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.}

NUHW Wants Stewards To Collect Back Dues:

In finishing up his cross examination of UHW Finance Director, Edgard Cajina, NUHW attorney asked why UHW is seeking damages for lost dues from NUHW when the dues are ultimately owed by the workers. Mr. Cajina explained that the cost involved of taking action to collect dues from individual members would be greater than the amount collected and that it would not be feasible. As if it were not enough to ask that the union sue individual members, Mr. Siegel went as far as to suggest that shop stewards should go around their facilities collecting money from their co-workers.

“Don’t Spend Time With the Members:”

We heard testimony from more UHW staff members that were told to turn out members to meetings, create lists with our confidential information, and teach members how to be confrontational. Abby Reeve explained how working for defendant Barbara Lewis she could  dedicate only 30% of her time to representing members at grievances and bargaining. May Ann Durazo from the Homecare Division was invited by defendant Gabe Krystal to attend a “secret meeting” in early January 2009 where Rosselli was to speak about a “great plan.” But she started to ask questions, and the defendants didn’t like that so they withdrew their invitation.

Durazo continued to say how in early January 2009, she found herself dedicating most of her time (90%) to charting facilities, handing out flyers, and encouraging members to turn out for meetings,  versus only 10% doing actual representational work like processing grievances. When she expressed concern to her division director, defendant Vellardita, he told her, “Don’t spend time with the members.” Alex Espinoza from the hospital division added to this pattern when he told the jury how he too found himself representing members less and representing the interests of Sal more. He went on to say how a couple days before the trusteeship, and after the attack on the LA office where a mob stole confidential documents, defendant Lewis confronted him about information coming her way where he was “assessed as a 1,” meaning he had been labeled an SEIU supporter. Lewis then quizzed him about his employment plans after a trusteeship. Not making any accusations how this information came her way, but read yesterday’s post about witness (Nancy Stengel’s) testimony about the raid on the L.A. SEIU office and who they gave stolen documents to.

Lynn Templeton an operations coordinator at the Oakland office told how defendant Phyllis Willett told her to figure out the costs of buying the cell phones we mentioned yesterday. She continued to say how at Willet’s instruction she was to alter the contract for these phones so they would be purchased by the Patient Education Fund (the bogus fund set up by the defendant’s with $3 million of our dues money) not SEIU-UHW. In her testimony, she also told how Willett told her to remove from her office documents relating to the PEF.

Philip Rodokanakis, an expert in the field of computer forensics, recounted his analysis of the computer used by John Borsos. He determined that there were “many irregularities.” Of 5,700 e-mails that were “double deleted” he was able to recover 3,000. In the computer used by Fred Seavey he discovered that the user registry file was missing, also gone were event logs and Windows was (re)installed in February 2009. The biggest surprise was the discovery of a document he named “NUHW Staff List.” This document was created on January 21, 2009, six days before trusteeship when Seavey was still employed by SEIU-UHW. For the past week the defense has maintained that they were just expressing opposition to the International’s decision to move 65,000 long term care workers out of UHW and the trusteeship that followed their refusal, but this demonstrates how they were already working to undermine the union they worked for and betray us, the members.

Dumbest Question of the Day;

While cross examining Mr. Cajina, a native of Nicaragua, NUHW attorney Jose Luis Fuentes asked him, “Did you know Daniel Ortega?” FYI..Ortega is the current president of Nicaragua and also served in that capacity from 1985-1990.

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.}

Shakers & Makers – this was the name of a covert group of senior staffers in the Homecare Division that was formed in 2008 for the purpose of creating lists and planning for a possible trusteeship. Leon Chow, a one time member of this group, told the jury how he was recruited to identify and build a group of leaders to fight SEIU. At defendant John Vellardita’s direction, the group compiled a list of homecare workers and distributed it to select loyal followers who would use them to phone bank members…from their homes. This was a change in past practice when phone banking was done in the union hall and members’ personal informational was closely guarded.

The S&M group communicated through private e-mail accounts so no record of subversive activities would be on the UHW server. After “loyal” member followers were identified, Mr. Chow was instructed to perform a 1:1 assessment to confirm their loyalty to the defendant Sal Rosselli. These assessments were NOT to be turned over to clerical staff at UHW so that the assessments would not be entered in the UHW database.

At Vellardeta’s instruction, UHW staff members who were in Shakers & Makers were not to “expense” their out-of-pocket costs for this group’s activities. They were furthermore instructed to not enter their S&M participation in their weekly activity reports. So covert were the activities of this group that in preparation for a meeting on January 19, 2009 (a week before trusteeship) Vellardita instructed members who were driving to a meeting that day to not leave directly from the union’s Oakland office just in case they were under surveillance. Mr. Chow went on to testify that in a January 10, 2009 senior staff meeting, Rosselli brought forth the issue of “disaffiliation” from SEIU. A template for a disaffiliation petition was presented at this meeting. Rosselli did acknowledge that it would be improper for officers of the union to raise this issue, so, wink, wink, it would have to come from rank & file members. Mr. Chow will be testifying more about that tomorrow…guess what followed?

In other testimony, Lisa Gude, who was trying to negotiate nursing home contracts after the trusteeship was imposed, found it difficult to find necessary bargaining notes and other documents. Only after a court ordered him to do so did Mark Kipfer, her predecessor and a defendant in the case, return the necessary files. Jackie Peppars, a member from Fresno homecare, told how she and other members were encouraged to stop their COPE contributions. Kevin Hall, her former union rep, gave her a list of members to contact from home. Ms. Peppars told the jury how “something did not feel right” so she stopped calling halfway thru. That’s when she knew something was wrong.

The courtroom saw video footage of large audience meeting in Sacramento where the audience was mesmerized. This seemed painful for some in the room to watch. Perhaps it was a reminder of other “false leaders” who have led people down dangerous paths.

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.}

Once again, Mr. Dan Siegel, counsel for the defendants, attempted to sidetrack the trial and go into areas that he had been previously told were not to go into. Talking about the trusteeship….BAD. Again Judge William Alsup quickly reigned him in and instructed the jury that what is not at hand were the merits of the trusteeship. “Even if the defendants were the angels and the plaintiffs were the devils…it does not matter because even angels cannot steal,” the judge said, because the issue in front of the jury  is whether the defendants stole union property and assets and sabotaged UHW while on its payroll.

Oriana Saportas, a UHW organizer, explained to the jury that just before trusteeship, workers at Santa Rosa Memorial who had been trying to organize were told about an “island option” as a choice in their bid to become a union hospital. The implication is that the “island option” was code for a new union. Oriana Saportas, an organizer on that campaign, told the jury of meetings that happened where this was brought up. The meeting was attended by defendant Glenn Goldstein. She went on to say how defendant Peter Tappeiner, to whom she reported, instructed her to back up membership and campaign files from the union’s computer into an external drive. At some point he also instructed her to go to Kinko’s and Xerox all the worker “contact sheets.”

On the stand today were two shop stewards, Denny Henriques from Sutter Delta and Jenny Edney from Kaiser Vallejo. They both told how prior to trusteeship the former leaders, now defendants, instructed them “not to engage” any new union staff that may come into their facilities after the trusteeship. Prior to the trusteeship, they were given “decertification petitions” and told to gather signatures using membership lists provided for them by a defendant