For the last month, Andy Stern’s SEIU has been trying to stop worker activists at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo from organizing to win an election and build their own union, NUHW. Today they counted the votes.

158 workers voted for NUHW.

24 workers voted for SEIU.

There’s a story behind this David vs. Goliath victory, and it has implications for everyone who cares about the labor movement and grassroots efforts to build workers’ power. Let me tell you why…

When Andy Stern took over California’s SEIU UHW-West, removed the elected leaders who had led a reform movement within SEIU, and began firing staff and stewards who wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath, many in the labor movement thought Stern had beaten those workers cold. Even when healthcare workers announced they were forming an independent union, NUHW, and were preparing to file for elections to leave SEIU, few gave the workers building NUHW much of a chance at succeeding.

The question that the naysayers ignored, however, was the same question Andy Stern ignores to this day: what do the workers really want?

All over California, in response to Stern’s trusteeship, tens of thousands of workers filed petitions to hold elections to choose NUHW, a new union committed to workers’ power and democracy. Almost 100,000 SEIU members are now waiting for elections to leave SEIU and join NUHW. That’s more workers than petitioned for union elections across the entire nation last year. Workers want to join NUHW; that’s why they passed these petitions worker-to-worker in a grassroots effort all over the state of California.

SEIU’s response was to call those petitions “bogus” and to mount an aggressive campaign to delay the elections. Workers, however, have a federal right to petition to be represented by the union of their choice. SEIU can’t delay votes everywhere or block elections forever. And now, these elections have begun to be scheduled and workers have begun to vote.

The first of those elections was held at Doctor’s Medical Hospital San Pablo this month. Despite months of campaigning by SEIU, including threats and harassment against NUHW activists, ballots were counted today and the results weren’t even close: 158 to 24.

SEIU has spent millions shipping in organizers from all over the nation, and sending glossy direct mail and making phone calls to workers to try to stop them from joining NUHW. They have even diverted resources from other locals, and from winning EFCA and healthcare reform, to crush this growing movement of workers.

Yet with all those resources, they don’t have the one thing that makes a union strong: the support and participation of working people themselves. At Doctor’s San Pablo, SEIU could only find 24 out of 300 caregivers to vote for them.

Unsurprisingly, just as SEIU called workers’ petitions “bogus” and the effort to form NUHW “illegal,” SEIU is now claiming that the election results were “tainted.” Clearly, SEIU’s team haven’t taken the lesson written in bold letters from the election at Doctor’s San Pablo: spin will only get you so far.

Starting in June ballots will be delivered to 10,000 homecare workers in Fresno County. 2,500 of those workers petitioned to join NUHW this spring in a grassroots campaign that won 1,000 more signatures than were necessary to secure an election to choose NUHW. Hundreds of fellow healthcare workers from across the state have volunteered to go to Fresno and help Fresno homecare workers win their election and join NUHW. In fact, Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, will be leading a rally to support Fresno homecare workers joining NUHW next Wednesday.

Winning won’t be easy. SEIU is spending millions on paid advertising and a flood of direct mail aimed at misleading workers. Homecare workers have already reported being visited by SEIU staff and being told they would lose their jobs if they voted for NUHW. SEIU is expected to parachute in hundreds of out-of-state staff just before the election to visit workers at home and pressure them for their votes.

You can help.

First, by joining NUHW’s FACEBOOK Solidarity Group, and second by volunteering to help Fresno homecare workers win their fight for freedom against SEIU’s Goliath: VOLUNTEER.

Thanks for reading!

{Paul Delehanty works doing online communications for the workers building NUHW.}