Several weeks ago I posted a diary on behalf of Norma Amsterdam, a nurse leader at SEIU 1199-United Healthcare Workers East. She wrote about how the Alameda County Superior Court quickly overturned a temporary restraining order against SEIU once it was evident that the move was just another CNA publicity stunt. Yesterday, the court sided with SEIU again, issuing a tentative ruling that found no “credible claim of violence or threat of violence” for CNA to have filed the petition. Because such efforts to suppress free speech are a violation of the “SLAPP” statutue SEIU is now entitled to recover attorney’s fees associated with its defense.

Today, delegates at the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico recognized the harm the CNA vs. SEIU struggle is having on workers and unanimously passed a resolution calling for more unity and alliances among labor organizations, particularly within the health care industry.

To find out more about the resolution go to www.shameonCNA.com.

~Karen, SEIU

Lately there have been lots of stories in the press and the blogs about the California Nurse’s Association (CNA). The stories tell about how this “militant,” nurse-only union has been breaking up other union’s organizing efforts and marching into unionized hospitals in Houston, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas to convince the nurses that they should decertify and join with CNA instead.

It’s a sad and confusing story. One union fighting over another union’s members? But it’s also a critical story to understand so that we can put an end to it and start building the kind of worker-friendly union movement that we all really need in America right now.

In an effort to move beyond the rhetoric that is flying around the blogosphere, I wanted to pass along this testimonial written by Susan Horne, RN. Susan is a nurse at Mt. Airy Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio who was on the ER ward when CNA organizers stormed the place with anti-union, anti-SEIU flyers days before the entire hospital staff was scheduled to vote to join with SEIU and establish the first-ever union there. This Ohio CNA incident–also well documented in the news–happened about a month ago. Here is Susan Horne’s account.

CNA Doesn’t Speak for Us; Stay Out of Our Hospitals

After more than three years of struggle to stand up for ourselves and have a chance to form a union at Mercy Mt. Airy hospital in Cincinnati, my colleagues and I were robbed. Days before a vote for union representation with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a group of aggressive out-of-state organizers with the California Nurses Association (CNA) swarmed our ER hallways making the environment so toxic that we had to call the vote off.

In the meantime, my conscience will not allow me to remain on the sidelines while I stand witness to injustice. And that’s why I’m speaking out. I speak for my closest colleagues when I say to CNA and their team of bullies, shame on you. Shame on you for pretending to speak for us and pretending to represent our needs. And shame on you for tarnishing our honest hard work with your petty political games.

                       – Susan Horne, RN

For more information on CNA’s actions, you can check out www.ShameonCNA.com. I also hope to post another account later today from an Ohio nurse who has been in California trying to speak with CNA Excecutive Offers and staff about what their union did to her and her colleagues in Ohio. Since coming to California and having first hand experience of similar CNA tactics in LA County hospitals, Sue is demoralized and wants to share her thoughts. Stay tuned.

 – Ali Jost, SEIU Staff

This is a new low.  

Two of our female board members received harassing visits at their homes yesterday by some of the (male) SEIU staffers who have come to California in recent days.

I am posting the release below where the nurses explain what happened.

RN Leaders of California Nurses Association/NNOC Demand Andy Stern Immediately Cease SEIU’s Harassment and Stalking of Nurses at Home and on Patient Care Floors

Service Union Staffers Went to Homes Thursday of CNA Leaders

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Association today condemned the Service Employees International Union for targeting CNA/NNOC leaders and members with threats and intimidation, stalking them at home and in patient care units at hospitals.

In a statement today, CNA/NNOC-the nation’s largest RN union– demanded SEIU International President Andrew  Stern “immediately renounce the actions of SEIU staff and cease and desist these despicable attacks against anyone who speaks out against his pro-corporate agenda.”

“SEIU’s behavior, sending swarms of staff to threaten women in their homes, is especially disgraceful, and another illustration of their contempt for a predominantly female profession that they treat as chattel in so much of their activity, including trying to force RNs into his union,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

Roving bands of SEIU staff, four or five at a time, arrived on the doorsteps of at least two CNA/NNOC female Board members in Southern California Thursday, with video cameras to film their abusive exploits.

Debbie Cuaresma, RN, was confronted by five SEIU staffers chanting they were “from another union and another state,” who harassed her and her daughter. Margie Keenan, RN saw four SEIU staff members arrive at her door, yelling epithets and screaming at her.  Both called the police; the SEIU staff ran off before the police arrived.

Subsequently, Keenan learned that SEIU staff had first showed up in her nursing unit at Long Beach Memorial Hospital searching for her, and asking a co-worker where to find her.

‘I will not be intimidated by bullies.’

“I was home alone. Four people were staring at me through the window.  When they saw me they started screaming and trying to scare me. I called the police and they ran off,” said Keenan.

“I am a leader of  CNA/NNOC. I am proud of my organization, and I will always stand by it in our common goal of fighting for my patients and my colleagues. I will not be intimidated by bullies hired by (SEIU President) Andy Stern.”

Cuaresma also expressed outrage, saying “I am appalled that five bullies would come to my house with cameras and hurl abuse at my daughter. I believe this to be nothing less than a violation of my family’s privacy.”

“Union membership is about collective democracy. Nurses decide they need a union and then choose the union of their choice,” Cuaresma said. “We will continue to give voice on behalf of our patients and we will never be intimidated in our struggle to defend our ratios and  our hard-won benefits. Stern should rethink his strategy – he will not intimidate me or the CNA.”  

Thursday’s attacks on CNA/NNOC Board members are the latest escalation by the Service Employees Union which has in internal conversations bragged about its intent to “destroy” CNA/NNOC for challenging SEIU’s practices which the RNs say compromise patient safety, erode RN standards and professional practice, and undermine workplace and union democracy.

Also on Thursday, CNA/NNOC obtained a letter from an  SEIU staffer who resigned in disgust with the behavior of SEIU International and quoted a top SEIU official bragging of plans “targeting ten to fifteen C.N.A. bargaining units.”

SEIU’s corporate partnerships compromise patient safety

Perhaps the most egregious behavior of SEIU International, says CNA/NNOC are its deals with corporate hospitals and nursing homes, sacrificing patient safety for agreements to help it recruit more SEIU members.

For example, SEIU has signed pacts with nursing home operators in California and Washington state agreeing to lobby for the nursing home chains. Under the 2003 California deal, SEIU agreed to oppose legislation requiring nursing homes to provide enough staff  to keep patients safe and healthy, and to not report health care violations to state regulators except when required by law.

Five years later, according to a report cited in the Los Angeles Times this week, despite increased state funding for nursing homes, the direct result of SEIU lobbying, nursing homes are spending less in California on direct patient care, and reports of patient mistreatment have shot up 38%.

Similarly, in partnership with hospital corporations, SEIU lobbied in California against the RN-to-patient minimum ratio law, and worked to erode the law after it was enacted.

In New York, SEIU joined with the Greater New York Hospital Association in supporting the closure of more than a dozen hospitals and nursing homes, proudly issuing a joint statement that “We are surely the only hospital association and health-care workers union in the history of the United States to support a process that could lead to the downsizing of our own industry.”

Treating RNs as chattel

SEIU International is also seeking to retaliate against CNA/NNOC for opposing its top down deal with Catholic Healthcare Partners in Ohio. The employer picked SEIU as its chosen union to represent RNs and other employees without a single signed union card, and CHP and SEIU agreed to prevent employees from discussing the rigged election that resulted from the deal.

SEIU and the employer called off the election after the deal was exposed when it became apparent there was little or no support from the employees.

“What nearly occurred in Ohio was a marriage arranged by a paternalistic employer worried about losing control of its workers and a paternalistic union that agreed to take over the workers’ management in the employer’s interest. It was a business arrangement by men in which women are objects of trade rather than trading parties,” DeMoro said

.

For more information about  SEIU’s efforts on behalf of employers, see www.ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.org .  

This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism.  A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.

Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful–in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.

Story below the flip

You can read more in the Chicago Trib, or from the California Nurses Association, below.  

A bit of background: The Service Employees International Union is known for “partnering” with major corporations–whether that’s Wal-Mart on healthcare reform, nursing home companies on blocking nursing home reform, or their own employers, including HMOs and hospital chains.  When they partner with their employers, they agree to work together for the good of the company, which puts the needs of members second to the needs of the employers, and ends their ability to advocate for social justice and truly progressive reforms, including single-payer healthcare.  

This is a danger to the entire labor movement, and the main reason SEIU bolted from the AFL-CIO a few years ago.

But this extraordinary story–which included having the hospital chain actually file the papers for the union–is a new step for SEIU, and fortunately one that has been stopped.

One journalist reports she was told, “It’s like the workers will have two bosses, and they pay dues to one of them.”

Here’s the full NNOC/CNA statement:

Hospital Chain and Hand Picked Union, SEIU, Forced to Cancel Rigged Election After Protests by RNs and Other Employees – ‘A Victory for Employees, Patient Care, and Union Democracy’

After public exposure and protests, the Catholic Healthcare Partners chain and its hand picked union, the Service Employees International Union, today cancelled rigged elections — called without a single sign of support from the employees — planned this week for 8,000 registered nurses and other employees at nine Ohio hospitals in Cincinnati, Lima, and Springfield.

