaintiffs-appellees.

Daniel Siegel (argued), Jose Luis Fuentes, and Dean Royer,
Oakland, California, for the defendants-appellants.

California labor board files complaint against SEIU in Fresno election for voter intimidation

See all posts re SEIU.

Judge rules against SEIU in California fight
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post
July 21, 2011

A judge ruled this week that the Service Employees International Union improperly coerced workers caught in the middle of SEIU’s high-stakes turf battle with a breakaway union in California, potentially invalidating a 2010 election involving 43,500 employees.

SEIU, the nation’s most politically influential union, has been engaged in a costly fight with the former leaders of a 150,000-worker California chapter that formed a breakaway union in 2009. The split followed clashes with then-SEIU President Andy Stern over his emphasis on growing membership even if it meant giving concessions to employers.

Last fall, SEIU won the biggest standoff, an election to represent 43,500 Kaiser Permanente workers in Northern California.

The vote was a big setback for the breakaway union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, leaving it with fewer than 10,000 members.

But this week, Administrative Law Judge Lana Parke ruled that Kaiser had improperly withheld pay raises from workers in Southern California who had switched to the new union and that SEIU had then improperly threatened the workers voting in the Northern California election that they, too, could have raises denied if they made the switch. It is now up to the National Labor Relations Board to decide whether to call a second election, as the judge recommends.

Leaders of the breakaway union noted that the ruling came at the same time as SEIU and other unions are arguing in favor of new rules proposed by the labor relations board to reduce employer coercion against workers before union elections.

“SEIU has been promoting itself an as advocate for labor law reform and workers, and against coercion and intimidation, but no institution has done more to coerce and thwart workers about which union they want to join,” said John Borsos, vice president of the breakaway union...



California labor board files complaint against SEIU in Fresno election for voter intimidation
NUHW.org
AUGUST 22, 2012

The California Public Employment Relations Board has filed an official complaint against SEIU-UHW West for its conduct in the 2009 Fresno homecare election.

Citing SEIU’s “physical and verbal threats,” “menacing and abusive behavior,” “unlawful destruction and removal” of property and a campaign of lies intended to mislead 10,000 Fresno homecare workers into voting to stay in SEIU, the board has affirmed the serious charges brought by homecare workers against SEIU.

NUHW President Sal Rosselli spoke out in support of the board’s decision,

“Today’s complaint validates entirely what Fresno homecare workers have said about what they experienced from SEIU. Threats, destruction of property, mail tampering, abusive behavior and violations of workers’ rights, all waged in a deliberate campaign of intimidation by SEIU following the direct instructions of Dave Regan, an ethically bankrupt leader who sits atop SEIU-UHW and serves on the SEIU International Executive Board to this day.”

Witness tampering in Grotz v. Kaiser Permanente retaliation case?

It appears that there may have been witness tampering by Kaiser Permanente and/or SEIU in the Grotz v. Kaiser Permanente case.


Courthouse News reported on July 11, 2012:

Kristinna Grotz sued Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Group, and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which allegedly failed to stick up for her.

Grotz claims she worked in Kaiser's admitting department from 2002 until she was fired in the summer of 2011.

She says that from early 2008 department manager (nonparty) D. T. used drugs - "in all likelihood methamphetamine" - at work, and that D. T. retaliated against her for reporting it.


This case sounds very familiar.

As a patient of Kaiser Permanente, I was amazed to learn that Kaiser forced its doctors to falsify medical records in my case, apparently to justify denial of care. I have published some of the obviously false documents HERE.

As an employee of a different institution, I experienced a similar problem to that of Grotz. I was a teacher at Chula Vista Elementary School District when my employer retaliated against me for asking for an investigation into abusive, illegal actions by teachers. One of my witnesses told me that Richard Werlin, the Assistant Superintendent for human resources, came to her school and interrogated her about her prospective testimony. It was pure intimidation. The district wasn't interested in the facts; they didn't even interview me! Later, teachers contradicted themselves and each other in their depositions. See Linda Watson deposition HERE.

My union behaved exactly like Grotz' union. California Teachers Association supported teachers who had committed crimes instead of supporting me. My local president,Gina Boyd, said 60 times during her deposition that she didn't know or didn't remember something. See deposition HERE.

Still, I was shocked when one of the witnesses in the Grotz v. Kaiser case contacted me and asked me to remove her name from my post about the case, saying she could lose her license. Apparently she has been threatened, and may be planning to change her story.

I removed the names of both witnesses who were mentioned, but I am concerned that Kaiser and SEIU may be tampering with witnesses in this case, a serious felony.

