Assembly Bill 52 is a modest bill that would give teeth to the State Insurance Commissioner’s oversight of health insurance rates in California.

On a day when the SF Chronicle is reporting that Kaiser Permanente, flush with more than $5 billion in profits over the last 27 months, is poised to raise rates on 300,000 California Kaiser policyholders by an average of 11%, Wendell Potter, writing in the Huffington Post, and Lee Fang, writing at Think Progress, are investigating Kaiser’s financials more deeply and shining a light on the “coalition” that big insurers have built to fight AB 52 and kill the rate review bill before it becomes law.

More key graphs on the flip…  

Writing in the Huffington Post, author and former health insurance exec, Wendell Potter highlights the background of Kaiser’s opposition to AB 52:

Kaiser alone has spent $700,000 so far this year lobbying lawmakers in Sacramento. It undoubtedly will be spending quite a bit more this summer to persuade state senators to vote against the rate control bill. And if any health plan can pull it off, it’s Kaiser, which has the biggest market share in the state and is also one of the country’s most profitable insurance companies.

According to public filings, Kaiser has made a whopping $5 billion in profits since 2009. That’s more than all but a small handful of the country’s for-profit insurance corporations have made. During the first three months of this year, Kaiser made more than $920 million in profits. Yet because it has been able to maintain its legal structure as a nonprofit, it doesn’t pay taxes on that money like the for-profits do.

One of the ways the company has been able to keep profitability strong is by demanding double-digit rate increases from its customers. Earlier this year, Kaiser announced it would raise rates on many of its policyholders in California by as much as 23 percent. No wonder it doesn’t want the state’s insurance commissioner to have the power to say “no” to such increases.

Potter continues, assessing the outsized compensation packages and ample reserves enjoyed by the executives running Kaiser and Blue Shield, which are ostensibly “not for profit”:

Kaiser’s CEO’s $8 million in compensation puts him in the same league as the CEOs of the biggest for-profits. Blue Shield of California and many of the other nonprofit Blues around the country are also doing quite well, thank you.

As a Consumers Union analysis found last year, seven out of 10 nonprofit Blues plans had at least three times more in reserves than regulators required. To be able to maintain that level of profitability, nonprofit health plans have to hike rates just as high and just as often as their for-profit competitors.

And healthcare insurers, using those profits, have assembled a powerful “coalition” in an attempt to defeat AB 52, a bill that will regulate those rate hikes. Lee Fang, writing in Think Progress, breaks it down:

Like the national legislative battle over President Obama’s health reforms, insurance companies in California are attempting to undermine AB 52 by showcasing widespread opposition to the bill. The California Association of Health Plans – the trade association representing major insurers in the state like Kaiser Health Plans, Anthem Blue Cross (WellPoint), Aetna, UnitedHealth, HealthNet, and Cigna – is leading the charge, firing off press release after press release noting the “diverse group” of California organizations against the rate review bill. However, a closer look at the groups the insurers are touting reveals multiple financial ties to insurers opposed to AB 52.

Fang continues:

ThinkProgress has learned that the lobbying firm Fiona Hutton and Associates has been charged with helping to recruit and push these insurer allies…Health insurers have not only purchased lobbyists with their customers’ premium money, they have purchased friends to build their anti-AB 51 “coalition.”

You can take action to create grassroots pressure for the passage of AB 52. The Courage Campaign is running a petition calling for Kaiser Permanente to switch course and support the passage of AB 52.

You can SIGN THE PETITION here.

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NUHW, California’s fastest-growing union, is a worker-led movement to hold healthcare corporations accountable to the public interest, improve the lives of caregivers and patients, and win quality, affordable healthcare for all. Join us on FACEBOOK and follow us on Twitter. You can read about NUHW workers’ fight to win a fair contract at Kaiser at KaiserUnited.org.

{This blog post originally appeared on the Huffington Post}

January 2009 was a watershed moment in our nation’s history. As we gathered to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, members of my union felt a powerful sense of accomplishment. Together we had worked long hours and covered many miles to elect a president who would represent working people instead of big corporations.

But those days were also bittersweet for me and thousands of health care workers in California. As President Obama took the oath of office, SEIU’s President Andy Stern had begun a process to remove me and other health care workers from our elected positions, suspend our local union’s constitution, and put his own officials in charge.

Why did Andy Stern take over our union?

Our disagreement with SEIU was about democracy, and how friendly a union should be with corporations. We insisted that workers should always have the right to vote on the issues that affect our workplaces, our union, and our future. Stern’s view was that union officials had the final say, and that it was fine to make backroom deals with employers without workers knowing or being involved in the decisions. In January 2009, when Stern moved to split our union in half and weaken our voice with our employers, tens of thousands of us spoke out and said that we would not allow SEIU to divide healthcare workers without a vote of the members.

Despite the fact that our union was a thriving, democratic local, and a model for the rest of the labor movement, Andy Stern and SEIU took it over simply because we disagreed with him.

When SEIU put our union into trusteeship, Andy Stern removed every elected official of our union from office. In response, we formed a new, independent union, and tens of thousands of our co-workers petitioned to join. However, what followed came as no surprise. SEIU filed charges to block our elections and sued our union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and 28 officers and staff, for $25 million.

Andy Stern’s legacy

There are so many pieces of our story and struggle to reform SEIU that I wish that I could share with you. Videos of more than 6,000 of us marching for democracy. Our local president Sal Rosselli’s passionate speech calling for democratic reforms at SEIU’s 2008 convention. Petitions signed by 80,000 healthcare workers asking Stern to stop his attacks on us. Or the web site we created to share our proposals with other local unions in SEIU.

But in the days after taking over our union, SEIU staff removed our videos from YouTube and erased our website, just like they removed 85 health care workers and elected leaders of our union with the stroke of a pen.

While our country was celebrating our nation’s democratic process, Andy Stern had turned SEIU into a one-party system where health care workers’ voices are silenced and our attempt to reform SEIU erased from the history books. That is Andy Stern’s true legacy and how he will be remembered by workers who know best.

Our response to SEIU’s $25 million lawsuit

Silencing health care workers’ voices is exactly what SEIU has tried to do with their $25 million civil lawsuit against our new union, NUHW.

SEIU’s lawsuit was an attempt to get us to close the doors of our democratic union just as we got started. But despite a jury’s decision to award SEIU a fraction of the damages they sought last week, I can tell you today that NUHW is strong and growing.

SEIU’s lawyers and PR team have tried to smear NUHW. They’ve even called us “guilty” despite the fact that this was a civil lawsuit not a criminal trial. The truth is that their lies fell away in court. None of the outrageous charges SEIU leveled against us were even decided on by the jury. It is significant that the limited damages assessed to our union came down to our decision during those two weeks in January to resist SEIU’s attempt to silence us and take over our union.

We are proud of our decision to disagree with Andy Stern and oppose his efforts to take over our union, and we are proud that our elected leaders had the courage to do what was right, even at great personal cost. Our elected executive board, on which I served, voted not just to authorize our leaders to resist Andy Stern’s attempt to weaken our voice — we demanded that they do so. If we had it to do all over again, we would make the same choice.

Moving forward with NUHW

Andy Stern thought January 2009 would be the end of our struggle. Instead, it was the birth of our new union.

SEIU may have tried to erase all traces of our disagreement, but Andy Stern couldn’t erase the new union we are building together. Thousands of us have already voted to join NUHW, and tens of thousands more will join by the end of the year.

As President Obama said, “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” In response to SEIU’s attempt to silence us, healthcare workers are making history in California

Shirley Nelson, CNA, Kaiser Redwood City

{Shirley Nelson, Certified Nursing Assistant, has been a caregiver at Kaiser Redwood City Hospital for 42 years.  Elected by her co-workers, she served on the Executive Board of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West until she, and 85 other rank and file members of the board who served with her, were removed by SEIU International in January of 2009. She currently serves on the Executive Board of a new, member-led union in California, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.}

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all. NUHW Voice features blog posts by workers from NUHW’s Our Voices page. You can follow NUHW on Facebook and Twitter.}

This blog post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

My name is LaNeta Fitzhugh and I work as a Registered Nurse (RN), at  Kaiser Sunset Los Angeles Medical Center. Kaiser Sunset is one of the  largest hospitals in the nation. We serve hundreds of patients every day  on seven floors, and RNs are involved in every aspect of the care of  our patients. The voice of RNs at Kaiser Sunset is central to the proper  function of our hospital.

