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.  

Dave Johnson has been posting about this strike and its big picture implications, but I also wanted to share some of the individual stories from the workers on the front lines. Here’s Saras Chand from Fremont:

I am a security officer with Inter-Con at the Kaiser Fremont Medical Center. I live in Fremont as well. I’ve worked here for about 1 year and 5 months.

I am from the Fiji Islands. I left the Fiji Islands to come here because it’s hard to survive back home. You can’t get a good education for your family and it’s hard to earn enough to support them. I have 6 kids and my family is important to me.

I’ve worked other security jobs. In a hospital, security has a lot of responsibility and risk. We come into contact with sick people frequently. Despite that we get paid less here than I have at other security jobs.

I do a good job. I always come on time to work. If something is part of my duties, I do it. My heart tells me I should always do a good job and work my best, no matter where I am. I do my best for Kaiser patients and staff – I am committed to doing my part so no one gets hurt.

But we don’t get respect.

We don’t have paid sick leave. If I get sick, I miss pay. That means when we are sick, we think about coming to work anyway since we don’t want to lose pay. That’s not good for us, for patients, or Kaiser staff.

Some people think security is an easy job. But that’s because they don’t know our responsibilities or how hard we work.

When I was in Fiji, I thought, “America is a good country. I will make good money and support my family there.” But we don’t get respect over here.

When I wake up each morning I pray to God that he will help me do my best for my family, my friends, and at my job for Kaiser.

I am an organizer for SEIU.

(Proud to be working on this. Solidarity! – promoted by Bob Brigham)

I have been writing about the strike by California Kaiser Permanente security guards working for contractor Inter-Con Security, who are demanding that laws be enforced and their rights be honored.

SEIU sent out a press release on the situation, titled, Workers With No Healthcare Protecting Kaiser Facilities, Security Contractor May Be Misleading California’s Largest Healthcare Provider.  In summary, the security guards at Kaiser are supposed to be provided with individual healthcare after working for 90 days, but it turns out that many are not.  The security contractor Inter-Con Security has found a way around the promise: they classify workers as “on-call” instead of permanent.

As more and more workers report that Inter-Con is keeping workers on temporary or “on-call” status for months or years, it’s still unclear whether Inter-Con is misleading Kaiser or if Kaiser is simply turning a blind eye to these tactics which short-change workers.

And their families are not provided with health insurance at all.  The security guards — paid as little as $10.40 an hour — are supposed to buy it.  The result is that 41% of the officers who responded to a survey cannot.  And without paid sick days they cannot afford to take the time off to see a doctor anyway.

So here we are with a company finding ways around a promise by changing the classification of the workers to “on-call.”  This points out yet one more problem of workplaces that do not have unions.  How many people are classified as “temporary” or “contractors”?  This is one of the bigger scams that is going on these days.  One reason companies do this is because if someone is not an employee the employer doesn’t have to pay their share of the Social Security payroll tax.  (There are other reasons as well, including avoiding paying promised benefits.)

How do you know if you should be called an employee or an independent contractor?  For a quick guideline, let’s go to the IRS.  They say that by-and-large you are an employee,

if the organization can control what will be done and how it will be done. This is so even if the organization gives the employee freedom of action. What matters is that the organization has the right to control the details of how the services are performed.

Yet most of us see examples of people in this situation who are called “temporary workers” or “contractors” all the time.

Companies are not supposed to do this to us, but here’s the thing: What can you do about it? 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.

This is what the security guards at Kaiser are trying to do.  This is what you should do.

I encourage you to visit StandForSecurity.org.

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

Dave Johnson has been posting about this strike and its big picture implications, but I also wanted to share some of the individual stories from the workers on the front lines. Here’s Dale Brown from Sacramento:

I’ve been with Inter-Con at Kaiser South Sacramento for a year. I’m constantly worried about getting sick. Working in a hospital, I’m exposed to illness and danger all the time. Without paid sick leave, Inter-con officers either have financial hardship if we take off of work, or are forced to work while sick. If I were to have to miss even one week I would be in danger of losing my apartment.

I’m a single mother, and the insurance plan is too expensive for me to enroll my 2 children. It would cause me hardship even just to buy the Inter-Con/Kaiser plan for my kids.

Recently I had to tell my daughter that we couldn’t afford to pay for cheerleading or volleyball because of the low pay-and no raises–paid at Kaiser to Inter-Con officers. That’s not a situation a parent should ever have to face.

I am fighting for a union because we deserve better. We protect Kaiser and its assets, but Inter-Con isn’t even willing to sit down and hear us out. That is just wrong.

But Inter-Con is breaking the law and violating our civil rights. They’re threatening and harassing workers, pulling people aside and interrogating them. I hated to go on strike, because we all want to make sure that Kaiser patients and employees are protected. But Inter-Con’s breaking the law so we had no choice.

Dale Brown, Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center

I am an organizer for SEIU.

(I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike. – promoted by Bob Brigham)

Yesterday I wrote about the security guards who are striking at Kaiser Permanente because their contractor-employer is engaging in illegal tactics while trying to block them from forming a union.  The guards work for Inter-Con Security Inc., which is contracted by Kaiser to provide security services.

You can read articles with details about what happened with the strike yesterday here and here.  (There is close to zero coverage of this strike in newspapers.  But you wouldn’t expect a corporate-owned media to provide information about labor, now would you?)

Please visit the site Stand for Security for background and details about the security guards’ fight to form a union.

While this strike is about violations of workers’ rights, there are very good reasons for their three-year effort to form a union.

In Oregon, the state just north of California, Kaiser Permanente security guards are employed by Kaiser, not by a contractor.  They are unionized and here is a short chart of just some of the difference this makes.

This chart is an example of the difference that a union makes.  The column on the left — the one with better pay, health care, sick days, pension and other benefits — is the workers who are in a union.  The column on the right is these security guards.  So this is why these security guards have been fighting for three years to join a union.  The employer, Inter-Con Security won’t even give sick days!  For people working in hospitals!  What are these workers supposed to do?  And they won’t even pay when the workers have jury duty!  (Shouldn’t a company be concerned about the greater public good, like a court system that works?)

But this chart is also representative of other workplaces, showing the difference that forming a union can make for other workers.  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.  

On top of that, the Republican government has stacked the labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board to side with the big corporations.  So it is even harder to form a union than ever.  Which is, of course, why wages are stagnating and CEO pay is off the charts.

This is why these workers are striking — to demand that their civil rights be honored and to demand that their right to form a union be honored.  These security guards are placing everything on the line — and doing this for all of us.  If they win this fight, all of us are a step further toward our rights being honored, and toward our own jobs paying more and giving benefits.

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

(I’m proud to be working on this for SEIU, there’s great energy here on the picket line! – promoted by Bob Brigham)

There is a three-day strike starting today at Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California.  1800 security guards are striking for three days in an “unfair labor practice” action.  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.

Here is some background:  

Rather than directly employ security guards Kaiser contracts with a company called Inter-Con Security Systems, Inc.  Inter-Con hires and manages the security guards for Kaiser, paying them very little and giving them few benefits – not even sick leave.  So these security guards, even though they work at Kaiser, (some for many years), are paid far less than other security guards at Kaiser facilities in other states, and receive few benefits.  Kaiser is one of the more responsible, unionized companies for its workers, which makes this situation even worse for these workers.

These security guards have been trying to form a union for three years and Inter-Con is trying to stop them.  It is legal to form a union but Inter-Con has violated civil rights by “threatening, intimidating, and spying on workers who were trying to form a union for better conditions” and that is illegal.  

“…They’re pulling us aside to ask us who is going to picket or strike, who’s a union supporter,” said Angelito Morales, an Inter-Con officer at Kaiser Union City Medical Center, near the Hayward facility.

That’s illegal.  Many other occurrences of i9llegal anti-union practices led the security guards to file a complaint with the (Bush) National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that Inter-Con managers have:

   * Ordered employees to inform management when individuals at the job site were engaging in union activities.

   * Interrogated employees, asking them to disclose the names of individuals who intend to engage in union activities.

   * Spied on employees, photographing and/or otherwise recording employees as they participated in union activities such as picketing.

   * Interrogated at least one worker about planned strike activities, asking whether or not the worker was planning on participating in the strike.

   * Promised workers improved benefits (healthcare), to deter them from engaging in further union activities.

All of these are against the rules, but the NLRB has not acted.  

Please visit Stand For Security, SEIU’s website covering this strike and the security guards’ fight to form a union.

Don’t get caught up in arguments about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing for employees to go on strike for money or benefits.  That is not what this strike is about.  This strike is about asking that laws be enforced, so the security guards can go about the legal business of forming a union to represent their interests.

These are the only workers at Kaiser — subcontracted or not — who do not have a union.  Janitors and others are subcontracted but have unions.  And being in a union makes a huge difference.  For example, these are the only Kaiser workers without paid family health care.  Inter-Con employees must be full time to get any health coverage, while other Kaiser workers get it for working part time.  (And of course Inter-Con has lots of ways to make sure employees don’t get classified as full-time, like having an “on-call” status that doesn’t count.)  

They don’t even have paid sick leave.  These security guards have to restrain patients, work in the psychiatric ward, etc., and some have been attacked, but they do not even get sick pay! And, of course, there is a dramatic pay difference between these Inter-Con contractors and the other Kaiser employees and contractors.

Rather than turn this into a comprehensive, 12-page essay I’m goign to write more over the next several days, as this strike unfolds.  For now, please visit Stand For Security, SEIU’s website about this situation.

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

Update – Construction workers building a wing at the Oakland Kaiser site have shut down to honor the picket line there.

Pics from Oakland:

     

Update – Just got a report that an Alhambra truck with a Teamster driver is refusing to cross the Oakland picket line, and in Hayward the IBEW workers will not cross.