NLRB Judge Throws Out Kaiser Elections

NLRB Judge Throws Out Kaiser Elections
New Vote for 43,000 California Workers
by Cal Winslow
Jul. 20‚ 2011
Beyond Chron

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has just thrown out the results of the September/October 2010 representation election at Kaiser Permanente, the huge California based Health Maintenance Organization. The ruling, by an administrative law judge, has handed California healthcare workers a stunning victory. In that election, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) defeated the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), the new union challenging SEIU in the healthcare industry. The 2010 election – involving 43,000 Kaiser service and tech workers - was marred by a SEIU campaign of lies, fear and intimidation. The election itself was estimated to have cost SEIU between $20 and $40 million dollars – more than $500 per vote.

NUHW appealed, charging SEIU and Kaiser with a host of unfair labor practices, above all with collusion in denying service and technical workers a free and fair choice election, relying, crucially, on Kaiser’s illegal decision in 2010 to withhold scheduled wage increases for new southern California NUHW members.

In her July 18, 2011 decision, Washington DC Judge Lana H. Parke ruled that SEIU had indeed “interfered with unit employee’s free and uncoerced choice in the election.” Underscoring the significance of her ruling, Judge Parke explained, “The Board does not lightly set aside representational elections…There is a strong presumption that ballots cast under specific NLRB procedural safeguards reflect the true desires of the employees.” She then ordered a new election so that workers will have “the right to cast their ballots as they see fit…in the exercise of this right free from interference…”

The vote, taken in September/October 2010 was the largest union election in the US in the last seven decades.

NUHW spokesman Leighton Akio Woodhouse hailed the decision as a “total victory for our members – SEIU’s whole campaign was dependent on Kaiser’s violation of the law.”

In early 2010, NUHW Southern California nurses and professionals successfully challenged SEIU in NLRB administered elections. Kaiser responded by unilaterally denying these workers scheduled contractual wage increases, increases guaranteed, according to labor law, even when a union is replaced by another

Judge Parke’s ruling drew attention to the conduct of Kaiser Permanente Regional President Ben Chu who reinforced SEIU’s illegal threats during a large employee town hall forum prior to the election. SEIU “was joined in its warnings by Kaiser’s President [Ben] Chu, who informed employees that only members of coalition unions were guaranteed PSP incentive bonuses. “

The ruling focuses on SEIU. The withholding of wages, subsequently found by the NLRB to be illegal (back wages increase were ordered to be paid) gave SEIU a key opening for a barrage of misinformation.

Here’s just one example from a SEIU campaign leaflet: “After Southern California RNs and pros voted to join NUHW, here’s what happened: They lost their 2% raise in April. That means a loss of more than $1600 a year for some pros and RNs… They are no longer eligible for up to $2000 a year in tuition reimbursement…” Parke noted “30 disseminations of this statement in as many facilities.” It was just one of many. It was a lie.

“We won,” says Jonathan Siegel, the Oakland lawyer who led NUHW’s appeal. “I don’t want to quibble, she didn’t go far enough.”

Siegel believes Parke erred in not finding Kaiser also at fault. “It is clear that Kaiser and SEIU worked together to have raises come due precisely at election time, while arguing a NUHW victory would negate them.”

“But we won, they lost! SEIU will no doubt appeal, that will take 6 to 12 months, we may cross-appeal, but I’m certain the ruling will stand, so we’re looking for a new election in 2012.”

This California conflict remains, I’ll argue, the most important issue in US labor today, not as spectacular as the February days in Madison, to be sure, but ongoing and stark in its implications –can workers stand up to corporate power? With unions? What kind?

The California healthcare union dispute stems from the 2009 trusteeship of SEIU’s California local, the 150,000 strong United Healthcare Workers- West (UHW), then a militant, progressive union, now a shambles.

The California healthcare workers took issue with SEIU’s corporate structures and strategies, above all its back-door wheeling and dealing with healthcare corporations and corrupt politicians – policies aimed at increasing members (read dues payers) at any cost, most often at the expense of the rights and standards of its own members, healthcare workers.

They objected as SEIU spent lavishly on politicians (Blagojevich in Illinois) signed ten year contracts (in Washington State) gave up the right to strike (in California nursing homes), abandoned organizing drives (in Santa Rosa), sabotaged healthcare reform (with Arnold Schwarzenegger), ignored staggering intern corruption (LA local 6434) – all with the justification that cultivating friendly employers and politicians was the road to grow and influence. They are still doing it.

Today the healthcare corporations - profit and not-for profit alike - are as voracious as any. There is no recession for them. Kaiser reported a net income of $921 million for the first quarter of 2011, with reserves of more than $12 billion. Still, last month it announced it would raise premiums for more than 300,000 Californians. Kaiser officials claimed this would amount a 10.7 increase, but consumer groups predicted increases of up to 17% for some subscribers.

At the same time, George Halvorson, the CEO for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals received compensation of $6.7 million.

“What is their justification for causing economic hardship on 300,000 people?” asks Woodhouse. “They’re doing incredibly well financially (and) sitting on huge reserves.”

Still Kaiser wants concessions and SEIU is handing them out. Worse, while the nation’s second-largest union announces one sham national political campaign after another, it has virtually abandoned its UHW members. Roy Chaffee, a call center clerk at Kaiser’s Vallejo call center, reports that “SEIU has withdrawn staff, they’re not visible, we have to fend for ourselves, with Kaiser taking full advantage – the changes have been unprecedented and all detrimental.”

Angela Glasper, Kaiser Antioch, fired executive board member of pre-trusteeship UHW, says, “We have not seen them /SEIU/… we get no representation at all. And we have people getting fired, some with 20 years on the job. It’s a big thing.”

And NUHW? According to NUHW’s John Borsos, “We are already working for the new election – but we’re mostly doing what unions are supposed to do, fighting back against employers demanding concessions, fighting for better standards for our members. And organizing. I have to say -in contrast with far too many unions today – we’re not rolling over in the face of employer demands for concessions. We’re in the middle of contract negotiations for several thousand healthcare workers.”

And it’s not just about talk. On May 18, 2011, 2500 NUHW members struck Kaiser in Southern California: 1100 nurses and 100 professional (social workers, therapists, dieticians, medical technicians) and picketed Kaiser’s Los Angeles medical Center in Hollywood, rejecting concessions and demanding a decent contract in a powerful display of solidarity.

On June 21 In Salinas, 850 NUHW members struck the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. The day- long strike, the first ever in the hospital’s 58-year history was in response to stalled negotiations with hospital management workers. NUHW is fighting plans to cut more than 100 direct-care positions and trim pension and healthcare benefits for new hires.

It is important to note that in each strike, SEIU sent multiple mailers to the workers involved, urging them to cross picket lines.

At the same time, NUHW is joining with other workers, community and consumer groups to expose corporate greed. At Salinas Valley NUHW members revealed the fact that Samuel Downing, outgoing chief executive, was granted a retirement package that included $5 million in supplemental payments plus a $150,000 annual benefit.

These struggles are critical. NUHW is rebuilding at a time when the situation of workers is increasingly desperate; they come at a time when it ought to be self-evident that concessions don’t work; they come at a time when the political class, here in California, across the nation, internationally, is singing just one song: austerity!

There is, however, an alternative. The NLRB ruling on the Kaiser election will strengthen it. “It was a shot of hope,” reports Glasper. “ People are smiling today, we’re rejuvenated. We still are the union. They tell us we our voices don’t count. We remember, they do.”

“This ruling is a tremendous vindication for us,” says Chafee. “It is a vindication for thousands of honest healthcare workers, the victims of the SEIU – we are excited and hopeful, we can still regain our union, we can restore our economic security, we can regain our voice and do the job we want to do – take care of and defend the rights of our patients.”

Cal Winslow has written extensively on the subject of the SEIU and NUHW. He is the author of Labor’s Civil War in California, PM Press and an editor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies (Verso, 2010). He is a Fellow at UC Berkeley, Director of the Mendocino Institute and associated with the Bay Area collective, Retort. He can be reached at cwinslow@berkeley.edu

SEIU-UHW Field Rep Lisa Cox Shows True Colors by Teaming Up with Kaiser Permanente... Permanently

SEIU-UHW Field Rep Lisa Cox Shows True Colors by Teaming Up with Kaiser Permanente... Permanently
Stern Burger with Fries
November 21, 2011

Ever wonder how deep the collusion is between SEIU and Kaiser Permanente? Well, would it surprise you that SEIU’s Field Reps are taking jobs as Kaiser supervisors… and are now responsible for disciplining SEIU-UHW’s own members?

That’s exactly what happened at Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center, where workers report that SEIU Field Rep Lisa Cox just became a manager of the hospital’s Environmental Services Department.

Cox is the SEIU-UHW Field Rep who recently teamed up with management to threaten and bully SEIU-UHW’s own members in advance of the giant strike on September 22. Here’s what one worker wrote about Cox:

After talking with co-workers about the strike during a break, I was called into my director's office and was told to stop telling people they have the right to honor NUHW's picket line. She and her managers were telling employees that if they respected the picket line, they’d be considered a "no-show" and would be disciplined. At that point, Lisa Cox (the SEIU Rep) came into her office and told me, in front of my director, that SEIU did not support the strike and would support management's decision to discipline. My manager then said if I was "caught" talking about the strike, she would suspend me.

And it gets worse.

As the Field Rep, Cox was responsible for all of the hospital workers’ grievances and knew all of the intimate details about each worker’s case. By flipping to management, Cox is committing the highly unethical act of basically handing all these confidential details to management so they can screw workers.

Sounds par for the course for SEIU. After all, what can you really expect from Field Reps who're trained by SEIU officials to systematically bully and deceive the union's own members... like they did during last year's Kaiser election and so many others.
Posted by SternBurger