Dave Regan’s relentless
spending on ballot initiatives is not only producing repeated
losses at the ballot box for SEIU-UHW, it’s also generating decertification
efforts by the union’s own members.
Two weeks
ago, workers at 158-bed USC Verdugo
Hills Hospital in Los Angeles filed a petition to dump SEIU-UHW and work
without a union because they say SEIU-UHW has failed to win improved wages and
health insurance for 230 workers there, according to NLRB records and the
Regan’s multi-million-dollar
spending on ballot initiatives has left SEIU-UHW’s members with fewer resources
for workplace organizing and representation... and weaker contracts. According to
the worker who filed the petition at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, a majority of
employees signed the decertification petition and are backing the effort to bolt
from SEIU-UHW.
“A vote on whether or not to keep a healthcare
workers’ union at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale could come as early as
the end of the month,” the Glendale
News-Press reported last week.
Last
October, workers at the same hospital submitted an identical request but SEIU-UHW’s
attorneys blocked it, saying the request was filed two days late. SEIU-UHW has
made no such claims about the current filing, although SEIU-UHW’s lawyers are
filing “unfair labor practice” charges in an effort to stall the vote.
The
decertification effort offers a stark counterpoint to what’s happening at USC’s
other two acute-care hospitals.
More than
1,100 workers at 401-bed USC Keck
Medical Center and 60-bed USC Norris
Cancer Center are represented by the National
Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). During recent years, they’ve waged a
series of aggressive negotiating campaigns, including strikes and pickets, that
boosted workers’ wages, health insurance, and retirement benefits.
Last spring,
NUHW forced the two hospitals to in-source more than 100 subcontracted food
service and housekeeping workers, leading to pay increases of up to 80%. One
group of recently in-sourced workers had been members of SEIU United Service Workers West for years and were paid just above
the minimum wage. After they voted to leave SEIU, NUHW successfully pressured
the two hospitals to dump Sodexo,
USC’s subcontractor, and to hire the workers directly.
Due to NUHW's success, hundreds more USC workers have voted to join NUHW through
NLRB elections.
If workers at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital vote to decertify SEIU-UHW, it will
put an even brighter spotlight on Regan’s decision to pour tens of millions of
dollars of the union’s funds down the toilet in Dave's illusory quest for
unionization via ballot initiative.
Stay tuned.
