Unions will not accept groups who win elections due to "raiding"
Southern California Kaiser workers in the Health Care Professionals, Psych-Social and AFN (Sunset registered nurse) units could not be part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions or participate in national negotiations with Kaiser or in the Labor-Management Partnership (LMP) if they leave SEIU-UHW and join a new organization, the unions that make up the Coalition have determined.
The CKPU announcement reads, in part: "The Coalition will not support the application by any Union to join the Coalition or the (LMP) by virtue of gaining representation of Kaiser Permanente employees by raiding a constituent member union of the Coalition."
The CKPU announcement came less than one week after a decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board to order elections among the three Kaiser units covering about 2,400 members in Southern California. This decision is based on a ruling that there is no contract bar in place, despite the fact that each of the groups has a contract that runs at least until 2011. SEIU-UHW has appealed the ruling.
If the members in the three units vote to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), they would lose their current contract and put two years of negotiated wages, profit-sharing payments, healthcare coverage, and pensions at risk - as much as $15,000 for each of them. They also would have to go it alone in bargaining, not as part of the national Kaiser negotiations next year with nearly 100,000 members of the Coalition.
"NUHW is asking us to jump off a cliff. We would be risking two years of guaranteed raises, our profit sharing plan, healthcare coverage, and pensions. We would lose our place in the Coalition, our right to participate in national bargaining, and the benefits of the Labor-Management Partnership," said Tarry Bartley, MSW, Kaiser Riverside. "We would be throwing away our security and bargaining power smack in the middle of the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes."