Over the last few weeks I have been writing about the plight of security guards working for a company called Inter-Con, a contractor at Kaiser Permanente Hospitals in California.  One post I wrote on this was titled, Why Don’t We Hear About Labor Issues Anymore? and I want to get to that subject some more here.  But first, I want to go over what was covered.

(Continues)

The security guards went on strike because their employer was interfering with their right to form a union.  The first post, Security Guards Striking for the Right to Have Our Laws Enforced

This strike is not against Kaiser and is not to ask for money or benefits; it is not even to form a union in the first place. This strike is just to ask that our laws please be enforced. This may be a lot to ask for in today’s corporate-dominated system, but they’re asking for it anyway.

The second post, Why They (And You) Need A Union, asked,

How else are workers going to get back their rights, get health care, get pensions, and get paid? If you see a better idea out there, please let us all know because this strike and the things happening to these security guards shows that it is very very difficult to form a union. In today’s environment where workers are afraid of employers moving their jobs overseas – or even just laying them off and telling everyone else to work harder – and then giving their pay out as raises to the executives and multi-million-dollar bonuses to the CEO, this is a very brave action to take.

Then, in Unions: Sticking Together to Fight Corporate Power,

You and I are individuals, alone. But corporations have the ability to amass immense power and wealth and influence. You and I as individuals must stand alone against this power and wealth. What can you or I or anyone else do on our own? The average person in our society has very little ability to stand up against this kind of power and wealth.

Over time people discovered that there are some things they can do that will work. One of these has been to form unions. By joining together the workers in a company can amass some power of their own. The company needs the workers in order to function so the workers — if they stick together — have the ability to make the corporation obey employee/employer laws, provide decent pay, and all the other benefits that the unions have brought us. This is why they are also call “organized labor.” By organizing into a union and sticking together people have the ability to demand respect and compensation for their work.

There were also some other posts with news about the strike itself.

In the post Why Don’t We Hear About Labor Issues Anymore? I wrote,

A few local TV news broadcasts covered the story, and there were a few newspaper articles announcing that there was going to be a strike. But there was almost no actual coverage of the strike except on progressive sites and labor outlets. What’s up with that?

This is a significant problem with today’s corporate media.  There is overwhelming coverage of business issues like the stock market, investment, mergers and CEO personality profiles.  There is story after story pushing new products, cars, bigger houses, consumption, even listings of which movies are making more money than other movies – as if that was a concern to ordinary people.

But there is very little coverage of issues that might help regular people live their daily lives.  And in particular there is no, none, nada, negatory, zero coverage of ordinary working people fighting back against the corporate domination of our democracy and other decision-making, including the commercialization of everything.

Labor issues are a big part of that equation.  Organized labor is the vehicle that enables regular people to fight back against domination by the big corporations.  Big corporations are able to aggregate immense wealth and power.  Individuals have no change standing against such wealth and power on their own.  But banding together they do.  And the more that band together, the better the chance to stand up to the wealth and power of the corporations.

But not if people don’t find out that they can’t do this.  And that is where the blogs come in.  I was able to post the stories about the security guards’ strike at Huffington Post, MyDD, Seeing the Forest, and in DailyKos and Calitics diaries. Other sites like AlterNet picked up these stories and passed them along to their readers.  In this way literally millions of people were able to learn about this strike, which helped raise awareness of the situation as well as apply more pressure to Inter-Con, the employer as well as to government agencies responsible for enforcing the labor laws.  If stories like this can be kept entirely quiet strikes like this would be completely ineffective. But if the blog-readers and other progressives start demanding that laws be enforced and workers be allowed to organize, we can start to make a difference.

Please visit StandForSecurity.org.

I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike.  

This week I wrote about the Kaiser Permanente / Inter-Con Security Security Guard strike.

The post Security Guards Striking for the Right to Have Our Laws Enforced discussed why the guards are striking.  They are employees of Inter-Con Security, Inc., which contracts services to Kaiser Permanente facilities in California.  This company (not Kaiser) is trying to stop the guards from forming a union and the guards are striking to ask that laws allowing union organizing be enforced.

In Why They (And You) Need A Union a comparison with unionized security guards at Kaiser facilities in other states demonstrated the difference that forming a union can make to workers everywhere.

The post Unions: Sticking Together to Fight Corporate Power discussed how individuals are unable to stand up against the immense power and wealth that corporations are able to accumulate.  Over time workers learned that by organizing into unions they were able to also build enough power to fight back and demand fair compensation and benefits for their work.

Outside of the blogs there was remarkably little coverage of this strike.  Here is a roundup of some of the other coverage:

This is a good story online at Urban Mecca, Three-Day Strike by Hundreds of Security Officers at Kaiser Hospitals,

“The public needs to know that the security officers responsible for making Kaiser hospitals safe and protecting vulnerable patients are being denied our fundamental civil rights. Inter-Con freely uses intimidation, spying and retaliation to harass its workers,” said Shauna Carnero, a security officer in Hayward.

The strike, which began May 6 and included major rallies outside Kaiser medical centers in Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles, followed numerous federal complaints that workers have filed with the National Labor Relations Board in recent weeks charging Inter-Con with unfair labor practices over the past two years.

The Pasadena Star-News had Kaiser guards strike,

Hospital security guards went on strike statewide Thursday, citing poor working conditions and lack of health coverage.

About 200 Southern California employees of Inter-Con Security, which is contracted by Kaiser Permanente to provide security guards, joined their Northern California counterparts who have been on strike since Tuesday, Service Employees International Union officials said.

[. . .] Security guards have little legal recourse when they are denied the right to organize, an SEIU attorney said. A loophole in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gives security guards only one method of forming a union.

While most employees have the option of holding an election to bring in a union, security guards can only organize if their employers agree to recognize the union, said attorney Orrin Baird.

“It’s sort of out-dated,” Baird said. “If they were not guards they could file a petition with the (National Labor Relations Board) and then they would have to have an election.”

While a few local TV stations carried news about the strike, there was a near-blackout of coverage in the corporate media.  Why do you think that is?

Please visit StandForSecurity.org.

I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike.  

Striking for Justice

Today, security officers who protect Kaiser Permanente facilities in California are striking against their employer-Inter-Con Security Systems–which has met every union organizing effort with fierce opposition, jobsite harassment, and continued intimidation and coercion. The post below is written by Rochelle Duran, an Inter-Con security officer in Fremont, California, who is striking with 80 fellow security officers to make her voice heard.

Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life organizing sanitation workers in Memphis, my colleagues and I are still fighting for justice in the workplace.

Today, security officers who protect Kaiser Permanente facilities in California are striking against our employer-Inter-Con Security Systems-which refuses to give us basic rights and has met every step we have taken to form a union with fierce opposition and jobsite.

We’ve been struggling with Inter-Con for more than two years now.  Instead of honoring the wishes of its employees, Inter-Con responded by unlawfully intimidating and coercing its officers.

At Kaiser, security officers are among the only group of workers who are being denied the right to form a union. Almost all other direct employees or subcontracted workers are protected under Kaiser’s Labor Management Partnership. As a result, you can really see the stark differences in job quality, compensation, and overall staff morale.

I work the graveyard shift from 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. A nurse I work with was recently shocked to discover that I don’t receive differential pay for my late-night hours. I told her, “How could we possibly expect differential pay when we don’t even get a paid sick day or a basic annual wage increase?”

Forty years ago, Dr. King died while standing up for the dignity and human rights of workers.  Today my co-workers and I will share that struggle. We’ll be outside with signs in hand, using the only tools we have to make our voices heard. I pray this time it will pay off. It’s time for Inter-Con to give us a break. And if we can’t convince them to treat us like human beings, it’s time for Kaiser to give us the support we need so we can do our jobs well and be treated with the dignity we have already earned.

For more information on Rochelle’s struggle, go to www.StandforInterConWorkers.org

I work the graveyard shift from 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. A nurse I work with was recently shocked to discover that I don’t receive differential pay for my late-night hours. I told her, “How could we possibly expect differential pay when we don’t even get a paid sick day or a basic annual wage increase?”

Inter-Con won’t even provide security officers with a single paid sick day, which is just crazy in a hospital setting. We’re forced to come to our hospital sites sick-potentially infecting vulnerable patients-because we don’t have any other options. If we don’t show up, it’s not just that we’ll get docked pay-we also risk getting fired. I highly doubt that a measly five days of paid sick leave would break the Inter-Con bank; but I’m more than sure it would improve the services we provide and build loyalty among the staff.

Unfortunately, Inter-Con doesn’t share my sense of pragmatism. In fact, when I went on maternity leave six months ago, they harassed me into returning two weeks before the six weeks of family leave I am legally entitled to was used up. I’d been working at the job for nearly three years, and there was no doubt that I was coming back. But Inter-Con just kept threatening to give away my position, and I was scared. A lost job was the last thing I needed to deal with while juggling the responsibilities of being a mother for the first time.  Of course it wasn’t surprising coming from a company who had told me months before that “they didn’t have positions for pregnant women.”

It still shocks me that as honest workers, we have to fight this hard to get a break and Inter-Con’s only response is to violate our rights. I guess that’s just the way the world is these days. Job security is something you can’t take for granted when you work for a contractor like Inter-Con.

Back when I was out on maternity leave, Inter-Con fired one of my colleagues who had been active in trying to organize a union. Inter-Con said they fired him for his poor language skills- although those skills worked just fine for the three years he had already put in there! He was lucky. Because we’d started working with SEIU, we saw the kind of justice unions can provide. After negotiation and some legal proceedings, my colleague was able to come back to work for Inter-Con in an even higher position than the one they’d fired him from for his “lacking language skills.”

We need more of that kind of justice.

Even though my salary hasn’t budged since I started working at Inter-Con, my life’s changed a lot. I have a six-month old and my family needs me. I suppose I’m just like every other worker in America: I want a job that values my contributions and pays me a livable wage. In the wealthiest country on earth, I just don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Forty years ago, Dr. King died while standing up for the dignity and human rights of workers.  Today my co-workers and I will share that struggle. We’ll be outside with signs in hand, using the only tools we have to make our voices heard. I pray this time it will pay off. It’s time for Inter-Con to give us a break. And if we can’t convince them to treat us like human beings, it’s time for Kaiser to give us the support we need so we can do our jobs well and be treated with the dignity we have already earned.

– Rochelle Duran

For more information on Rochelle’s struggle, go to www.StandforInterConWorkers.org

Rochelle Duran has worked as a security officer at Kaiser Permanente in Fremont, California, for nearly three years. At the same time she fights for justice for her fellow Inter-Con security officers, Rochelle is a full-time student studying to become a probation officer. Outside of work, Rochelle enjoys spending time with her six-month old baby.