Today our hard work and unity paid off, and we are proud to announce that our union is the National Union of Healthcare Workers!

RNs at Kaiser Sunset LAMC voted 746 to 36 to join NUHW

Kaiser SoCal Psychsocial Professionals voted 717 to 192 to join NUHW

Kaiser SoCal Healthcare Professionals voted 189 to 29 to join NUHW

Our votes, joined with those of our brothers and sisters at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Los Alamitos Medical Center, The Sequoias-Portola Valley and Doctors Medical Center San Pablo, send a message to every healthcare worker seeking a voice in their workplace and a union that they control: in election after election, workers are choosing NUHW.

One year after the hostile takeover of our union by SEIU, we’ve sent a clear message with our votes today.

With 3,400 new members, NUHW is now California’s fastest growing union. The results of our elections also mean that NUHW has won 7 out of 9 competitive elections against SEIU and in those elections NUHW has decisively won the vote of healthcare workers. Our growth among previously unorganized workers also sends a powerful signal to the labor movement as a whole–four of NUHW’s eight victories this last year were among workers who were previously non-union; our organizing victory at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital was the nation’s biggest hospital election of 2009.

You can read a full description of NUHW’s organizing success in our Year One Report.

While those numbers are impressive, they can’t express the core reason we chose NUHW: we want a member-led union that we control–where our voice matters in our workplace and in the care of our patients.

We know that as elections are scheduled in workplace after workplace, an exodus of healthcare workers will join us in NUHW and leave SEIU. We also know that won’t happen automatically; it will take work.

Our victories were rooted in member leadership and strong organizing committees.  As we celebrate we know that other workers are eagerly organizing to join us in NUHW.

There is so much for us to win and so much hope in this new year.

Today, as three Kaiser units in Souther California, we are so proud to stand with our brothers and sisters who voted before us and say, “WE are NUHW!”

Tessie Costales, RN, Kaiser Sunset/LAMC

Jim Clifford, Therapist, MS, Kaiser San Diego Psychiatry

Molly Miller, CDRP III, Kaiser Fontana