Last week, workers at a nursing home in Northern California requested
an NLRB election to join NUHW. Recently, workers discovered that their current union, SEIU-UHW, inked a secret
deal with their Boss to slash workers' wages, benefits and even their working
hours.
Here’s how one worker at San Rafael Healthcare and Wellness
Center described it:
SEIU lied to our faces for months, telling us they weren’t bargaining in secret with our boss. But they were. And five months later, we finally got a copy of the deal they signed. With one secret deal, SEIU has destroyed all of the benefits and standards that we’d slowly built up over 25 years of bargaining.
Sources tell Tasty that Myriam
Escamilla, the director of SEIU-UHW’s Nursing Home Division, is the
official who signed the backdoor deal... and then refused to give copies to workers and
refused to even disclose that she was bargaining with their Boss. Last year, Escamilla pocketed $138,756 in pay from SEIU-UHW, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Since Escamilla’s dirty deal, the nursing home company has
boosted workers’ share of health care premiums to more than $700 a month for family
coverage. And the company has slashed workers’ vacations, sick pay, holidays
and work hours. Sources tell Tasty that the company also cut the work hours of part-time
workers to 19 hours a week so they’re no longer eligible for any benefits
whatsoever.
Workers also report that SEIU-UHW reps are totally MIA when workers need help.
Last week, more than 90% of the workers signed a petition to
dump SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.