“This is a significant victory for employee rights, patient care protections, and workplace democracy, and a huge setback for a hospital industry and SEIU that hoped to make this shoddy abuse of what should be a democratic process into a national model,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which challenged the sham elections.

CHP and SEIU arranged the votes through a top-down deal that “turned decades of labor law rights for employees on their head and made a mockery of constitutional protections of free speech,” DeMoro noted.

With the collusion of the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board, the employer filed for the election without any showing of support for SEIU, and maneuvered to stifle opposition and block potential participation from any legitimate union, she said.

CHP even resorted to the extreme action of going to court to obtain an injunction to block NNOC/CNA RNs from talking to the nurses about their rights and their ability to stop the hospital from imposing an unwanted union on them, while the hospitals were also blocking employees from internal discussions about the rushed vote.

DeMoro sharply criticized CHP and SEIU, along with the labor board for “determining among themselves the destiny of a workforce that is primarily women. The chauvinism and arrogance of their behavior is appalling, and has received the repudiation it so richly deserved.”

“But their conspiracy of silence and the whole shoddy scheme fell apart when it was exposed to the light of day and the nurses and other employees became aware that they had alternatives to a union selected for them by their employer,” said DeMoro.  

“They pulled the election precisely because it was abundantly clear there was no support from the very employees for a union imposed on them by their employer and disgust with the underhanded abuse of their constitutional rights.”

The cancelled elections, DeMoro added, are a “huge blow to SEIU International’s corrupted approach to growth at the expense of the public interest or a democratic voice of the workers.”

“SEIU depends on the complicity and support of employers even without any indication of support from the workers they are pretending to represent. That’s not what unions should stand for, and it’s not democratic,” said DeMoro. She noted growing opposition from SEIU members across the nation, reflected on the website www.reformseiu.org.

Finally, DeMoro also criticized the role of the labor board. The planned CHP elections were a template for new rules proposed by the NLRB to sanction employers filing elections without worker support, a form of company unionism that the 1935 law creating modern labor law rights was intended to stop.

But the current NLRB, stacked with anti-union appointees by the Bush administration, “has been steadily gutting workers’ rights, and turning the board into a vehicle for suppressing worker democracy and rights rather than protecting them. This election, and the rules now proposed, are a critical component of that ominous trend,” DeMoro added.

Note: I am a healthcare activist with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.  We are the nation’s largest RN union, the nation’s fastest-growing union, and sponsors of state and federal bills for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model, aka Medicare for All

The ramifications of the collapse of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s flawed healthcare bill will probably reach to the national level, as leaders and activists will study the lessons of why it failed and how to avoid making the same mistakes.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee was probably the first group to oppose the bill, and we did so based on the belief that handing more customers, revenue, and medical influence to insurance corporations would hurt our patients; this was a bad proposal strictly on the terms of public health.  Moreover, we warned early on that the financial projections would never “pencil out”–it’s simply not possible to protect out-sized profits for insurance corporations and to solve the healthcare crisis.  They’re mutually exclusive goals.

I want to share with you the thoughts of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA/NNOC, on the next steps for healthcare.

Over at California Progress Report, let’s start with DeMoro’s analysis of why the bill failed:

AB x 1 was rejected not because Californians and the legislature like the status quo or do not yearn for fixing our broken healthcare system. The bill collapsed because it was fundamentally flawed on its merits on access, quality, and cost.

Among our key concerns were the mandate forcing individuals to purchase insurance with no controls on costs or a minimum standard for benefits or quality, the failure to provide meaningful protection to families facing a huge spike in out-of-pocket costs, and the danger that the low employer mandate would encourage employers to drop current coverage.

Of course the solution to the healthcare crisis is to solve the healthcare crisis, and we can learn how by looking at the universal, non-profit, single-payer coverage common to nearly every other industrialized democracy:

Many the remarks by committee members during discussion on the bill bear particular note, including committee chair Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s comment that not voting for this bill “does not mean we prefer the status quo, any more than Gov. Schwarzenegger was saying he preferred the status quo when he vetoed SB 840,” a single-payer, Medicare-for-all style bill.

We concur with Sen. Leland Yee who noted, “the only way we can get true health care reform is with a single-payer process” that “is fair and makes sure everyone is covered.”

A challenge to healthcare advocates, and legislators, to immediately extend coverage to children:

In the interim, there is a short term alternative. Adopt AB x 1’s fee on hospitals reimbursed through higher Medi-Cal payments to hospitals proposed in the bill, and use the resulting federal money to expand coverage for children.