OAKLAND - The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has overturned an April union election and ordered a new election be held for more than 140 healthcare workers who provide care at Alameda County's two correctional facilities. The NLRB has called for the new election because many workers were denied the opportunity to vote.
During the April election, voting was interrupted when members of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department sought to use the room where the election was taking place. As a result, a significant number of workers left the polling place and were denied the opportunity to vote. The workers were choosing between the Service Employees International Union - United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), the organization started by former SEIU-UHW President Sal Rosselli and other former union officials.
"Now we have a chance to protect our contract and our guaranteed raises. Voting for NUHW would force us to re-bargain and start all over and risk losing everything we fought for," said Maxine Persky, a RN at the Santa Rita Jail.
Since the election, the caregivers agreed to a new three year contract with their employer, Prison Health Services, which ensures safe staffing levels and workplace safety by recognizing the experienced, high quality staff. The approved contract includes a 9.1% pay raises, back pay for hours worked since August 2009, and protects employer-paid healthcare coverage, despite Prison Health's attempt to pass the costs onto the workers.
Additionally, over the last ten weeks, Rosselli's group has suffered a devastating series of losses as they try to convince a shrinking and increasingly skeptical group of SEIU-UHW members to leave their union and switch to NUHW. The losses include federal court rulings, election defeats, losing raises for workers, and continued failures to negotiate contracts for the small number of works they represent.
In the past ten weeks, NUHW has...
Been defeated at 47 nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities covering 5,600 SEIU-UHW members. This brings the overall number of SEIU-UHW members who have rejected attempts to get them to vote for NUHW to more than 72,118, nearly 95 percent of the 76,422 they have attempted to raid since January 2009.
Lost two major rulings in federal court.
- In early April, a federal jury ordered NUHW, Rosselli and other officials to pay $1.5 million in damages for illegally sabotaging SEIU-UHW as they left to form NUHW and illegally using members' dues money to form their new organization.
- In May, a federal judge booted Rosselli and four other NUHW officials off the board of the $22 million SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund. Rosselli and the others had illegally changed the fund's bylaws in an attempt to give themselves lifetime appointments and the power to appoint their successors should they choose to leave.
Lost a 2 percent raise for 2,300 Kaiser RNs, social workers, and professionals and are now in a legal battle to restore raises that SEIU-UHW members have been getting for two months.
After five months, NUHW has not even been able to get to the bargaining table with Kaiser. So, while the rest of Kaiser workers who are members of SEIU-UHW are voting on a new contract that preserves their health insurance benefits, provides job security, and includes 3 percent raises each of the next three years, the workers who are represented by NUHW are facing major takeaways in their health insurance, no job security guarantees, and their raises is still up in the air.
Filed annual financial statements (LM-2s) with the U.S. Department of Labor showing that they have no members and are more than $2 million in debt (not including the federal court judgment).
Still have not negotiated a single contract.
Contact: Adriana Surfas, 510-869-2246
SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (SEIU-UHW) is the largest hospital and healthcare union in the western United States with more than 150,000 members. We unite every type of healthcare worker with a mission to achieve high-quality healthcare for all. SEIU-UHW is part of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation's fastest-growing union. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.
Source: SEIU-UHW