Michigan Workers Vote NUHW!

This just in. The NLRB finished counting the ballots from today’s election at Luther Manor Nursing Home and… workers voted by more than a two-to-one margin to leave SEIU and join NUHW! The final tally was 47 (NUHW), 22 (SEIU), 1 (No Union) and 4 challenged ballots.

Sounds like it’s been quite a week for Luther Manor workers. Last weekend, SEIU tried to lure workers to a barbeque where SEIU promised to raffle off a flat-screen TV. Then, SEIU deployed 15 organizers who knocked on workers’ doors and pushed a fear campaign to try to convince them to stay in SEIU. This morning, when workers arrived at work, they found 8 purple-shirted SEIU organizers standing on the corner near the nursing home trying to offer workers free coffee and donuts.

In the end, all of SEIU’s tricks, bribes and threats weren’t enough to overcome workers who stood strong through repeated rounds of SEIU’s hookin’ & crookin’ … from backroom deals with the boss … to ballot-box stuffing … to SEIU’s forced re-votes of already-rejected contract deals.

The workers are NUHW’s first members in Michigan.  Although not for long. Workers at CHP’s Hackley Hospital are waiting for the NLRB to cut through SEIU’s stalling tactics so they can have their vote. Congrats, Luther Manor workers!!

Crookin' in Michigan -- Round 3

Just nine weeks after the NLRB found SEIU guilty of threatening Kaiser workers during last year’s giant NLRB election, SEIU is doing it again -- this time in Michigan. Here’s what’s going on.

On Friday September 23, workers at Luther Manor Nursing Home will be voting on whether to dump SEIU and join NUHW. Workers requested the NLRB election back in March, but SEIU has been using bogus “blocking” charges to stall the election since then. As the election gets closer, SEIU organizers have been threatening workers that they’ll lose all their benefits and scheduled pay increases if they vote for NUHW. (Sound familiar, Kaiser workers?).

Readers might remember that in early September, SEIU used every dirty trick in the book to ram through a new contract despite workers’ strong opposition. Why was SEIU so desperate to ram through its contract? Because SEIU’s new contract just happens to schedule workers’ next pay increase for right after the NLRB election. This sets the stage so SEIU can threaten workers that they’ll lose next month’s scheduled pay raise if they vote for NUHW.

Of course, SEIU’s threats are total lies. Not only did the NLRB find SEIU guilty of illegally threatening Kaiser workers, but a federal judge found SEIU’s corporate bunkmate, Kaiser CEO George Halvorson, guilty of illegally withholding more than $1 million of scheduled pay increases and benefits from the Southern California workers who’d earlier voted to dump SEIU and join NUHW.

So, Mr. NLRB Man, Tasty humbly requests that you do something about repeat offenders like SEIU. Come on… can’t you do something? Here’s an idea: What about locking the SEIU officials in a room and forcing them to read Andy Stern’s crappy-ass book over and over again? Or what about forcing Stan Lyles to play his video about SEIU’s backroom deals during SEIU-UHW’s upcoming Leadership Conference in Fresno?

PS. Remember this post about SEIU stuffing the ballot box so they could steal the 2nd ratification vote at Luther Manor? Well, it turns out SEIU’s vote fraud was even worse than Tasty first reported. Right after the fraudulent SEIU vote, the NLRB published a list of all the SEIU members employed at the nursing home as part of the NLRB's routine preparations for the upcoming decertification election.

Guess what? There were only 79 SEIU members at the facility -- not 84, like SEIU said. That means that SEIU stuffed the ballot box with almost more votes (77) than the number of actual workers (79). If you wanna believe SEIU’s vote totals, then a whopping 98% of the nursing home’s workers turned out to vote during a two-hour period in the middle of the day… even though all of the night shift workers were still asleep in their beds.

Hey, Marge, don’t you think you cut your ballot-stuffing scheme a little too close for comfort? You might wanna study the numbers a bit more carefully before your next attempt at stealing the vote!

Crookin’ in Michigan-- Round Two

On Friday -– just three days before Labor Day –- SEIU offered an odd tribute to America’s workers when SEIU's members at Luther Manor Nursing Home were forced to re-vote a sell-out contract deal that they’d already rejected a week earlier.

So why did SEIU decide to shred workers’ first vote? According to SEIU officials, workers simply hadn’t understood the ballot. Hmmm… Too confusing? ... a “yes” or “no” vote on their own pay and working conditions? Guess it had nothing to do with SEIU being upset that workers rejected SEIU's concessionary contract.

So on Friday, SEIU dug deeper into its bag of dirty tricks to ram through the contract. SEIU dispatched two of SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s top officers -- Secretary Treasurer Johnnie Jolliffi and Recording Secretary Sheila Guinn –- to run the re-vote by the nursing home’s 84 workers.

Like in San Diego, SEIU pressured workers inside the polling place to accept the deal. In fact, Tasty hears that Secretary Treasurer Johnnie Jolliffi, who got paid $140,000 from members' dues money last year, resorted to yelling at Luther Manor's workers when they challenged the misinformation she was feeding them.

But that’s not all… Workers report that SEIU resorted to old-fashioned ballot stuffing. Jolliffi and Guinn reportedly allowed SEIU supporters to mark extra ballots for “their friends who couldn’t make it.” And they apparently let other people vote, even though they weren’t even in the bargaining unit.

The results? Let's take a look at the numbers. During workers' first vote (that’s the one that SEIU later shredded), workers rejected the contract by a margin of 36 (No) to 26 (Yes). In the re-vote, the same 36 workers voted “No,” but SEIU miraculously produced 15 more votes for its side so it could “win” by a tally of 36 (No) to 41 (Yes). 

Quite a feat… a 92% turnout of the nursing home’s 84 workers… in just a two-hour period… even though many graveyard workers were still sleeping.  

Tasty wonders if SEIU President Mary Kay Henry happened to share SEIU’s profound commitment to ballot-rigging and vote-stealing when she joined Obama today for a Labor Day event in Detroit. Somehow, Tasty thinks that topic probably didn’t make it into her purple talking points.

Michigan Workers Reject Another SEIU Contract Deal; Marge Launches New Vote-Rigging Scheme

Today, technical workers at MHP’s Hackley Hospital voted down a contract settlement that Marge “Cadillac” Faville, the president of SEIU Healthcare Michigan, had secretly negotiated with management.

And get this… workers won despite some serious hookin’ and crookin’ by SEIU. Tasty hears that SEIU staffers denied about 20 workers the right to cast ballots in the ratification vote. And then, at the end of the vote, SEIU banned workers who opposed the sell-out deal from simply watching the vote count.

Today’s vote comes just days after workers rejected a similar contract deal at Luther Manor Nursing Home in Saginaw.

So what’s Marge gonna do now? Well, it looks like she’s steppin’ up her game from “Hookin’ & Crookin’” to outright “Vote Rigging & Fraud.” Here’s what’s going on:

In most unions, when workers reject a contract settlement, the union’s bargaining committee goes back to the negotiating table to push for a better deal with the boss. But not Marge...

At Luther Manor, Marge just announced a re-vote on the same exact contract that workers rejected last week. But this time, Marge is rigging the rules. She’s moved the site of the voting from the nursing home to an offsite location that’s 10 minutes away by car. And Marge is only gonna let workers vote during a two-hour block of time during the middle of the day shift. Here’s the leaflet announcing the re-vote:

Do you think SEIU President Mary Kay Henry is upset that SEIU members' rights are getting crushed under Marge's thick heel?  Think again, my friends. History shows that Mary Kay is no fan of democracy. After all, she was personally involved in this episode… and this one too. In fact, it sounds like Marge has simply taken a page from Mary Kay’s playbook of dirty tricks.

SEIU: Hookin’ & Crookin’ in Michigan

Many readers will be familiar with the dirty tricks that SEIU is using in Michigan. Here’s what’s going on:

Workers report that SEIU just cut a backroom deal with Mercy Health Partners’ Hackley Hospital in Muskegon, Michigan. The tentative contract settlement would apparently hit workers with a wage cut of 6%-11% over the life of the contract by letting management push more health insurance costs and other benefits costs onto the backs of workers.

So how’s SEIU trying to sell this bad deal to union members?

First, SEIU waged a fake fight against the hospital to try to rally workers’ support for the deal. SEIU staged an informational picket at the hospital, and then hours later SEIU Healthcare Michigan president Marge Faville announced she had miraculously reached a wonderful deal for workers (…that’s the bad deal that Faville cut before the picket).

Next, SEIU pushed workers to ratify the deal while conveniently refusing to provide them with copies of the tentative agreements (TAs). Here’s one worker’s report:

After many phone calls and messages to the SEIU union hall, I finally spoke with Norma Kersting on Friday, who referred me to Matt Carpenter. I asked him to fax me the tentative agreements so I could review them over the weekend. He said they didn't want them to “proliferate through the department” and he didn't have time to fax them. SEIU must have a very difficult procedure to fax, because our way is very quick and easy. He told me to come to the “informational” meetings on Monday and gave me the times. When I told him that I couldn't make any of those times, he said I could come to the union hall any time, staff would be there all day, and that because of the "really complicated language" he would need to sit down and "explain it all" to me. No Matt, all I need you to explain to me is why I can't see the TAs that will have a major effect on my life.

Here’s what another worker wrote:

They act like people are stupid and they need their wisdom to figure things out. It's insulting. We can read and use a calculator. And if this is a good contract like they claim, then why are they scared of people seeing it?

Hmm… Marge?? Tasty realizes you have a lot on your mind. There’s your $160,000-a-year salary, your union-paid SUV (price: $47,242) and your union-paid corporate apartment for those weekend trips to the big city ($17,600 per year). And then, of course, there are the union staff jobs you gave to your daughter, son and niece.

Despite the many pressures of your job, Tasty humbly suggests that you tell your salaried children to photocopy the TAs. Then, you should hop in your fancy SUV and deliver those TAs to the workers, who're the ones who actually pay your salary (umm, and the kids' salaries, too). Tasty hears the workers kinda really wanna see what you agreed to with their boss.

Oh, and by the way, Marge. No need to swing by Luther Manor Nursing Home in Saginaw. The workers there saw through SEIU’s bag of tricks. Last week, they voted down a separate sell-out contract settlement that you were trying to push down their throats, by hook or crook, SEIU-style.