Uncategorized

NUHW: Founding Convention

1 Comment

Last Saturday, over 700 workers met at Everett Middle School in San Francisco to hold the official founding convention of their union, NUHW.

Here’s what the convention looked like:

And here’s the Full Convention Report.

I’d also like to bring your attention to an online program that was part of the convention and some recent NUHW actions below…

Hundreds of workers who could not attend our founding convention shared their support for NUHW by sending comments through our web site, and we posted all of their comments on a wall for everyone to read at our Founding Convention.

NUHW Founding Convention

You can read a selection of these comments at the NUHW Member Blog at our website.

Inspired by our convention and recognizing important challenges ahead, NUHW activists are on the move.

Here’s NUHW activists rallying to protest layoffs and employer collusion with SEIU at CPMC and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in the last week:

And in Fresno, 100+ homecare workers packed a meeting to protest wage and benefits cuts and SEIU’s failure to adequately represent them.

Fresno, Calif.-Over a hundred Fresno homecare providers packed the Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to oppose an agenda item that would reduce their wages and benefits to $9.50 an hour. But they weren’t just there to protest the wage cuts-they also pointed to the repeated failure of their union, SEIU, to support them in stopping the cuts.

“SEIU just failed to stop a different set of cuts last week,” said Flo Furlow, a homecare worker. “Now the county wants to cut our wages even more, and this time SEIU isn’t even going to take it to arbitration. How many times can we let this happen?”

With elections upcoming in Fresno County and ongoing at Doctor’s Medical Center San Pablo, NUHW activists are reaching out to progressive Californians and asking for your support.

You can be a part of the member-led, democratic movement represented by NUHW by joining us SIGNING UP at our website or by joining our growing FACEBOOK SOLIDARITY PAGE for the latest updates.

{Paul Delehanty works for the National Union of Healthcare Workers.}

One thought on “NUHW: Founding Convention”

  1. You can read about how SEIU made damaging concessions negotiating at Alameda Hospital.

    At Alameda Hospital, workers will now pay more than $1,000 for family health insurance. With this “groundbreaking concession” to an employer, SEIU has thrown away decades of hard work by caregivers to keep healthcare affordable, and opened the door to takeaways across California. That’s why healthcare workers across the state are organizing to keep their union strong in NUHW.

    And this update from Juan Gonzalez at Newsday paints a picture of SEIU’s finances not evident from SEIU’s prominent BlogAds and omnipresent press releases:

    For the past few months, Andy Stern, president of the powerful Service Employees International Union, has railed against the government’s $45 billion Bank of America bailout.

    He has condemned the bank for lavish bonuses, for exploiting millions of mortgage and credit card customers, and for mistreating its low-level workers.

    SEIU’s Change to Win labor coalition even led a “Just Vote No” shareholder revolt Wednesday at the bank’s annual meeting in Charlotte, N.C., at which Ken Lewis was ousted as bank chairman but kept on as CEO.

    But guess what? Despite all the public fanfare, Stern has been quietly doing big business with Bank of America.

    Last year, his union borrowed $10 million from the bank, SEIU’s financial report shows. That loan brought the union’s total debt with Bank of America to $87.7 million.

    Ken Lewis, in other words, is SEIU’s main creditor.

    And don’t miss this great post at Talking Union.

Comments are closed.