As 23,000
workers prepare to make history by striking Kaiser Permanente, SEIU is
making its own kind of history by waging one of the biggest union-run strike-breaking
operations in U.S. history.
Hundreds of SEIU’s organizers and stewards have been
dispatched to Kaiser facilities across California where they’re threatening SEIU-UHW
members with discipline and termination if they join their co-workers on the
picket line.
SEIU’s threats, of course, are completely bogus… just like
the illegal threats that SEIU used during last year’s NLRB election. Check
out this
fact sheet and an email from the Pharmacists Guild about workers’ right to honor
the strike (the email is posted below).
So what’s SEIU doing to try to stop its members from joining
the strike? Here are a couple of reports from Kaiser workers:
After talking with co-workers about the strike during a break, I was called into my director's office and was told to stop telling people they have the right to honor NUHW's picket line. She and her managers were telling employees that if they respected the picket line, they’d be considered a "no-show" and would be disciplined. At that point, the SEIU Rep came into her office and told me, in front of my director, that SEIU did not support the strike and would support management's decision to discipline. My manager then said if I was "caught" talking about the strike, she would suspend me.
Here’s a report from another Kaiser hospital:
We were in our monthly department meeting when our director said SEIU wanted to talk to us about the strike. The SEIU rep basically tells us we’d get fired if we honor the picket line. She must’ve figured her threat wasn’t big enuf, so she tries to tell us that all of us would lose our pay increases if just a few of us honor the picket line. SEIU is so full of sh*t their eyes are brown! How much is Kaiser paying them to do this?
Well, one thing’s for sure: SEIU’s aggressive war against its own members means
SEIU officials are plenty nervous that their members will join tens of
thousands of workers to fight Kaiser. Times are tough for the boss’s
union!
Check out this email from the Vice President of the
Pharmacists Guild, an independent union at Kaiser:
