Tuesday, April 16, 2013

NLRB's Actions Highlight Collusion between Kaiser and SEIU-UHW in Election



New legal documents indicate just how aggressively Kaiser is trying to help SEIU-UHW win the NLRB election… including by breaking federal labor law!  

Below, Tasty has posted copies of NLRB complaints recently issued against Kaiser Permanente for violating the rights of pro-NUHW workers at three separate hospitals. The complaints, which were issued after lengthy investigations by the NLRB, are essentially indictments that force Kaiser to undergo trials in front of judges.

Do these legal actions affect the voting at Kaiser? No. The election is going full steam ahead… and only 13 days are left to get ballots into the NLRB!

So what kinds of violations has Kaiser committed?

At Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center, a Senior Human Resources Consultant named Anthony Wong illegally blocked pro-NUHW workers from visiting break rooms during their off-duty hours so as to stop them from talking to their co-workers about NUHW. 

Wong also "interrogated” pro-NUHW workers “about the union membership, activities, and sympathies of other employees," according to the NLRB’s complaint. Two weeks ago, the NLRB ordered Wong to appear before a judge in San Francisco on June 4th!

In Southern California, three Kaiser officials recently went on trial for committing a laundry list of violations against pro-NUHW workers at Kaiser South Bay Medical Center. The officials are Heidi Greene (H.R. Consultant), Saro Tomasian (Managing Director of Support Operations) and Susanne Corlett (Assistant Director of the EVS Department).

Their violations include illegally blocking workers from talking about NUHW during their breaks; threatening
pro-NUHW workers with discipline -- and even termination -- if they talked about NUHW; and making up new rules to try to stop pro-NUHW workers from talking to their co-workers about the election.

Finally, the NLRB also took action against Alan Burnett, another H.R. Consultant, for blocking pro-NUHW workers from passing out leaflets in front of Kaiser South San Francisco Medical Center. Burnett -- who apparently is training to become a union-busting consultant -- even threatened to call the cops on the leafleting workers.

Remember... this is the same Kaiser Permanente that claims to be "neutral" in the NLRB election! What a joke.

Tasty talked to some labor lawyers about the NLRB’s complaints… and the lawyers made an important point: Federal law gives workers lots of rights to express their opinions during NLRB elections. When workers are off-duty (that is, during their breaks, before and after work, etc), they have the right to visit breakrooms, lobbies and other “non-work areas” to talk to their off-duty co-workers about the election and urge them to support NUHW. 

In fact, workers have far more rights than SEIU’s organizers -- even though Kaiser allows SEIU’s organizers to camp out in break rooms for days on end.

So... if your supervisor tries to mess with your rights, ask him if he'd like his name on the court docket... and on Tasty's blog! (oh, b/t/w, photos of offending H.R. officials are always welcome!).

Here are the NLRB’s complaints against Kaiser:

 And here's the complaint issued in Southern California: