NLRB: Workers at Two More California Facilities Are Dumping SEIU-UHW

The workers at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center aren’t the only ones who are leaving SEIU-UHW, according to the NLRB.

Apparently, workers have become so disgusted with SEIU-UHW's backdoor deals with corporate execs that some would prefer to have no union rather than be stuck in SEIU-UHW. 

Earlier this summer, hundreds of SEIU-UHW members at San Jose Medical Group, which operates a half dozen outpatient clinics in San Jose, California requested an NLRB election so they can leave SEIU-UHW and work without the support of any union, according to NLRB records.

Since the election request was filed, SEIU-UHW’s attorneys have been working overtime to block and stall the election.

At a second Northern California facility, SEIU-UHW’s members have already voted to become non-union.

According an official "Tally of Ballots" issued by the NLRB (see below), workers at 99-bed Bay Area Healthcare Center in Oakland voted by a margin of 61% (No Union) to 39% (SEIU-UHW) to dump SEIU-UHW, which is headed by "Wall Street" Dave Regan. 

Why?

Since 2009, Regan has worked hand-in-glove with giant healthcare corporations to slash SEIU-UHW members' wages and benefits. He's allowed hospital corporations to eliminate pensions for more than 30,000 SEIU-UHW members while also accepting wage freezes and health insurance cuts for many more. 

After SEIU-UHW lost the election at Bay Area Healthcare Center in February, SEIU-UHW’s attorney Bruce Harland used every stalling tactic in the book to delay the implementation of the final results. However, each purple monkeywrench has eventually been tossed aside by judges and the NLRB.

Here's the NLRB's "Tally of Ballots" from the election at Bay Area Healthcare Center:

  Nursing Home Workers Decertify SEIU-UHW: NLRB Tally of Ballots at BAHC 2-18-2015

Nearly 1,000 Hospital Workers Seek to Bolt SEIU-UHW

Last week, workers at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California requested an NLRB election to decertify SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

The 857-bed hospital is one of the largest in California and is owned by Sutter Health, the biggest hospital corporation in Northern California. NUHW already represents the workers at Sutter's largest hospital, California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, who voted to decertify SEIU-UHW back in 2011.

The decertification filing at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, which covers approximately 1,000 workers, comes after multiple failures, backroom deals, and dirty tricks by SEIU-UHW.

In 2012, SEIU-UHW officials allowed the hospital's CEO to eliminate 100 SEIU-UHW members’ jobs by subcontracting their jobs… even though the workers' union contract strictly prohibited the hospital from subcontracting their work.

That action followed multiple other failures and backroom deals, including SEIU-UHW’s agreement to slash workers’ health benefits and to block rank-and-file union members from attending contract negotiations between the union and management.

And then there's the case of Dominic Mitchell, the SEIU-UHW union representative who was assigned to help Alta Bates Summit workers defend themselves against the hospital's aggressive HR officials. That is, until Dominic Mitchell announced that he’d taken a job as an HR hack inside the Alta Bates Summit's HR Department.

Imagine workers' surprise when their former SEIU-UHW Union Rep began disciplining and terminating them. Purple partnership in action.

Stay tuned!

Worker: SEIU-UHW Deployed "Purple Clown" Strategy during NLRB Election

Remember SEIU-UHW’s loss in last month’s NLRB election at Mission Hospital in Orange County, Calif.?

SEIU-UHW was blown out in the election despite collusion from the hospital’s management as a result of SEIU-UHW’s sweetheart deal with the California Hospital Association.

Well, an employee at Mission Hospital sent along the following report about workers’ experience with SEIU:

The union organizers (sometimes 20+) completely took over our cafeteria every day for at least 2 weeks, sometimes with large purple union posters, while providing trays of free food, fish tacos, and stale purple cupcakes during lunch. The UNAC organizers also provided a "show" of verbal confrontations with CNA organizers in the parking lot.  The entire experience was so incredibly unprofessional.  Yup, they also had a purple clown in the cafeteria one day, and a purple cheerleader in the parking lot. It was shocking.

A purple clown? And purple cheerleader? Are you kidding?

Nope.

SEIU organizer at Mission Hospital

It turns out that SEIU-UHW actually dressed up its organizers as clowns and cheerleaders to, uhh, recruit support for the union. 

Apparently, in Dave Regan’s mind, ER Techs, Phlebotomists, EVS Aides, Surgical Assistants and other hospital workers actually prefer to be treated as six-year-olds.

One hospital staffer sent this blurry photo of SEIU-UHW’s purple clown as he paraded through the hospital. 

Does anyone know the identity of this bozo?

Of course, SEIU-UHW’s reliance on costumed child gimmicks shouldn't surprise us. Remember… this is the same union that dressed up its organizers as a Purple Barney and an Easter Bunny during earlier NLRB elections in Northern California.

 

Cass Gualvez, SEIU

So, which staffer devised SEIU-UHW’s genius cheerleader/clown strategy? 

It reportedly was Cass Gualvez, who is a "Staff Director" at SEIU-UHW and was also appointed by Regan to SEIU-UHW’s "Executive Committee," the union's its top governing body. In 2013, Gualvez was paid $140,757. 

In 2009, Gualvez conspired with executives at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center to fire a 31-year hospital employee and union member, which was later documented in a 50-page ruling by an NLRB Administrative Law Judge.

Gualvez, whose brain apparently approximates that of a six-year-old, is quite clueless. In fact, she’s so clueless she thought SEIU-UHW was headed towards a landslide election victory at Mission Hospital last month.

 

SEIU organizer at St. Louise Hospital

Here's what an employee at Mission Hospital reports:

SEIU also had a large purple RV parked down the road.  They planned to drive it to our campus parking lot for staff to gather for some sort of celebration when they won (we called it the "Barney Mobile"). SEIU was really expecting to win, but instead they had to drive it home!  

SEIU organizer at California Pacific Medical Center in 2010

SEIU-UHW Morphs into Boss at California Hospital

Workers are describing the latest details of Dave Regan’s dirty deeds with a giant California hospital chain.

At Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center -- an 830-bed hospital in Oakland, California -- workers say SEIU-UHW and the Boss have fused into one ugly Frankenstein-like creature.  

Here’s what’s happening.

Recently, the hospital announced layoffs of 359 workers. Several unions defended their members by filing court injunctions that successfully blocked the layoffs of their members.

But not SEIU-UHW! 

Instead, Dave Regan and Co. are working hand-in-glove with management to kick SEIU-UHW’s members out the door and onto the unemployment line.

SEIU-UHW’s members are receiving telephone calls from hospital HR officials who say their jobs have been eliminated. The HR officials then inform them they have just 15 minutes to decide whether to accept a layoff package or to try to make a bid for another position at the hospital.

When workers say "I need time to talk to my Union Rep," the HR official responds, "Your Union Rep is sitting right here." The stunned workers listen as HR hands the phone to SEIU-UHW Union Rep Pam Stevenson. 

WTF? It turns out that Stevenson is camped out in an HR conference room with the Boss, who’s speed-dialing workers to kick them to the curb.  

In one case, Stevenson and her HR pals phoned an SEIU-UHW member who's at home recuperating from an on-the-job injury. They gave her just brief moments to decide the fate of her sole means of economic support.

When workers confront SEIU-UHW officials and tell them, "We have a contract! Why are you doing this to us?," SEIU simply says “It is what it is."

Unfortunately, Regan's latest purple atrocities are just par for the course.

In 2012, "Wall Street" Dave cut a deal with Sutter that allowed the hospital to subcontract the jobs of nearly 10% of the union's members even though workers’ contract strictly prohibited the hospital from subcontracting their jobs.

During bargaining, Regan signaled his willingness to roll over for the Boss by stating: “We can work with employers like Sutter Health.” Observers speculate that Regan is working overtime to help his buddy, Sutter’s CEO Pat Fry, because Fry plays a top role at the California Hospital Association.

As for SEIU-UHW Union Rep Pam "The Terminator" Stevenson, she's apparently chosen the same career path as Dominic Mitchell, the former SEIU-UHW Union Rep at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center who’s now one of Sutter’s HR officials.

Like Tasty said... SEIU-UHW and the Boss have become one ugly, purple Frankenstein.

NUHW's Contract Settlement at CPMC Creates Buzz in California

Tasty hears that an NUHW contract settlement is creating quite a buzz among healthcare workers in California. Last week, NUHW’s members settled a contract with Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), which is the largest hospital in San Francisco and the second largest hospital in all of California.

So what’s got people talking? 

It’s the dramatic difference between NUHW and SEIU-UHW at the bargaining table.

After SEIU’s 2009 trusteeship, SEIU’s D.C. officials negotiated big cuts for CPMC’s workers and even penned a special “side letter” that sold out workers’ longtime community allies in their fight to preserve medical services for low-income residents.

That helps explain why CPMC’s workers later voted to get out of SEIU-UHW and joined NUHW.

Then, in 2012, SEIU’s Dave Regan negotiated huge cuts for thousands of workers at ten of Sutter’s other hospitals across Northern California. Regan’s concessions included a deal that forces workers to pay hundreds of dollars each month for a health insurance plan that’s always been free. 

And at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, Regan allowed Sutter to subcontract the hospital’s entire business office (almost 100 workers’ jobs), even though workers’ contract has language to block the subcontracting.  

Regan’s sell-out deal with Sutter created some serious headwind for NUHW during its negotiations with CPMC. But check this out. Last week, NUHW reached a contract settlement with improvements and not a single cut!

NUHW was able to reverse the cuts that SEIU accepted during its prior negotiations with CPMC, including cuts to workers’ seniority rights, layoff protections, reclassification language, reporting pay and shift differentials.

Plus, NUHW won new pay increases. After workers voted to leave SEIU, CPMC continued giving them the scheduled wage increases specified in their old contract -- which is a requirement of federal law. Meanwhile, workers were negotiating a new contract with NUHW. Then, last week, NUHW negotiated a retroactive pay increase that goes back to 2012 and gives workers a 5% wage boost in 2012.  

It’s a remarkable story. And it speaks volumes about the dramatic differences between NUHW and SEIU-UHW.

And get this. SEIU-UHW has basically admitted that NUHW is more successful at fighting and winning for its membership.

Last year, SEIU-UHW’s officials cowardly inserted “me too” provisions in its Sutter contracts so that SEIU-UHW’s members would enjoy the superior health benefits that NUHW just negotiated. SEIU knew that NUHW would bargain a better contract. And thanks to NUHW, SEIU-UHW’s members at St. Luke’s Hospital won’t have to suffer the health insurance cuts that SEIU’s negotiators accepted.

Seems like SEIU-UHW ought to throw in the towel, right?