Rank-and-File Pharmacists Deliver Overwhelming Rejection Vote to Kaiser's Execs

Check this out!

Tasty hears that the pharmacists at Kaiser’s hospitals and clinics in Southern California have overwhelmingly rejected a tentative deal for a three-year labor contract favored by Kaiser Permanente’s fatcat execs.

According to Tasty’s sources, the vote was 72% (“No”) to 28% ("Yes").

The rejection is significant because both Kaiser and the pharmacists’ union leaders were pushing pharmacists to accept the deal.

What union represents the pharmacists?

The “Guild for Professional Pharmacists” is a “non-partnership” union that’s historically been weak at the bargaining table. On May 29th, the Guild announced that it had reached a "tentative agreement" for a deal that would’ve cemented in place a variety of deep cuts to pharmacists’ benefits.

SEIU-UHW and the other "partnership" unions have already accepted one of these cuts (a cut to retiree health benefits). And Dave Regan has reportedly promised to push through the remaining cuts (pension and health benefits) during the Coalition for Kaiser Permanente Union’s next round of bargaining.

Meanwhile, the 23,000 members of NUHW and the CNA are actively fighting these same cuts… by, for example, waging several successful statewide strikes during which SEIU-UHW officials worked hand-in-hand with Kaiser’s execs to try to defeat the strikes.

That's what makes the pharmacists’ vote so interesting. 

Plus, observers say the “no” vote is especially

Kaiser's Ed Ellison

surprising because the Guild's membership has historically been very disengaged and easily swayed by Kaiser.

In recent days, Kaiser's execs made a special push to get pharmacists to vote "yes" on the deal. On June 10th, Kaiser’s Ben Chu (President of Kaiser's Southern California Region) and Ed Ellison (CEO of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group) sent out personalized letters to each and every Guild member that said the following:

…we thank you for your flexibility and responsiveness to help continue meeting the care needs of our members and patients throughout this period. Because of your role as an integral member of our care delivery team, we believe the entire region was very pleased when it was learned that Kaiser Permanente and the Guild for Professional Pharmacists had reached a tentative labor agreement… We hope that you and other Guild-represented Kaiser Permanente pharmacist ratify this offer. Its acceptance will ensure our organization's ability to sustainably meet our mission to provide our members and patients with high-quality, affordable healthcare, as well as make us a best place to work in healthcare.

Kaiser's request for "flexibility" is especially outrageous given that Kaiser is pocketing mega-wads of cash -- it made an unprecedented $1.1 billion in profits during the first three months of 2014 alone. 

Now... both Kaiser's execs and the Guild's leaders have pie in the face as pharmacists celebrate their rank-and-file rebellion. 

What's next? Stay tuned. 

SEIU-UHW Officials: "We Knew about Kaiser's Layoffs in August"

Check this out. Remember the internal conference call that Tasty posted last week?

That’s the one where SEIU-UHW officials claimed they had no advance knowledge of Kaiser Permanente’s massive layoffs, which will hit an estimated 1,000 workers in California. Instead, SEIU-UHW officials claim they first learned about the giant job cuts when Kaiser sent emails to SEIU-UHW’s entire membership in recent days.

One worker famously asked, “What kind of partnership is that?”

Well, check out the latest development.

A resourceful reader was able to record a different SEIU-UHW conference call where union officials revealed a very different story. Tasty has posted an audio excerpt from this conference call below.

In this second conference call, Hortencia Armendariz and Chokri BenSaid (the NorCal and SoCal directors of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser Division) say SEIU-UHW officials first learned about Kaiser's plans many months ago... when they attended an August 13th meeting of the Kaiser labor-management partnership council in Los Angeles.

At that meeting, two of Kaiser’s top execs -- Ben Chu (President of the Southern California Region) and Judy White (Business Administrator of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group) -- made a presentation to union officials where they announced that Kaiser was facing a “budget gap” of hundreds of millions of dollars, which is Kaiser’s justification for the massive layoffs hitting workers just in time for the holidays. (More on Kaiser's so-called "justification" later.)

Apparently, this is the same meeting that UNAC’s president described in an earlier letter to UNAC’s members.

So what else did SEIU-UHW reveal during its internal conference call?   

Chokri BenSaid says that “approximately 250” of SEIU-UHW’s members in SoCal have already been served with layoff notices -- which SEIU-UHW calls “position elimination notices.”

He also gave details about the particular job classifications that are most affected by the layoffs. And he reports that 982 of SEIU-UHW’s members are being targeted for early retirement. Here's the recording.

Recording of SEIU-UHW Conference Call Speaks Volumes about Mass Layoffs at Kaiser Permanente

Check out an audio recording of an internal SEIU-UHW conference call that focuses on Kaiser Permanente’s layoffs of an estimated 1,000 employees in California… even though Kaiser is banking billions in profits. The recording is posted below.

Here's the background:

In an earlier post, Tasty shared a copy of Kaiser execs’ email instructions to managers about layoffs targeting 550 employees in Southern California. That email was dated October 23.

Then, on November 13, the president of Kaiser’s Northern California Region, Greg Adams, sent an email to all of Kaiser’s NorCal’s employees in which he described the company’s “need to adjust staffing to align with our current hospital census counts, manage costs, and operate as effectively as possible.” Layoffs.

Which brings us to the conference call. 

On November 22, SEIU-UHW officials held a conference call -- only for the union’s shop stewards -- where they coached the stewards on how to respond to members’ questions about the layoffs. Here’s what the union staffer said:

What we want to make sure is communicated to the members, and in our facilities, is that everyone know that SEIU-UHW along with the Coalition of Unions are against the layoffs. Okay? If any questions come up in your facilities where they wanna know, “Did SEIU-UHW know?” No, we did not know, right?

The SEIU-UHW officials tell a story that’s hard to believe -- that Dave Regan and other union officials knew absolutely nothing about the NorCal layoffs until November 13, when Greg Adams sent his email to all Kaiser employees. 

One steward asks: “What kind of partnership is that?” Other stewards offer detailed info about the layoffs -- even a newspaper article -- that the union officials claim to be totally unaware of.

There’s also a revealing discussion about SEIU’s total and complete failure to represent Kaiser workers on the job. A steward describes how Kaiser supervisors have been given free rein to “weed out” any workers “they don’t appreciate.” Another steward says, “They are terminating more people than they ever have… they’re trying to get rid of people.”

Be sure to listen to the end of the 7-minute recording. That’s where the SEIU-UHW staffers offer ingenious ideas about how SEIU-UHW is supposedly going to “fight” the layoffs of an estimated 1,000 employees? You guessed it.... flashmobs and “dance-offs!” Tasty is not kidding.

Judge, Citing More SEIU Violations, Throws Out a Second Kaiser Election!

Breaking news: The NLRB has found SEIU guilty of violating workers’ rights in a SECOND Kaiser election and has recommended that the election be re-run!

The judge's 14-page decision (posted on NUHW's website) affects Kaiser’s Northern California Medical Social Workers, who are in a separate bargaining unit of approximately 380 employees. Last fall, they voted in an NLRB election about whether to join NUHW or stay with SEIU.

SEIU won the election by a razor-thin margin of just 9 votes (148 to 139). A judge later investigated the election and found SEIU guilty of the same kind of collusion with Kaiser that she cited in last week’s decision covering 43,000 California workers who are in the Service & Technical employees' bargaining unit.

Here are some excerpts from the judge’s 14-page decision on the Medical Social Worker (MSW) election:

“Insofar as [SEIU’s] campaign focused on Kaiser’s conduct in the SoCal-pro units, its objective effect was to warn employees that they jeopardized monetary benefits if they changed representatives. In [SEIU’s] communications, Kaiser’s Unfair Labor Practices figured as concrete, menacing reminders that Kaiser unilaterally withheld benefits from employees in the SoCal-pro units when they chose to be represented by NUHW.” (p. 11)

'[SEIU’s] widely disseminated, consistent warnings that Kaiser was likely to repeat its 2009 unlawful conduct in the MSW unit if unit employees selected [NUHW] as their collective-bargaining representative tended to stoke unwarranted and coerced fears.” (p. 13)

“The unavoidable inference to be drawn from these circumstances is that MSW unit employees voted with objectively reasonable, albeit inaccurate and Unfair Labor Practice-induced, apprehensions that a vote for [NUHW] was a vote for benefit reduction.” (p. 13)

“Further, [SEIU] was joined in its warnings by Kaiser’s Regional President Ben Chu, who informed employees that only members of coalition unions were guaranteed PSP incentive bonuses. [SEIU] widely disseminated Chu’s statement, giving weight to [SEIU’s] repeated forewarnings that representational change might endanger PSP bonuses. In these circumstances, widely disseminated warnings that PSP incentive bonuses would not survive a change of representative must also have tended to interfere with employees’ freedom of choice.” (p. 12)

“I recommend that the Board election in Case 32-RC-5774 be set aside and a new election be held.” (p. 13)

Judge Overturns Kaiser Election!

It's true! An NLRB Administrative Law Judge issued a 34-page decision (see below) that overturns the results of the largest private-sector union election in 70 years because of multiple legal violations committed by SEIU and Kaiser Permanente. According to the decision:

The mail ballot election held between September 13 and October 4 was set aside because the National Labor Relations Board found that certain conduct of SEIU-UHW West in the circumstances of unfair labor practices committed by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group among three professional collective-bargaining units of Kaiser employees in Southern California interfered with the employees' exercise of a free and reasoned choice among employees in the following unit... Therefore, a new election will be held in accordance with the terms of this notice of election.

Translation??? The judge said that, first of all, Kaiser violated federal labor law by withholding $2 million in pay and benefits from 2,500 Southern California professional workers after they voted to join NUHW in January of 2010. Next, SEIU used Kaiser's illegal action to threaten 43,000 service and technical workers (who were preparing for their own vote) by telling them that they too would lose their pay and benefits if they voted for NUHW. The judge put it this way:

Kaiser's ULPs figured as silent, menacing reminders that Kaiser not only could, but already had, unilaterally withheld benefits when other employees had chosen to be represented by NUHW.

The judge gave a special smackdown to Ben Chu, the President of Kaiser's Southern California Region, who told workers at a region-wide employee townhall meeting before the election that they would lose their guaranteed bonuses if they voted for NUHW.

Further, SEIU was joined in its warnings by Kaiser's President Chu, who informed employees that only members of coalition unions were guaranteed PSP incentive bonuses.

(Yo Judge... any chance you can you send Ben Chu to the Big House for threatening workers with illegal pay cuts?)

Altogether, what a huge victory!! For all the workers who were forced to experience months of SEIU's lying and bullying plus Kaiser's disgusting collusion with its "preferred union," this is a giant victory that's sending shock waves across the nation. Congrats!

   Judge's Decision overturning the results of an NLRB election for 43,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente hospit... by