UPDATE: UHW just issued a statement, apparently a few members of the executive board planned to raise objections to both the substance and timing of this vote, since there is an official meeting Jan 20-21st. Stern decided to do the vote electronically with the deadline of 2 pm tomorrow.  More when I hear it…

ORIGINAL POST: I know I have been quiet here as of late, but I couldn’t let this pass without speaking out and making sure it did not fade below our collective radar.

Today a special meeting of SEIU executive board is being called by teleconference. On the agenda is the potential creation of a statewide long-term care union, a new local.  SEIU International has established them in several other states and they want to do it here in California.  That is not their only motivation and probably not their biggest one.  The creation of this new union would gut UHW, by removing 65k members.  This appears to be the solution that the International has come up with for weakening UHW, after the charges they went after UHW with fell apart during the trusteeship hearings in the fall.

The SEIU/UHW dispute aside, a statewide local sounds like it could be a good idea, no?  Consolidate everyone who have the same type of job and build a new local.  It might end up being a new benefit to the workers, or it might not.  It depends on if the new local is a better advocate for the workers than the one they left.  They would be leaving the known for the unknown.

One would think that SEIU members should have the say over whether or not they want this to happen.  Well, there was an election, technically speaking.  It gave all of the SEIU health care workers in CA two different options for creating a statewide health care local.  There was no option for workers to keep their current representation, staff and elected leadership.  Both would end UHW as we know it, which appears to be why the International is pursuing this, despite the results of the “advisory” election.

Ballots representing 7.8% of eligible members were received, a horrible turnout.  Notice I didn’t say only 7.8% voted.  That’s because the rules were changed mid-election and members were encouraged to vote more than once.  UHW actively organized against the vote, and frankly organized circles around the International.

Perhaps just as important, union members presented the Election Officer with petitions protesting the election signed by 80,000 members.  These were accompanied by 40,000 formal letters of protest. UHW members presented these letters and petitions in sacks weighing hundreds of pounds. It was an astonishing outpouring of opposition, organized in less than one month.

It is fair to say that SEIU members are vehemently opposed to the creation of this new local based on the results of the election and the huge backlash against it.  However, the International is calling the election “a celebration of union democracy” and using it as justification during today’s board meeting.  They have not received a mandate to make this change and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best.

The International has the power to create this new local and that is just what they are going to do.  Stern would appoint the new leadership and staff would be found.  The members that would be forcibly moved would be under unelected leadership that could from from anywhere in the country.  They would be leaving, in at least the case of the UHW members, an incredibly strong, fast-growing union that has gained deep, far-reaching contracts that are in many cases considered the gold standard.  Through this fight with the International, UHW members have proven how dedicated they are to their leadership and staff and willing to do whatever it takes to defend it.

The result is that the path seems pretty clear.  Today the International will create the new statewide home care local.  UHW members will actively and strongly resist it.  That will create legitimate grounds for trusteeship, which the International would persue with pleasure.  The path is so clear that it seems like it is indeed the point.  This would gut UHW and end up with them trusteed.

Cal Winslow in the article I linked above and quoted goes into a longer deeper discussion of the larger fight between UHW and Stern/Internation.  We have covered this in some depth last year here at Calitics.  Generally speaking, the gutting of UHW would take away a strong ally here in California for the progressive movement.  They are organized, effective and tend to be more progressive when it comes to policy than Stern and those he appoints.  It is the difference between the Arnold health care plan that Stern flew in here to back and the Democrats’ legislation.

It is not my role as an outsider to tell SEIU how they should run themselves.  It is up to the members.  They clearly are not interested in what the International is attempting to force upon them.  That is the antithesis of a bottom-up people-powered union.  While I have great respect for a lot of the political work SEIU International has and continues to do nationally, this stinks for SEIU members in CA and for the larger progressive movement here.

This transcript from today’s Democracy Now! includes an interview with Sal Rosseli and the press release from the International on today’s events.  Here is the excerpt as it gives you a flavor of where both sides are coming from in their own words.

Sal Rosselli, I wanted to ask you very quickly-we just got a statement a few minutes ago within the show emailed to us from the Service Employees International Union. They say, “Today’s vote follows an exhaustive two-year participatory process including 13 days of hearings to determine how best to represent SEIU’s 240,000 long-term care members in California. In August, an outside hearing officer concluded that California’s long-term care workers would be better served if they were no longer divided among three local unions. Similarly, in June, the member delegates to SEIU’s quadrennial convention representing the union’s 2 million members overwhelming adopted a proposal that called for the creation of a single long term care workers’ union per state.

“The question facing the IEB today”-that’s the International Executive Board-“could not be more urgent. These are particularly challenging times for California workers. Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed dramatic across-the-board cuts in patient care and worker pay, including slashing the pay of many workers to a bare minimum wage, and long-term care members must to be organized to fight back.” They conclude, “The proposal being considered today would create the nation’s largest organization of long-term care workers, instantly making it a political and economic heavyweight in the nation’s most populous state.”

Sal Rosselli, your response?

SAL ROSSELLI: It’s disingenuous at best. You know, the hearings inside SEIU are kangaroo court type of operations. The bottom line is, workers need to be able to vote in a very democratic way about their future. And the workers in-the 150,000 workers in UHW in California have voted to stay united into one union.

It’s also hypocritical, because in every other state, including New York, long-term care workers are united with hospital workers. Enforcing a division of them in California, which is what Andy Stern is attempting to do, will delegate long-term care workers to permanent second-class citizenship. It’s the strength of hospital workers united with long-term care workers that’s fundamentally important to achieve quality patient care, achieve a real voice in staffing levels and achieve fair conditions for these workers.

My views are absolutely colored by watching the proceedings in the fall where SEIU was unable to prove that UHW did anything wrong and yet are doggedly continuing on a path to eliminate or vastly weaken UHW.  That said, I am interested in what others opinions are on the subject.  This is no cup of tea to talk about as two allies duke it out and good friends are on both sides.

In my years as an activist member with SEIU United Healthcare Workers – West I have been a part of many struggles for working people.  But in the last months we have been in a different kind of fight.  We have stood up to the arrogance of Andy Stern, Anna Burger and other SEIU International officers who, in an attempt to flex their muscles and stifle dissent, have chastened many rank-and-file members and our local, United Healthcare Workers – West with the threat of trusteeship.  But I will say now, organized union members will never be intimidated by anyone, International Union officers included.  We will stand up to anyone.

I saw this stifling of members’ voices at the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico from the moment we entered the convention center, when our delegation was harassed and followed.  I saw this as the Convention voted to move me and other workers out of my union and into corrupt Local 6434, ignoring our right to decide where we belong.  The hundreds in Puerto Rico voted to move us 65,000 from California.  But we were not intimidated then.

UHW member Ella Raiford, protesting the Convention’s vote to force members out of UHW.

In response, we came out in force.  At our mass demonstration in Manhattan Beach, where we organized 6000 members to protest another sham hearing, I personally went up to Anna Burger and confronted her, telling her that we will not be swayed and demanded that Stern and Burger meet with our membership.  We aren’t furniture, we can’t be moved around on their whims.   We weren’t surprised when she said no to a meeting.  We stood strong in front of them, never scared.

My UHW brothers and sisters protesting the International’s plans to divide us in July.

We continued on to Madison, Wisconsin, where a group of us were determined to meet with SEIU International.  We continued in our demands for a meeting with Andy Stern, and to our surprise he agreed to meet us for a brief talk.  But he said very little to us, claiming that he couldn’t say anything without his lawyers.  Instead of our elected officers working for us, Andy and Anna wanted the lawyers to do their job, so they could wash their hands when we pressed them with questions.  When faced with dozens of informed, angry union members, maybe our International union officers were intimidated by us!

    

We confronted Andy Stern; me right after our meeting with him.

And most recently, I and fifty other UHW members occupied the SEIU International office in Alameda to demand answers from out-of-touch union officials who support taking away our voice.  We shouldn’t be afraid to confront them — they work for us!

Us confronting International officials at the SEIU Office in Oakland.

This is a movement of union members who have one goal: to keep our democratically run union, UHW, where we make decisions.  I and others in our union have confronted our bosses and won, through the power of organized union members.  We are not afraid to take on any fight, even against SEIU International officials.

JuanAntonio Molina

Proud UHW Member

In-Home Healthcare Provider

San Francisco, CA

We were very pleased to have Robert from Monterey attend the sham trusteeship hearing against members at United Heatlthcare Workers – West. Robert had a great perspective on the hearing.

Here are some of my thoughts as a UHW member:

For the past two days I joined several thousand rank-and-file UHW members in donning red shirts with the slogan “Hands Off Our Union” at our march and protest against Andy Stern and SEIU’s attempt to impose a dictatorship on our local union.  The tension was thick throughout the trusteeship hearing which SEIU convened with less then a months notice to justify unlawfully removing our elected leaders for political reasons.

SEIU hasn’t succeeded in taking control of our union away from healthcare workers like me yet.  And we’re not going to let them.  I’m a CNA at a nursing home in Fresno and what I want right now is to spend my time working hard to elect Barack Obama, helping other workers join our union, and fighting to put patients before profits.  Outside the hearing all these things were heavily on our minds while we came together with other healthcare workers in a festival for a democratic, bottom-up union.

Several dozen SEIU staff in blue monitor shirts greeted us when we arrived at the trusteeship hearing yesterday and this morning.  I thought to myself that their time could be put to better use working in the swing states for Obama.

Fortunately, my fellow UHW members made up for them by phone banking during the hearing to union members to urge them to support Obama.

Three thousand of us rallied and marched during the lunch recess of the hearing on the first day and today we had even more members and their families show up.  Throughout the day we cycled through teach-in and phone bank tents for trainings and making calls to protect our union and elect Barack Obama.

With so many important issues like universal health care in play, we need to be doing everything we can to get Obama elected.  UHW members sent that message to Andy Stern and SEIU loud and clear at their kangaroo court.

Anita Wiltz

Certified Nursing Assistant

Golden Cross Healthcare Center

Yesterday thousands of SEIU United Healthcare Workers – West members gathered at the San Mateo fairgrounds to protest the bogus hearing being held by SEIU International intended to put their member-led local into trusteeship.  UHW members had these responses to SEIU’s stated plan of taking over the local and installing more hand-picked leaders.  

UHW members’ rank-and-file TV spot: Keepin’ It Real 1 of 2

Keepin’ it Real 2 of 2

Check out more coverage from union members on the ground at http://www.seiuvoice.org.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

So many of us have a hard time living up to our own values.  Here is a story of one example.

The Sisters of St. Joseph have a proud history of fighting for human rights and human dignity and improvement of conditions for working people.  But like so many progressives — and people in general — the Sisters of St. Joseph appear to be having trouble living up to these values when they apply to themselves.

A few days ago Julia Rosen wrote a Calitics post titled, Sisters of St. Josephs it’s time to make peace with your workers.  I urge readers here to go read that post.  Julia writes,

It is a dirty little secret, but often times the more virulently anti-union employers are religious orders that run health systems.  Such is the situation with the Sisters of St. Joseph who run the St. Joseph Health System.  They have been resisting the efforts of their service employees to join SEIU-UHW for the past three years.

And at Huffington Post Delores Huertes has a post titled, Together We Marched in Solidarity.  I also urge readers to click through and read it.  She begins,

This week I’m joining St. Joseph Health System workers, Attorney General Jerry Brown, Father Eugene Boyle, actor Ed Begley Jr, and community and religious leaders to call upon the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange to make peace with their workers.

next she makes the important point,

For decades, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange have fought for justice for California’s workers. In the summer of 1973, they marched in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and farm workers during the brutal Grape Strike. I witnessed the Sisters putting their personal safety at risk. They walked picket lines and even went to jail with more than 3500 striking farm workers. I was inspired by the Sisters’ commitment to stand with the farm workers, even in the face of violent provocation.

Yes, it appears that the Sisters of St. Joseph are ready to stand by workers, walk pickets lines, and fight for the rights of workers.  But this time they are holding back when it involves their own workers.  Huertes continues,

Over the last three years, workers in the St. Joseph Health System (SJHS) who care for the sick and vulnerable in our community, have been working to form a union with S.E.I.U. — United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) so they can have a real say in the decisions that affect their patients, their families and themselves.

But the Sisters, who founded and hold majority control of the Board of SJHS, a $3.5 billion system of hospitals and clinics, sadly are using heavy-handed tactics similar to those used by other major corporations to deny workers a free choice about whether to form a union. SJHS workers have told me directly, that the SJHS management is fighting their efforts and violating federal labor law by threatening union supporters with arrest and job loss – and denying them free speech. Public records show that SJHS has hired some of the most notorious union-busting firms to fight their employees. Meanwhile, government officials have cited SJHS for violating its employees’ basic labor rights, including illegally firing, spying on, and intimidating workers who want to form a union. These heavy-handed tactics leave workers feeling threatened, intimidated and disregarded.

While looking into this I came across a December, 2007 article at the Catholic News Agency, Catholic health workers’ effort to unionize could crowd out Catholics. Please read to article to learn about the subtexts of this unionization battle.  From the story,

A political activist in Sacramento [. . .] said the UHW takeover would be a “done deal” if the employees’ demand for a fair election agreement were met.

If you read the story it is clear that the activist mentioned is very much against unionization and supports the Sisters’ efforts to keep the workers from having a unionization vote.  But if allowing a vote for a union means that a union is “a done deal” then it means the workers want a union.  

Any way you look at it, it is a shame that the Sisters are trying to keep their workers from voting on whether to have a union.  The Sisters need to understand that they are role models for their community.  They were positive role models standing up for their values when they supported the farmworkers.  They can again be positive role models by showing that even when it affects their own interests they are willing to stand by their values and support worker rights and human rights.  

It is time that the Sisters of Saint Joseph allow their workers to vote on whether they want a union.

Click through to Speak Out California.

UPDATED – see this video coverage of our march into the SEIU International officials’ secret meeting.

Today, myself and 5,000 other UHW members from all over the state are in Manhattan Beach to protest. But we’re not protesting another corrupt boss. We’re protesting a process rigged by SEIU International officials designed to take away the voices of 65,000 long-term care workers in California.

What’s this all about? It’s about whether SEIU, our union, will stand on the principles of democracy and be governed by its members, or whether Washington D.C. union officials will force us into another union, against our wishes and against our vote. We are here to say clearly: we are not to be moved around like pieces of furniture. We won’t be forced out of our union against our will.

In the past, we have been critical of SEIU leaders in D.C. meeting behind closed doors to cut deals that hurt healthcare workers. But now we’ve seen it in action.

Yesterday, top SEIU International officers were meeting here, behind closed doors, to plot to cut our union, UHW, in half by forcing nursing home and homecare workers (like me) away from hospital workers.

Why wasn’t our union invited to the meeting? Is it because we have already voted by 97% to stay in UHW? Is it because we oppose agreements like the California Nursing Home Alliance, which trades away worker rights and limits our ability to advocate for residents?

We wanted to find out. So a group of more than 20 of us rank-and-file members of UHW decided to let these leaders know we opposed their backroom dealing and that we were prepared to fight to stay united in UHW.

It happened very fast. We walked into their secret meeting, and we told them that we weren't going anywhere, that we had already voted for and chosen our union. Another coworker of mine said that it made no sense for us to move, since we had achieved much better contracts in UHW, where all kinds of healthcare workers are together, than the other union they want to move us to.

The union officials sat there stone-faced. I don’t know if they were shocked or if they didn’t care what we thought. The only one who said anything was Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer. She tried to shut me up, but I kept on going, addressing the rest of the room. I told them that we, the members, are the union. We are not for sale, we can't be given away like a piece of furniture.

In the end, once we’d made our message clear, we left. Today the hearing officially begins, but the backroom meeting leads us to believe the decision has already been written. But that won’t stop us.

We will continue this reform movement to make SEIU a democratic union. For us, our union is not just about wages, it’s not just about benefits, it’s about democracy.  

My name is Barbara Lewis and I’m VP in the SEIU-UHW (United Healthcare Workers – West) Hospital Division. We’re glad to continue this discussion about the direction of SEIU and defending the voice of the membership.

SEIU has made outrageous allegations here and elsewhere that my local union, SEIU-UHW had a hand in the California Nurses Association (CNA) raid against SEIU’s Ohio CHP (Catholic Healthcare Partners) campaign — a raid that resulted in SEIU pulling the campaign and 9000 workers being denied the right to form a union.

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry and Dave Regan’s effort to shift the blame onto UHW for the Ohio tragedy is simply an attempt to cover up their own responsibility in this.

A little background on my relationship to this issue: I worked for 18 years with our International Union, mainly in organizing – both public and private sector, and since 1998 exclusively in Southern California as an SEIU staff person assigned to help lead our healthcare organizing, along with leaders from Local 399 and Local 250, prior to the merger that created UHW.

In early 2005, I left the International Union to join the staff of UHW to lead our Tenet work in California. I worked jointly with the International Union as a UHW staff person to help organize Tenet workers in Florida. And I led the Tenet Rank and File Unity Council for two years to establish national priorities for the next round of bargaining: priorities that included winning organizing rights and improving contract standards for existing members.

This week, SEIU Local 1199 sent a letter to the homes of all UHW members claiming that our local union was responsible for the California Nurses Association raid that derailed the organizing campaign at CHP in Ohio.

This outrageous allegation has no factual basis whatsoever as UHW was not involved and we immediately denounced CNA for the Ohio debacle. (See relevant documents at seiuvoice.org.) If anyone is responsible for the campaign’s collapse, it is the leaders who negotiated the election agreement.

Simple safeguards should have been taken ensuring these elections would be done carefully without public fanfare and without being vulnerable to an attack typical of the CNA. Mistakes get made, bad things happen, but to try to blame their failure to protect the agreement on some fabricated role of UHW is reprehensible.

Having worked with locals from around the nation as we develop models for organizing registered nurses and gaining footholds in primarily non-union areas, we’ve seen many examples of CNA swooping in at the last minute to disrupt organizing efforts.

In California in May 2003, SEIU, Local 399 and Local 250 won an organizing agreement with Tenet Healthcare to organize all the Tenet hospitals in California and two Tenet hospitals in Florida. This agreement came out of a multi-year national fight with Tenet and once the agreement was reached, there was a great deal of publicity.

Only days after we reached the agreement, the California Nurses Association was on the ground working to undermine it.

The California Nurses Association put out endless literature and news releases about how our agreement with Tenet was a “sell out, back room deal” and that Tenet was “hand picking the union,” and that nurses shouldn’t have to belong to a “janitors union.”

The CNA’s strategy was to file with the bare minimum support necessary at the NLRB to hold up our elections for registered nurses, and to threaten SEIU’s traditional base of hospital members by creating an “ancillary union” to compete with Local 399 and Local 250.

Workers’ right to an election was delayed for over one year, and for that entire year we had to operate on two fronts: hand-to-hand combat with the CNA at the worksite (as their organizers’ main job was to create conflict, intimidation and chaos) and holding together the support we had so that once we could move forward we could win.

We finally settled jurisdictional issues with the CNA in December, 7 months later. It took another full year for workers to finally have their election.

Since the California Tenet experience, CNA has made numerous attempts elsewhere (Illinois/Nevada/Arizona) to derail RN organizing.

Given all this history is well known in SEIU, the CNA action in Ohio should have been 100% predictable. But instead, there were multiple newspaper articles after the Ohio CHP agreement was reached about the details and the locations and dates of the upcoming elections. These constituted an engraved invitation for the CNA to land in Ohio.

Since SEIU is acutely aware of the CNA’s search and destroy missions, why wouldn’t they ensure that no press releases were made?

UHW has done everything we’ve been asked to do and more to help our sisters and brothers in Ohio fight off the CNA attacks. We received a call from Dave Regan when CNA landed asking for our assistance to immediately leaflet the CNA represented hospitals urging their members to request an end to their activity. We did so without any hesitation, and in such an aggressive manner, that the corporate office of Tenet demanded we stop leafleting. We did not stop and continued for several days.

Despite the fact that at the time we were in the middle to four contested organizing campaigns ourselves (two of which were won this week by 1,000 new members) we offered to send staff immediately into Ohio to help. This offer was rejected.

To send a letter to the homes of our members, claiming that our union was responsible for the horrible tragedy in Ohio is nothing but an effort to turn Ohio workers against California workers and escalate SEIU’s attack against our local union.