This January, RNs at Kaiser Sunset voted 20 to 1 to leave SEIU and to express our voice with the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

When people ask why my co-workers and I voted to join our union, our  answer is simple.

Our union, NUHW, is a member-led union…

We elect our leaders. We  participate in every aspect of bargaining our contracts. When there are  important decisions that affect our workplace, we know that we will have  a vote. In sum, we determine our relationship with our employer.

Having a member-led union at our workplace is important not just for  me and my co-workers, but also for the care of our patients. As RNs, our  main goal is to deliver quality patient care. Our top concern at Kaiser  Sunset as RNs has centered on staffing and how a shortage of RNs and  the Monitor Techs who work with us impacted our patients.

Our experience with SEIU

Under SEIU and its president, Andy Stern, we had made absolutely no progress on the staffing issue. This was typical. With SEIU, our  concerns about our workplace often went unaddressed. Our experience with SEIU was that more and more it was a union dedicated to the employer-friendly agendas of union officials in Washington D.C. and not the concerns of health care workers and our patients.

Our experience with our pension plan was typical. In 2009, under Andy  Stern’s leadership, SEIU agreed, without a vote of the members, to  allow Kaiser to reduce the size of the lump-sum pension option. Since the lump sum pension option was preferred by the majority of our  members, this giveaway had the effect of forcing some RNs at Kaiser Sunset to retire before the deadline to take advantage of the full  payout. These RNs were not replaced, increasing our staff shortage. This  directly impacted patient care.

With SEIU, instead of addressing our most immediate concerns, we went backwards without a vote. All that changed when we joined NUHW.

Our victory with NUHW

As soon as our election was certified, we elected a team of leaders to express our voice with Kaiser management. We made clear in a series  of meetings our concerns about staffing. I’m proud to report that together in NUHW, in just two months, we’ve won an agreement from Kaiser to post 122 new RN positions, seven Certified Nursing Assistant  positions, and 42 Monitor Tech positions at our hospital vastly  increasing both our nursing staff and the caregivers who support us. The public should know that every patient who is treated at Kaiser Sunset will benefit from better care as a result of our victory.

Our staffing victory will resonate beyond my fellow RNs. Almost one third of the positions will be among workers who are not in our  bargaining unit at the hospital. Soon, those co-workers will have a chance to vote to join NUHW, too.

A message to healthcare workers

I would like to close by sending a message to my fellow healthcare workers who have petitioned by the tens of thousands to leave SEIU and join NUHW. Get the facts. Don’t let fear and scare tactics distract you from the power that you and your co-workers possess. We won our staffing victory as RNs coming together in NUHW, despite the dire  predictions by SEIU International staff who simply don’t know Kaiser and truly don’t know our hospital.

We are proving at Kaiser Sunset the real power of a  member-led union. As Sal Rosselli, the interim president of our union is  fond of saying, “There is no limit to empowering workers.”

We’re putting that into action every day at Kaiser Sunset Los Angeles Medical Center for ourselves and for the patients we care for.

–LaNeta Fitzhugh, RN, Kaiser Sunset/LAMC

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Bio: LaNeta Fitzhugh has worked as a registered nurse at Kaiser since 1982. In that time, she has served as a steward, chief shop steward and elected executive board member of her union. She was recently elected by her co-workers as the Chief Shop Steward for RNs at Kaiser Sunset Los Angeles Medical Center with the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all. NUHW Voice features blog posts by workers from NUHW’s Our Voices page. You can follow NUHW on Facebook and Twitter.}

This blog post originally appeared on the Huffington Post

My name is Shirley Nelson. I work as Certified Nursing Assistant and I have been a caregiver at Kaiser Redwood City Hospital for 42 years.

I would like to thank the community of readers here at Calitics for providing me an opportunity to share my point of view about SEIU’s civil lawsuit against 26 union reformers.

They say every coin has two sides, well, so does every case in court…

To begin with, I want talk about the union I used to be an elected leader of before Andy Stern removed me and 85 other union members from office.

UHW was, by all measures, a successful union. We bargained strong, industry-leading contracts. We represented our members effectively. We organized non-union workers to join our union. We trained our stewards diligently. If you ask anyone in the labor movement who knows our history, they will tell you that we served our members well. In fact, our union was an example for the rest of the labor movement of the kind of power that a member-led union can win for its members.

