On a conference call with Kaiser employees August 3, Kaiser Southern California President Ben Chu confirmed that NUHW members at Kaiser are not automatically eligible to receive Performance Sharing Program (PSP) bonuses. The PSP adds thousands of dollars to Kaiser workers' income each year.

An open letter from Kaiser San Jose Leaders

We are SEIU-UHW stewards and leaders at Kaiser San Jose and the majority of us are more committed than ever to defend our contract by ensuring that SEIU-UHW remains our union. We condemn the efforts of a small minority of stewards at our facility to destroy our contract--a great contract that we all worked hard to win and are proud of. As your elected leaders, we vow never to abandon our members or our contract as they have done, but rather to stand beside our SEIU-UHW brothers and sisters at Kaiser facilities across California to protect all our hard-won gains.

OAKLAND - Hundreds of caregivers at Piedmont Gardens and their supporters will rally at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, August 12, to support quality resident care and stand behind 38 caregivers who were illegally fired when they tried to return to work Saturday after a 5-day unfair labor practice strike.

A year ago this week, Kaiser announced it was cutting 1,700 jobs. Fast forward: today, every affected worker who wanted to find a new position and keep working is doing so.

How is that possible? Our contract, which guarantees each member's full salary and benefits for one year if our job is ever cut and provides education and retraining in order to transition workers affected by job elimination into new positions. Without this provision in our contract, these 1,700 workers would be without a job today--like so many healthcare workers at other hospitals.

On July 27, 238 workers at two Generations nursing homes in Daly City voted to stay united in SEIU-UHW by more than a 3-to-1 margin in a decertification election brought on by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), the organization formed by former SEIU-UHW leaders who were ousted for misusing millions in dues money.

"Now that we have the NUHW distraction out of the way we can push forward and negotiate the best wage reopener ever!" said Maria Victoria Tuason, a CNA at Generations Heights.

The trusteeship has been an extremely challenging time for all of us as members of SEIU-UHW. Leading up to the trusteeship we lived through two years of chaos and disruption organized by the former leaders. And for the last 18 months, we've lived with the division and commotion that the former officials of our union have created in many of our workplaces after they formed a new organization, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

This Thursday, July 22 is the deadline set by the Labor Board for NUHW, the organization of former SEIU-UHW leaders who were removed from our union for misusing our dues, to agree to hold the election they requested to take away our union and force 43,000 members to re-bargain the national agreement we just won at Kaiser.

Last week, with SEIU-UHW members from across the state as witnesses, the Labor Board proposed an agreement to hold an election within 60 days. SEIU-UHW signed the agreement. NUHW refused.

Our SEIU-UHW member-elected bargaining team at Catholic Healthcare West is recommending we vote "YES" on our new agreement to guarantee improvements to our pensions, weekend differentials, and on-call pay. We stood up to management throughout bargaining and took action statewide through purple-ups, petitions, and delegations in order to meet our contract goals. Now it's time to lock in our improvements--Let's get out and VOTE!

Last night our SEIU-UHW bargaining team secured a tentative agreement with Catholic Healthcare West to improve our pension, weekend differentials, and on-call pay.

At the start of negotiations, CHW said they wouldn't spend more than $2 million additional per year to improve the pension, and $2.3 million for differentials and on-call pay-an agreement signed by ousted UHW official, and current NUHW leader, John Borsos.

OAKLAND - Two weeks after filing for a union election among 46,000 Kaiser workers in California, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) refused to sign an agreement that would allow the election to go forward in the next 60 days.

At a hearing before a National Labor Relations Board hearing officer, members of the Service Employees International Union - United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) readily agreed to hold the election as soon as possible and signed an election agreement. But NUHW officials stalled for nearly five hours and then refused to sign before leaving the NLRB offices in downtown Oakland. The board then strongly indicated they would dismiss the election petition if NUHW doesn't sign the agreement by July 22.

Record Setting Member Approval of New National Contract Agreement!

After 10 days of voting across the state, SEIU-UHW members have ratified our new national agreement with an overwhelming 94% vote! More members participated in our campaign to win three 3% across-the-board annual raises for everyone over three years, lock in healthcare benefits through 2013, and improve long-term job security than ever before. In fact, voting on the agreement alone was 58% higher than it was for our agreement in 2006!

Dozens of workers brave the cold and rain to send a message to management that we won't accept anything less than what we deserve

Since February, the SEIU-UHW Piedmont Gardens and Grand Lake Gardens bargaining committee has been fighting for a fair contract so we can ensure that our families are taken care of while we work providing the best care we can for others.