Feed aggregator

Yesterday we won a great victory at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

I am so proud to report that we won our re-run election over SEIU by a margin of 183 votes for NUHW to 135 votes for SEIU.

SEIU’s organizers had told NUHW supporters that they were going to “make us cry” at the ballot count. We did. We cried tears of joy at our victory.

Now we have a union that we control again—and where all union members are treated with respect—at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

Please share this important leaflet with our co-workers and welcome them to our union, NUHW.

We are the newest members of NUHW at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

Sincerely,

Ruth Kees, Clinical Lab, Children’s Hospital Oakland
National Union of Healthcare Workers    

Yesterday, NUHW forced SEIU to reveal their secret deal with Kaiser.

SEIU wanted to prevent workers from seeing the details of their agreement with Kaiser Permanente before healthcare workers were forced to vote on it. SEIU tried to do what they’ve done to workers at Daughters of Charity and Dignity/Catholic Healthcare West and get workers to approve giveaways to the employer without even having a chance to read them.

When NUHW got the document we printed it right away and shared the TA’s—or Tentative Agreements—with everyone. Now, SEIU has been forced to put their version of the TA’s up on the SEIU website with four additional pages.

But SEIU’s version of the TA’s raise even more questions about the changes in store for Kaiser workers. SEIU’s TA’s mention secret 2010 agreements on “On call Conversions,” “Regional Transfers” and “Job Postings” that they’ve now signed off on with management but never printed and shared with healthcare workers.

Is SEIU hiding more cuts from healthcare workers? That’s all but certain.

SEIU is a union where staff in Washington D.C. call all the shots and backroom deals are the order of the day.

Tomorrow, Kaiser workers will begin to vote on SEIU’s disastrous deal with its “partner,” Kaiser Permanente. When Kaiser workers cast their ballots to vote NO to this sell-out agreement, they should know one thing: SEIU’s contract ratification process is a sham.

At Daughters of Charity hospitals, we know firsthand about SEIU’s ratification misconduct. Yesterday, along with our co-workers, we filed charges against SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan for violating the SEIU and SEIU-UHW Constitutions in our recent ratification vote.

After agreeing to a contract that eliminates our pension plan, raises our healthcare premiums, and allows management to subcontract some of our jobs, SEIU refused to give us copies of the agreement and then rushed to begin our ratification votes with only nine hours advance notice. This was a clear violation of Article XIV, Section 7 of the SEIU-UHW Constitution, which requires at least three days notification before starting the ratification process.

(In our charges, we’re also challenging SEIU for wasting $5.5 million of our dues money on a phony ballot initiative and then refusing to allow us to see the deal SEIU officials cut with hospital industry leaders.)

As we said to Regan and Henry in our letter, “How can we make an informed choice when we’re not even permitted to see the actual language that would define our families’ future health benefits and our pensions? Would you vote on a deal to cut your benefits without seeing the actual language?” You can read our letter to Regan and Henry here.

At Kaiser, workers are experiencing much the same thing from SEIU. After signing the tentative agreement with Kaiser last week, SEIU officials refused to allow members to see the contract language. NUHW got a copy of the TA, and now we know why SEIU kept it a secret: it’s chock full of giveaways to Kaiser.

Follow this link to view SEIU’s agreement: http://bitly.com/SEIUgiveaways

Now SEIU is rushing to get this deal ratified before members learn about all the cuts SEIU agreed to at a time when Kaiser is making more money than ever before in its history, even though the current agreement does not expire until September 30. These cuts include a major reduction in workers’ retiree healthcare benefit, an hourly tax to pay for SEIU’s Partnership with Kaiser, and a “wellness program” that allows management to monitor workers’ health and lifestyle choices.

SEIU can’t be trusted at the bargaining table, and they can’t be trusted at the ratification ballot box. That’s just another reason why workers at Daughters of Charity and at Kaiser Permanente are organizing to get out of SEIU and join NUHW.

Please print and share this leaflet with your co-workers.