All that has changed since SEIU took over UHW. While UHW was a member-led union, SEIU is an employer-friendly union.

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In just one year of trusteeship, SEIU has given away the lump sum payout pension option for Kaiser employees without a vote, bargained away family health benefits at Alameda Hospital, forced Sutter employees into a substandard health plan and given away $10.5 million at the bargaining table to Daughters of Charity directly from union members’ pockets. Those giveaways are the result of SEIU’s employer-friendly approach to bargaining.

Directly out of our disagreement with SEIU and their takeover of our union, we have built a new, democratic union called NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Since we took that step, however, SEIU has pursued what even Judge Alsup has called a “greedy” and “vastly overreaching” legal strategy against the union reformers who organized to prevent SEIU’s takeover and went on to form NUHW.

That is the real background to SEIU’s civil lawsuit.

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When their lawsuit began, SEIU’s lawyers were asking for $25 million in damages from the defendants. After one week in court, they have abandoned 80% of their claims. For example, over the last year SEIU has smeared the defendants with false claims of:

-taking $3 million from UHW’s strike fund

-“Sabotaging” bargaining and grievances

-“Leaving contracts open” at hospitals so workers could vote to choose their union

-Misusing UHW lists and information to help Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital workers and Fresno homecare workers file for elections

SEIU has backed down from every one of those claims when asked to prove them in court.



It is clear that SEIU’s lawyers understand, and want to hide from the jury, that the vast majority of the members of our union disagreed with Andy Stern. It’s also clear that SEIU knows full well that no funds from our former union were used to build NUHW. Every witness they have put on the stand including SEIU officials Eliseo Medina, Mary Kay Henry and Leon Chow have testified to that.

As SEIU has called each key witness in the trial, the judge has been perplexed as to what SEIU thought the testimony was proving. The judge has said over and over that it is completely appropriate to try to prevent the trusteeship of a local union.

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As I sit in court and hear the testimony of the current SEIU-UHW staff members, I am also deeply struck and saddened by the gross incompetence and lack of even basic familiarity with the fundamentals of representing union members they demonstrate. The staff SEIU’s trustees have hired to run my former union have shown themselves to be unfamiliar with the very basics of filing grievances and bargaining contracts. They have also demonstrated a glaring lack of common sense. I say this not only as a union steward but as someone who has trained stewards and bargained contracts for over two decades.

Finally, it has also struck me the manner in which SEIU’s trustees personally attack the former elected leaders of SEIU-UHW like Sal Rosselli and John Borsos. I think I can offer a valuable perspective here, since I was a member and leader of the union before either of them arrived.

I have always known Sal and John to put the members first and to conduct themselves in a deeply ethical manner. That has been our tradition; and that’s why we elected them. That commitment is the founding principle of the new union we are building together, NUHW.

To read more union member voices and get facts about the trial, please visit NUHW.org/trial.

Shirley Nelson, CNA, Kaiser Redwood City

{Shirley Nelson, Certified Nursing Assistant, has been a caregiver at Kaiser Redwood City Hospital for 42 years.  Elected by her co-workers, she served on the Executive Board of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West until she, and 85 other rank and file members of the board who served with her, were removed by SEIU International in January of 2009. She currently serves on the Executive Board of a new, member-led union in California, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.}

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all. NUHW Voice features blog posts by workers from NUHW’s Our Voices page. You can follow NUHW on Facebook and Twitter.}

My name is Tyrone Dickens and I am a union healthcare worker.

I have worked as a homecare provider in San Francisco for almost six years. My work involves cleaning, cooking and caring for patients in their homes who cannot do these things for themselves. For some of my homecare consumers who don’t have family any more, I am the only companion in their lives.

This week I have attended a civil lawsuit in which the officials of the union that currently represent me are suing the former leaders of my local union, leaders that I elected and that I still support. I know that may sound confusing, but I think I can explain it clearly so that you can understand.

Despite my and other members’ protests, officials from SEIU removed the former leaders of my union, SEIU-UHW, from office in January of 2009 and since that time have pursued a civil lawsuit against 28 defendants who used to work for SEIU-UHW asking for $25 million. You can read more about the lawsuit and the defendants here.

