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:
