Here's the latest from Kaiser.
The Coalition of
Kaiser Permanente Unions (a.k.a. "the partnership unions") has begun
circulating a bargaining survey in advance of upcoming national negotiations covering
90,000 workers at Kaiser facilities across the U.S. The negotiations are scheduled to begin April
14, 2015.
So… Are top officials at the partnership unions planning to
fight Kaiser's effort to cut workers' pensions and health benefits?
It sure doesn't look like it.
Check out the Coalition's bargaining survey (see below). It
doesn't even mention the idea of preserving the defined-benefit pension plan that Kaiser is trying to replace
with a 401(k) plan. And it fails to mention the health benefit cuts that Kaiser
has already
proposed to the Coalition.
Instead, here’s how the survey attempts to re-frame the
Coalition’s dumbed-down bargaining goals:
Completely lame and dishonest, right?
Also absent from the survey? Any mention of Kaiser's record
$14.5 billion in profits and its skyrocketing executive pay.
So who's responsible for the survey?
SEIU-UHW, with half of the Coalition's total membership of
90,000 workers, is by far the largest union inside the Coalition and consequently
calls all the shots inside the Coalition. In fact, one of Dave Regan's staffers -- Hal
Ruddick – is the Executive Director of the Coalition and will be its
lead negotiator at the bargaining table.
Meanwhile, the non-partnership unions are intensifying their fight
against Kaiser even as partnership union officials prepare to jam cuts down their members’ throats.
Earlier this month, the California
Nurses Association’s 18,000 RNs conducted a two-day strike at Kaiser. Also
this month, NUHW’s members -- who’ve
waged a four-year battle against the cuts and scored a $4 million fine against
the HMO -- announced the results of a membership vote to
authorize another statewide strike against Kaiser. And in Hawaii, UNITE HERE Local 5 has staged multiple strikes
and job actions to oppose cuts to workers' benefits.
Stay tuned.