Like thousands of other healthcare workers in California, I support the former leaders of my union and the new union we are building together, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). NUHW is a democratic union that we, the union members control.

That principle, workers having a democratic voice in our own union, has always been the primary disagreement between the officials of the SEIU and tens of thousands of healthcare workers and the leaders we have elected to represent us.

For that reason, I want the public to understand some facts about this lawsuit. This is a civil lawsuit. For as much as SEIU wants to make this trial seem like a criminal proceeding. It is not.

Despite SEIU making claims to my co-workers that this civil trial is the result of the defendants “stealing” money or that actions taken by the defendants hurt union members bargaining or grievances, the truth is that SEIU’s lawyers, some of the highest-powered attorneys in the country, are not making those claims at all.

However, SEIU is not explaining that to my coworkers.

SEIU is also not telling my coworkers that the scope of their civil lawsuit has shrunk. In fact, Judge Alsup, the federal judge overseeing this trial, reduced the scope of the trial to one fifth of SEIU’s previous charges. Even then, SEIU will have to prove its case in court.

What I’ve seen so far has not impressed me. Today we found out that SEIU staff who took over our union and who were supposed to be looking for and securing files didn’t do a very good job.  The people who are saying that stuff is missing didn’t even try to see if someone else had them. They just said “Oh, well” and let it go.

One of the other things that I have learned about this trial that disturbs me is that the lawyers for SEIU are being paid an estimated three times more than what the civil suit is asking for. Since SEIU’s lawyers are being paid out of my dues money, I think our dues could have been better used fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger and protecting healthcare workers.

Finally, I would also like to share my personal experience of the civil trial. I attended the trial because I wanted information and to see for myself what was being said in court. Sitting alongside me in support of the defendants this week were other homecare workers, nursing home workers, hospital workers, community members, labor allies and friends and family. But don’t take my word for it, come to court and find out for yourself.

Thank you for reading,

Tyrone Dickens, IHSS, San Francisco

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all. NUHW Voice features blog posts by workers from NUHW’s Our Voices page. You can follow NUHW on Facebook and Twitter.}

My name is Oscar Medina and I’ve worked as a transporter at Summit Alta Bates Hospital in Oakland, California for seven years.

I’d like to share our experience at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center since SEIU took over our local union. In particular, I would like to explain what has happened with our contract and why we are choosing to organize with a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

Our previous experience in our union

Before our union was taken over, our bargaining team at ABSMC was large and democratic, with all members elected by our coworkers. Our bargaining team never accepted takeaways or subcontracting, and we bargained for the strong health benefits that healthcare workers deserve. During bargaining, we printed out our tentative contract agreements to share with our coworkers. Our philosophy was that workers are more powerful the more informed we are.

All that changed when Washington, D.C. officials took over our union, SEIU-UHW West, and replaced our elected leaders with their appointed trustees in January of 2009.

SEIU’s approach to bargaining and our vote

With SEIU, our new bargaining team did not communicate. Bargaining was closed to members for the first time. They didn’t share our tentative contract agreements with us. SEIU even demanded we sign a loyalty oath to SEIU simply to observe the bargaining process.

When it came time to vote, the one copy of our contract that SEIU provided us sat on the table where we went to vote. We were not allowed to take a copy of our contract and read it for ourselves before we voted.  This never happened prior to SEIU’s trusteeship.

I asked an SEIU staffer about the changes to overtime in our contract and he said that there were no changes to overtime.  When I pointed out to him the passage that changed our overtime, the SEIU staffer said, “Oh, I hadn’t seen that.” It’s no wonder that our managers at Sutter were telling us to vote yes.

Why SEIU’s contract with Sutter is bad for workers, our patients and our community

A healthcare workers’ union should not give away our healthcare benefits, but that’s just what SEIU has done. My coworkers and I will now have to pay to keep the health insurance and doctors we now have, some of us over $200 per month, or else accept a new substandard plan that penalizes workers who don’t join Sutter’s wellness program.

The new contract also changes the “reclassification” provisions in our contract. Reclassification is the process through which casual employees can qualify to become benefitted employees. The new contract that SEIU has bargained with Sutter will make it virtually impossible for casual workers working alongside us in our hospital to ever qualify to become benefitted employees.

Finally, SEIU has agreed to provisions that will allow subcontracting in our hospital. Subcontracting lowers wages and erodes the power of union work in our hospital and has real implications for patient care.  The training and expertise we’ve developed in our workplace will be replaced by workers who are hired simply because they cost our employer less and don’t receive benefits.

As you can see, SEIU’s changes to our contract don’t just hurt us as union workers, they impact our workplace, the care of our patients and our whole community.

SEIU is the boss’s union, NUHW is our choice

Before SEIU’s trusteeship, we were informed, strong and stood up to Sutter in a democratic union that we controlled.  With SEIU, it’s clear that Sutter and SEIU are friends. SEIU is the boss’s union and has agreed to concessions with Sutter that we would never have agreed to.

It is a shame how many of my coworkers voted for our contract without being able to read it and decide for themselves. As my coworkers learn what’s really in our contract, I am confident that they will join the majority of us at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center who are organizing to build a union that we control at our hospital again.

Together with 100,000 caregivers from all over California, we’re organizing with a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), made up of our elected workplace leaders and the experienced negotiators who have helped us win for years.

Organizing with NUHW means that when we bargain with Sutter, the process will again be democratic, open and nothing will be hidden.

–Oscar Medina, Transport, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Oakland

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all. NUHW Voice features blog posts by workers from NUHW’s Our Voices page. You can follow NUHW on Facebook and Twitter.}

Published in the Gilroy Dispatch

I’ve been a respiratory therapist at Saint Louise Regional Hospital for 18 years. I want to tell our community the truth about what’s been going on in our  hospital over the last year, and why things are about to get better.

For  the last eight years, my co-workers and I have been part of a labor  union. You may have seen us on the sidewalk once or twice with picket  signs, and wondered what was going on.

I helped organize the  union because caregivers at Saint Louise were concerned about our  patients as we worked harder and harder caring for more patients with  not enough staff. We were tired of spending long hours caring for people  in our community, only to come home unable to afford quality healthcare  for our own families. We were tired of having no way to make things  better.

Organizing the union was hard. We weren’t prepared for how  hard hospital administrators would fight to keep us from having a voice  in decisions. They threatened us with discipline and told us we’d lose  everything – but that wasn’t true.

With our union, we finally had a  way to solve the problems we all faced at work. We won contracts in 2002 and 2004 that improved patient care and helped attract and retain good, experienced caregivers.

But while we were moving forward here in Gilroy, trouble was brewing on the other side of the country. Officials of our union’s parent organization had hatched a plan to centralize power in Washington, D.C., and take control of negotiations away from healthcare workers like us.

The Service Employees  International Union wanted more members and more dues money, they didn’t care who they hurt in the process. In time, we saw them make secret deals with nursing home companies to take away residents’ rights, and undermine many of the gains hospital workers had made in California.  Then they tried to take our rights away.

Together in our local union, we stood up to SEIU and told them “No.” In retaliation, they took over our union last year, removed the co-workers we’d elected to represent us, and replaced our elected leaders with unaccountable staff from Washington, D.C.

SEIU took over negotiations at Saint Louise, and settled a contract that is nothing but takeaways – on  scheduling, healthcare, job security, and more. They lied to workers about the deal, and made us vote on a contract we’d never seen. Employees at Saint Louise are sad and upset. Many of us have been targeted and threatened by SEIU.

It’s been painful to see this happen. I spent 10 months of my life under fire from management, organizing this union so that my co-workers and I would have a voice of our own. Now the bullying and intimidation are coming from our own union. We have no voice, and little protection if we speak out for our patients.

Saint Louise workers are taking our union back, by building a new union that belongs to us and no one else. A majority of us petitioned last year to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and an election is coming soon so we can make the change official. NUHW was founded by healthcare workers like us, and the experienced negotiators who helped us win our first two contracts are now supporting us in NUHW. Thousands of workers at Kaiser and at hospitals and nursing homes have already joined NUHW.

We’re voting NUHW to restore democracy and integrity to our union at Saint Louise, so we can keep standing up for quality patient care and better jobs in our community.

Kathleen Volle, registered respiratory therapist, Saint Louise Regional Hospital

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{NUHW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, is a vibrant and democratic movement of healthcare workers, dedicated to dignity, justice, and healthcare for all.}

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