Sincerely,

Suad Husary, Respiratory Therapist, Seton Medical Center
Donald Bolt, Respiratory Therapist, St. Francis Hospital
Maria Ventura, Laboratory Technician, St. Louise Hospital
National Union of Healthcare Workers    

When SEIU announced its “great contract” with Kaiser Permanente, one thing was clearly missing: the actual tentative agreements.

Only by reviewing the agreement between SEIU and Kaiser can workers make up our own minds about the takeaways that SEIU have agreed to.

NUHW has obtained a copy of the tentative agreements and we’re sharing them with Kaiser workers today. We’ve also included comments that help to explain the tentative agreements. Please download and share the document, which you can find at this link: 2012 CKPU National Bargaining Tentative Agreements.

Here’s a summary of SEIU’s takeaways: 

• SEIU agreed to cuts in retiree health by agreeing that when a cap on spending is reached after 2017, benefit cuts can be implemented.  

• SEIU agreed to charge a “partnership tax” of 9 cents for every hour that we work. That is in addition to our regular union dues. Altogether, SEIU-UHW’s members will now pay at least $6 million a year in “partnership taxes.”  

• SEIU also agreed that the partnership tax can be increased “as needed.”  

• SEIU failed to decrease the wage gap between Northern and Southern California. In fact, SEIU’s agreement increases that wage gap.  

• SEIU accepted wage increases of 3%, 3%, 3% while the Kaiser agreed to wage increases of 5%, 5%, 5% with the California Nurses Association, a non-partnership union, with no takeaways, including no takeaways on retiree health.  

• SEIU gave up our right to local bargaining (See page 3 of pdf). That means that there will be no negotiating on shift differentials, work load, wage equity adjustments, job descriptions or other important worksite issues. At the end of this contract, it will have been ten years since SEIU allowed any bargaining on our local agreement.
  
  
• In this agreement, SEIU and Kaiser will make UBT’s a place where we discuss our health, including BMI, smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure levels. SEIU agreed to allow Kaiser Permanente to monitor our private health decisions, including creating health care monitors who will be paid with the increased partnership tax.

The proper response to these takeaways is to vote “No” to SEIU’s agreement with its partner Kaiser Permanente.

Ralph Cornejo, Kaiser Director
National Union of Healthcare Workers

SEIU wants us to take their word for it. They say that they’ve bargained a “great contract with no takeaways.” But why should any of us believe what SEIU says?

Two years ago, SEIU and Kaiser broke the law, violated our rights and lied to us. The federal government overturned our 2010 Kaiser S + T election because of SEIU’s unlawful and dishonest conduct.

Now, SEIU officials are telling us that Kaiser workers should approve a new contract while refusing to allow even members of SEIU’s own bargaining team to so much as read it. In fact, at SEIU’s ratification votes, we’ll only be provided with what SEIU is calling “summaries” of the tentative agreements.

What’s SEIU trying to hide?

At Daughters of Charity, SEIU refused to provide members with copies of the tentative agreements and rushed through a ratification vote claiming the agreement included no takeaways. It turned out SEIU had given away Daughters of Charity workers’ defined benefit pensions, agreed to a “wellness plan” that pits worker against worker, and reduced workers’ healthcare benefits and job security protections.

At Dignity Health, formerly Catholic Healthcare West, SEIU members were told that SEIU officials had reached an agreement with management to improve their pension plan. Those workers later learned that SEIU had in fact given away their defined benefit pension plan, profiting Dignity/CHW to the tune of $217 million.

Kaiser workers have every reason to vote NO on ratification

From what little that SEIU has shared with Kaiser workers, we know that SEIU has agreed to change our retiree health benefits and to institute a “wellness program” that will let Kaiser management monitor our private lives. We also know that SEIU has given up on local bargaining and has agreed to a contract that will widen the wage gap between workers in Northern and Southern California.

With Kaiser sitting on $7 billion dollars in profits since 2009, there’s no reason for any of these takeaways. Knowing that Kaiser CEO George Halvorson gave himself a million dollar raise in 2010, Kaiser workers have every reason to demand no takeaways to retiree healthcare, a decrease in the wage gap between North and South and to exercise our right to engage in meaningful local bargaining.

We recommend that Kaiser workers vote NO on SEIU’s proposals and on any contract that we’re not allowed to see for ourselves.

Please print and share this leaflet with your co-workers and tell them to vote NO when SEIU asks us to ratify their secret deal with Kaiser.

Sincerely,

Isaiah Arvizu, OR Attendant, Kaiser South Bay
Marie Foster, Program Assistant, Kaiser San Jose
National Union of Healthcare Workers    

Two years ago, NUHW members at Kaiser Permanente made a decision: at a time when Kaiser is making billions in profits, there’s no reason for workers to agree to the benefit cuts that Kaiser put on the bargaining table.

So along with our allies in the California Nurses Association and the Stationary Engineers, we fought back. Our campaign to win a fair contract for Kaiser caregivers has included four separate strikes, including the two biggest walkouts in Kaiser’s history. Through these actions, we have stopped Kaiser from imposing any cuts on NUHW members.

We don’t know what Kaiser and SEIU agreed to at 3am Friday morning. SEIU, as usual, is refusing to share the language of the agreement with members. Withholding contract language and misleading members about what was agreed to has become standard practice for SEIU officials. In the past, SEIU claimed to have settled a contract with no takeaways at Catholic Healthcare West. Later on, workers learned that their pension benefits had been given away.

What we have heard about the tentative agreement, however, points to substantial shortcomings. We understand that the tentative agreement includes cuts to retiree health benefits. When the former leadership of UHW prior to the trusteeship achieved retiree health coverage at Kaiser, it was a groundbreaking achievement. SEIU allowing Kaiser to weaken that standard is a significant setback. We also know that SEIU is forcing workers into a ‘wellness program’ that requires employees to divulge private, personal information for Kaiser’s benefit. We know that SEIU has allowed the wage gap between Northern and Southern California Kaiser workers to widen still further. And we know that once again, there will be no local bargaining following ratification, so locally focused concerns will go entirely unaddressed.

Just today, Kaiser announced that in the first quarter of this year, the company generated another $770 million in profits. Why, at a time when Kaiser has made nearly $7 billion in profits in the last three years, is SEIU agreeing to any concessions at all?

We await further information about SEIU’s settlement with Kaiser, especially as it pertains to healthcare coverage and retirement benefits. Over the last few weeks, thousands of SEIU members at Kaiser have signed our petition to “Just Say No” to a contract with benefit cuts, in order to prevent Kaiser and SEIU from making the back room deal we know they’ve been negotiating for months behind closed doors. We hope that the commitment and determination of the many workers who signed that petition had its intended effect, and that SEIU’s agreement with Kaiser really does preserve existing healthcare and retirement benefits for tens of thousands of Kaiser workers. If so, our fight will have been a victory for everyone.

Sincerely,

Sal Rosselli, President

National Union of Healthcare Workers

For months, SEIU and Kaiser have been trying to figure out a way to cut our health and retirement benefits. We’ve been standing up to them and saying, “No Way.”

Because thousands of us have stood together, Kaiser and SEIU are stuck. They can’t push takeaways on us without being exposed as frauds.

So now Kaiser and SEIU officials are discussing postponing the cuts until after the government reruns our Service and Tech election. There’s only one reason Kaiser and SEIU are backing away from their agreement to cut our benefits: because we said NO.

What we all need to do now is keep the pressure on, and make sure that Kaiser and SEIU have no room to go back to their deal to cut our health and retirement benefits before bargaining ends.

Won’t you join me in printing and sharing this leaflet today? (Spanish language version.)

It’s more important than ever to join thousands of our Kaiser co-workers and sign our petition to “JUST SAY NO!”

Sincerely,

Debbie Almendarez, HIM Specialist, Kaiser Modesto
National Union of Healthcare Workers    

PS. You may remember that Kaiser filed bogus charges against our January strike, because NUHW’s walkouts are making an impact and Kaiser is doing whatever it can to stop us. We’re proud to report that the government threw out Kaiser’s frivolous charges and dismissed their complaint, affirming our right to act like a real union by going out on strike instead of faking the fight with “wellness walks” and “team salad days.”

Also of note, please read this informative new article on Kaiser’s rate hikes and its illegal interference in our election two years ago!

Click on the image above for a leaflet to download and share with your co-workers.Eliminated pensions, two-tier benefits, higher premium costs, giving up the right to sympathy strike, allowing subcontracting: these are just a few of the takeaways that SEIU agreed to for 2,500 California healthcare workers employed by the Daughters of Charity Health System.

All healthcare workers should pay close attention to the contract SEIU-UHW just settled at Daughters of Charity; it’s a road map to SEIU’s plans for healthcare workers in California and all over the United States.

You can read SEIU’s full Daughters of Charity Tentative Agreements here, and a summary of the takeaways below. While SEIU isn’t sharing this contract with workers at Daughters of Charity Health System, NUHW is.  Healthcare workers have a right to know.

SEIU officials – against the strong opposition of several bargaining team members – rushed a ratification vote for its members at Daughters of Charity with less than 24 hours’ notice because they didn’t want anyone to know they had agreed to the following cuts to wages, benefits and working conditions:

1. Eliminated the Defined-Benefit Pension Plan
2. Created Two-Tiered Retirement Benefits Going Forward
3. Gave up the Right to Bargain over Future Retirement Changes
4. Eliminated Fully Employer-Paid Health Insurance unless workers Agree to Participate in an Invasive “Wellness” Program
5. Eliminated the EPO Plan at Seton Medical Center in Daly City
6. Accepted Higher Premium Costs for Those Who Choose the POS and PPO Plans
7. Gave Up Workers’ Right to Sympathy Strike
8. Shortened the Timeframe for Members to File Union Grievances
9. Severely Reduced On-Call Pay
10. Allowed Management to Subcontract Jobs at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles

If you would like more information about how healthcare workers are fighting back against SEIU and greedy employers, click here to sign up for NUHW emails.

For more information about the cuts at Daughters of Charity please visit the SEIU watchdog website Stern Burger with Fries.

As Kaiser workers, we know that SEIU lied and cheated in our 2010 elections.

That’s why we’re getting ready for a re-vote of our Kaiser S +T election later this year.

Now, an agency of the State of California, the Public Employment Relations Board, has stated that it will file a complaint charging that SEIU did the exact same thing to homecare workers in Fresno.

The list of illegal and unfair practices allegedly committed by SEIU in Fresno is long. According to a complaint to be filed by the Office of General Counsel, SEIU-UHW:  

• “engaged in coercive behavior”  
• “destroyed” or “removed” private property  
• “obtained unsupervised access to marked ballots”  
• and, lastly, SEIU “threatened voters” about their health insurance, their wages or even threatened “they would lose their jobs entirely” if they did not vote for SEIU.  

You can read the full decision here and read press reports here and here, but it all adds up to one conclusion, and it’s not pretty.

SEIU can’t be trusted.

As Kaiser workers, we’ve learned the hard way that SEIU can’t be trusted when it comes to the bargaining table. For the first time in memory, healthcare workers at Kaiser are facing takeaways to our health and retirement benefits.

We know that there’s a better way. That’s why thousands of Kaiser co-workers are uniting to stand up to Kaiser and SEIU to say NO to Kaiser’s cuts.

Won’t you stand with us today? If you are a Kaiser worker and haven’t signed the “Just say NO” petition, please click here and add your voice.

Sincerely,
Jose Balibrea, EVS, Kaiser Vacaville
National Union of Healthcare Workers

PS. Please join us celebrating with Children’s Hospital workers in Oakland who will vote to leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW on May 16 and the 70 NUHW members at Sequoias Portola Valley who just yesterday won a three-year contract with minimum raises of 6%, with some employees receiving as much as 24%.

To print this article click here.

George Ross, LVN, SVMH 25 yearsNUHW is taking action in support of a bill in the California Legislature sponsored by Assemblymember Luis Alejo of Salinas that would limit hospitals’ ability to violate the public trust with excessive pay packages for executives. Assemblymember Alejo drafted the bill after NUHW members exposed gross financial mismanagement and exorbitant executive pay at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

NUHW member George Ross, a 25-year LVN at SVMH, spoke out at a legislative hearing. “This proposal is common sense. It reflects our experience at our hospital. One of our executives received millions of dollars in severance payments in addition to a large pension. That’s shameful and unaccountable.”

You can read more in the Bay Citizen.

NUHW’s fight to hold healthcare executives accountable contrasts with SEIU-UHW, which recently dropped two state-wide ballot initiatives it had spent millions in dues dollars on, ostensibly on behalf of poor Californians, in exchange for a backroom deal with the California Hospital Association. (LA Times)

My name is Suad Husary and I work at Seton Medical Center, a Daughters of Charity hospital in Daly City, just outside of San Francisco.

Late Saturday night, SEIU-UHW agreed to major takeaways with Daughters of Charity that will eliminate our defined benefit pension, eliminate our fully employer-paid PPO plan, increase our out-of-pocket healthcare costs and implement a “wellness program” that financially penalizes workers if we don’t personally meet our employer’s health standards.

You can read more about SEIU’s lousy deal at the always informative blog Stern Burger With Fries.

These takeaways will affect nearly 2,500 SEIU-represented healthcare workers including workers at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, St. Francis and St. Vincent in LA County, St. Louise Hospital in Gilroy and my hospital, Seton Medical Center.

If you are a healthcare worker represented by SEIU-UHW, especially if you work at Kaiser Permanente, please take a close look at the list of takeaways SEIU has agreed to at Daughters of Charity below:  

• Eliminating workers’ defined benefit pension plan and replacing it with a substandard 401(k)-style plan
• Elimination of workers’ 100% employer-paid PPO plan; workers will now have to pay 25% of the premiums
• Implementation of a “wellness program” that forces workers to pay 20% of our premiums if we don’t meet the employer’s health standards
• Significant increases in out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions and doctor visits

In violation of their own Constitution and Bylaws, SEIU-UHW approved these cuts at 9:35 PM on Saturday night and began the ratification vote on Sunday morning, just twelve hours later. My co-workers and I hadn’t even had a chance to read the Tentative Agreements before SEIU began to rush through a vote to ratify a contract that will gut retirement and healthcare benefits that we have won over years of struggle.

We know that Kaiser Permanente has proposed similar retirement and health cuts to healthcare workers, and SEIU has given every indication that they won’t say “NO” to Kaiser’s cuts. In fact, SEIU has already announced that they expect to settle a Kaiser contract on May 10th.

If you are a Kaiser worker there’s something you can do.

 

Print out this email about the cuts at Daughters of Charity and then ask your co-workers to sign our petition to “Just Say NO” to cuts at Kaiser.

 

Sincerely,
Suad Husary, Respiratory Therapist, Seton Medical Center
National Union of Healthcare workers

 

Once again, SEIU is trying to fool us into believing their giveaways to Kaiser are actually victories for workers.

SEIU’s latest lie is that they reached a tentative agreement for a contract with no takeaways for IT workers. After weeks of hiding it, SEIU finally disclosed the actual tentative agreement. (With helpful annotations in red from NUHW.)

And here’s the truth: the IT agreement is full of concessions and is just another SEIU sell-out to Kaiser. Here are some facts every Kaiser worker should know about SEIU’s IT deal:  

We all know that SEIU can’t say NO to Kaiser!

SEIU is dancing up a storm, but Kaiser is still demanding the healthcare takeaways that UHW President Dave Regan promised them in the 2010 National Agreement, and they’re still waiting for SEIU to sell out our retirement benefits just like they did for 14,000 of their members at Catholic Healthcare West.

Our strikes aren’t fake fights!!

The reality is that SEIU can try to fake the fight, but when it comes to standing up for healthcare workers, SEIU’s “rallies” look more like this:NUHW knows how to stand up to employers, because NUHW is run by workplace leaders who fight for our rights every day on the job.

NUHW’s history of standing up for workers instead of lying down for employers has led to contract victories all over the state.

Take Keck Medical Center at USC. NUHW members waged a powerful strike at Keck Medical Center last fall. Now they are celebrating a contract with raises between 9.75 and 33 percent over three years with NO takeaways at all.

Or take Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, where NUHW members went on strike and even brought their picket line to a board member’s house! Workers at Salinas won a contract with raises and no concessions because they fought back and their employer knew they meant it.

That’s what a real fight looks like.

We all know that SEIU’s fake fight is window dressing for the side deals that, time and again, SEIU leaders have cut with employers behind the scenes.

The question Kaiser workers should ask ourselves is this: Where is SEIU’s fake fight going to leave us when the dancing stops?

Cindy Benko, Lead Pharmacy Tech, Kaiser Stockton
National Union of Healthcare Workers   

PS. If you’re a Kaiser worker, you can fight back by “Just Saying No” to SEIU and Kaiser’s cuts.  Sign the petition today!

Marilyn Benson worked as a Licensed Vocational Nurse at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital for 37 years. She was elected Chief Shop Steward, and served as an elected member of the Executive Board with Local 250 and UHW. As a rank-and-file leader, Marilyn experienced the turmoil of two separate trusteeships, and became a founding member of NUHW. Marilyn helped lead the SVMH bargaining team during her years of service, and with her help, SVMH workers won one of the best hospital contracts in the country.

Thank you Marilyn!

This week, with more than 50% of the members covered by the agreements casting ballots, we voted overwhelmingly to ratify NUHW contracts at Keck Medical Center at USC and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.  NUHW is on a roll!

In both cases, we won three years of raises with no concessions on health or retirement benefits.  At USC, we won raises of 9.75 to 33 percent over three years. At Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, we won 7 percent raises across the board over three years.

You might ask yourself, given the retirement and health benefits concessions SEIU-UHW has accepted at CHW, Daughters of Charity and at Kaiser Permanente, how did we win our outstanding contracts with NUHW?

The answer to that question is simple. United in NUHW, we demanded that our employers bargain a fair contract with us from the first day of negotiations to the last.

SEIU does the exact opposite. For example, SEIU never talks about Kaiser’s profits—$6 billion in the last three years—or Kaiser’s obscene executive pay. In fact, SEIU has told healthcare workers to expect concessions and cuts at the bargaining table while Kaiser is making money hand over fist!

Dave Regan, President of SEIU-UHW, even said, “We can’t just say no to Kaiser.” That’s hogwash.

We won raises with no concessions (click for a leaflet to download and share) at Keck Medical Center at USC and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital precisely because we said no to our employers’ demands for takeaways.

If you are a Kaiser worker, please join 4,000 of your Kaiser co-workers who are already members of NUHW and Just say NO to cuts to health and retirement benefits at Kaiser Permanente.

United in NUHW, healthcare workers are showing what we can accomplish when we stand together.   

Sincerely,

Jo Obermayr, Imaging Scheduler, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
Noemi Aguirre, Respiratory Therapist, Keck Medical Center of USC
National Union of Healthcare Workers

April kicked off with a string of huge contract victories for healthcare workers in NUHW…and we’re stoked!

At Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, after a nine-year struggle to organize a union and win a fair contract, we reached agreement for a great contract on Tuesday. Our tentative agreement, reached after 11 months of bargaining, includes across-the-board wage increases of 7% over three years, first-time wage scales, and provides for better retirement benefits than those negotiated by SEIU-UHW at Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West.)

At Keck Medical Center at USC in Los Angeles, NUHW members reached a tentative agreement for an outstanding contract with no takeaways and raises of 9.75 to 33 percent over three years.

And at Doctors Medical Center San Pablo last night, we ratified an agreement to win retroactive raises going back to June of 2011 after fighting back our employers’ demand for healthcare concessions.

All of these victories have one thing in common: NUHW is showing the world what healthcare workers can accomplish when we stand up and fight back.

The difference with SEIU-UHW could not be clearer. SEIU thinks we should settle for takeaways with Kaiser Permanente, a company that made over $6 billion in profits in the last three years! That’s not right.

At all three of our hospitals, we showed what we can accomplish when we stand up and say “NO” when the boss asks for takeaways.

With our contract victories, word about NUHW is spreading. Workers at Hazel Hawkins Medical Center in Hollister just submitted a petition to demand an election to leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW this week.

Sincerely,

Duka Ristic, Lead Ultrasound Tech, Doctors Medical Center San Pablo
Paisely Roberts, Care Partner II, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
National Union of Healthcare Workers   

Brothers and Sisters:

At 4:30 in the morning today, after a marathon round of bargaining, NUHW members at Keck Medical Center of USC reached a tentative agreement for an outstanding contract with no takeaways and raises of 9.75 to 33 percent over the term of the contract.

Our agreement includes fully employer-paid health insurance, a ban on subcontracting and improvements to our retirement benefits, our PTO, and other provisions. It’s a great contract and we can’t wait to vote to ratify it.

Once again, NUHW members have proved that workers win when we stand up for ourselves instead of lying down for management.

Over the last fourteen months at USC, we engaged in an informational picket and a 24 hour strike, and we were prepared to walk off the job a second time if management didn’t commit to a contract that’s fair to workers and patients.

That’s how we won — by being ready to fight for what we deserve.

Our brothers and sisters at Kaiser who are still stuck in SEIU hear everyday from their union that the only way they can settle a contract is by giving SEIU’s friends in management what they want. SEIU believes that even though Kaiser made over $6 billion in profits in the last three years, workers have to agree to benefit cuts to make sure Kaiser can make even more money. That’s what it means to SEIU to be a “partner” to Kaiser Permanente.

At USC, we proved that workers can win without giving in to management. And if we can do it at USC, our co-workers at Kaiser can do it, too. If you’re a Kaiser worker, all you need to do is Just Say No to SEIU and Kaiser’s cuts. Sign the petition today!

We said ‘No’ at USC, and now we’re ready to ratify a great contract with raises and no takeaways!

Sincerely,

 

Julio Estrada, Respiratory Care Practitioner, Keck Medical Center of USC
National Union of Healthcare Workers

Last week, NUHW President Sal Rosselli and NUHW Executive Board member Helen York-Jones joined community leaders from all over San Francisco to tell the media that San Franciscans expect better than the lousy deal Sutter Health cut with the Mayor for the construction of CPMC’s new hospital campus on Cathedral Hill.

The recent agreement lets Sutter off the hook by failing to require CPMC to provide the same level of charity care to the indigent as other area hospitals, or to require it to provide affordable housing to offset the project’s exacerbation of the city’s chronic housing shortage.

Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The evidence is clear.

In the last three years, SEIU has given away more than $2 billion in contract concessions across the United States, $1.6 billion of that right here in California, and all of us at Kaiser Permanente are next.

Before that happens, now is the time for workers at Kaiser to stand up to SEIU’s giveaways. Won’t you join me?

Click here, and “Just say NO” to SEIU takeaways at Kaiser.

Since 2009 Kaiser has made over $6 billion in profits. But SEIU wants workers to agree to reductions in our benefits. That makes no sense.

SEIU will often try to disguise takeaways by calling the changes “improvements” and then marketing the cuts to workers using the same techniques that advertisers and employers do. That’s exactly what SEIU did with pension cuts at Dignity Health, formerly Catholic Healthcare West.

With SEIU’s $2 billion track record of takeaways, why should anyone trust SEIU when it comes to protecting our benefits at Kaiser Permanente?

Please take action and sign our petition right now.

Once you’ve signed the “Just say NO” petition, please forward this email to your co-workers and download and share this leaflet today.

Sincerely,


Angela Glasper, Optical Cashier, Kaiser Antioch
National Union of Healthcare Workers  

By Carl Finamore, Mar. 16, 2012
Talking Union

“With God on Our Side” is a very catchy book title. It also appears at first glance to be quite topical because mention of religion so dominates, and distorts many would add, political discussion in this country.

For that reason, curiosity may initially draw the reader’s eye. But the subtitle “The Struggle for Workers’ Rights in a Catholic Hospital” gives it all away. This is a book about organized labor and workers.

This is usually where most readers take flight. But that would be a mistake because it is so much more.

Books about labor post dreadfully low sales, true enough. Nonetheless, Adam Reich has written a very readable and colorful “story of worker leaders” at the largest and most prestigious hospital in the northern California town of Santa Rosa.

The story, however, carries political lessons far beyond the geography of this small-town power struggle. Reich has written a human-interest story about people and why some act so passionately to improve their lives.