Report from Day 1 at Kaiser Ballot Count

Here’s a report from the first day of the Kaiser ballot count at the federal building in downtown Oakland, California.

First, the NLRB ballot count is far from over and likely won’t be finished until the end of the day tomorrow (May 2). So far, there are no interim results.

Secondly, workers who attended the ballot count say there's a massive “enthusiasm differential” between the two unions. Apparently, the day started off with a bang when red-shirted Kaiser workers began arriving at the federal building at 7:30am. Some workers had driven overnight for 7 hours in packed cars from Southern California.

By 8:00am, nearly 300 NUHW supporters were in long lines that snaked through the building’s lobby. As additional groups of NUHW supporters arrived from Fresno, Ventura County, Los Angeles and points south, the crowd erupted in cheers.

What about SEIU-UHW?

The purple supporters were as scarce as ice cubes in the Mojave. Only 4-6 Kaiser workers were reportedly in SEIU-UHW’s contingent, which was largely comprised of union staffers like Latasha Winslow-Beavers, Flannery Hauck, Joe "Wellness Walk" Simoes and Greg Pullman.

As the crowd of red-shirted supporters continued to grow, SEIU-UHW’s staffers became increasingly nervous. Soon, Homeland Security was called to the scene... apparently at the request of SEIU-UHW, according to an article in the Sacramento Business Journal. It turns out that a large crowd of red-shirted workers on May Day produces a certain reaction in the reptilian brains of SEIU fat-cats and federal officials.

 

Officials from Homeland Security quickly shut down the metal-detector-equipped entrances to the federal building and pronounced, “There are too many of you.” Negotiations ensued, with the NLRB even threatening to impound the ballots unless a small crew of Kaiser workers sitting patiently in the fifth-floor cafeteria agreed to exit the building. 

In a picture taken just before exiting the cafeteria, here are the workers... who'd been properly admitted into the building and simply awaited their turn to serve as official observers in their ballot count.

Workers say they were particularly surprised by the Feds’ aggressive response because during the 2010 ballot count, workers were permitted to wait in the cafeteria for their turn to help safeguard the integrity of the ballot count.

Here’s a shot of some of the workers who were locked out of the federal building.

Fortunately, the locked-out workers found creative ways to pass the time, including attempting to visit the union office that’s funded by their monthly dues. SEIU’s Dave Regan (who didn’t show his face at the ballot count) reportedly called a Code Red from his Purple Couch... and barred the dues-paying members from entering their union hall.

According to readers, the ballot counting process is revealing important differences between the two unions. The NLRB set up 15 tables where representatives of each union reviews every mailed-in envelope to determine whether they are properly completed and submitted by eligible voters. SEIU-UHW officials assigned union staffers to carry out this role. Meanwhile, NUHW deployed successive groups of Kaiser workers who’d used vacation days and self-funded trips to attend the vote count.  

So what happens tomorrow? 

Tasty hears that the envelope-by-envelope review of ballots will likely be finished by the late morning. In the meantime, the already-approved envelopes will be cut open and the ballots will begin to be counted as representatives from side look on. It's possible that the count will be finished by the end of the day.

Stay tuned!

Big Bust for SEIU's Wellness Walk

Although readers won’t be surprised by the news, Tasty hears that SEIU’s wellness walk at Kaiser Permanente on March 1st (aka "the Great 2012 SEIU-UHW Step Up") was a colossal failure. Workers report that only handfuls of SEIU members turned up for the events at hospitals across California.

Just days ago, SEIU officials had confidently predicted they’d turn out 5,000 Kaiser workers to the wellness walk. Instead, the total statewide turnout was closer to 200-300 people. Check out these pictures from workers.

Here's SEIU's wellness walk in Stockton:

Here's the turnout at Hayward:

This is as big as the 'crowd' got at Antioch:

 At Union City, the wellness walkers never even left the hospital's cafeteria:

Here's SEIU's wellness staffer Latasha Winslow-Beavers taking a picture of walkers at Roseville Medical Center:

 At Walnut Creek, a group of 8-10 workers turned out.

According to a worker, one of the “walkers” pictured in the above photo later tossed his purple shirt in the garbage after seeing proof that SEIU officials had never intended to use the event to protest Kaiser’s proposed benefits cuts -- even though that's the story that SEIU organizers used to lure workers to the event.

Here's a picture from Manteca. Take special note of the big pile of unused purple shirts and bottles of water at 12:18pm -- some 45 minutes after the event was supposed to have started. Sources say the people in the picture include SEIU staffer Jared Mayhugh and Contract Specialist Cali Lombardi.  

 

At Richmond, a total of five workers collected their free pedometers from SEIU-UHW staffer Fola Afariogun before returning to the cafeteria. At Modesto Medical Center, SEIU didn’t even attempt to hold an event because SEIU is so unpopular. 

Even SEIU’s own photos -- posted online -- show how few workers turned out for SEIU-UHW's "Great Step Up." Check these out (the first is from Manteca and the second is Downey):

The abysmally low turnout wasn’t due to a lack of resources. In fact, SEIU's Dave Regan spent suitcases of members’ dues money on the wellness walk. He reportedly bought 10,000 purple pedometers emblazoned with SEIU-UHW’s logo -- and handed them out to walkers for free.

SEIU also ordered custom-made banners for the walk.

SEIU even deployed giant signs depicting SEIU’s SpongeBob-like cartoon character in an effort to inspire Kaiser workers to walk.  

SEIU’s partner -- Kaiser Permanente -- also threw its full support behind the event. Workers report that Kaiser’s executives allowed SEIU staffers to set up purple tables on the hospitals’ campuses to stage the walk. When one worker asked a security guard to explain how that was possible under the hospital's rules, the guard shrugged and said, “We don’t remove anyone unless we get orders from the boss upstairs.”

Tasty hears that some Kaiser supervisors even used departmental meetings to instruct employees to participate in SEIU’s wellness walk.

Early in the day, nervous SEIU officials realized the wellness walk would be a massive failure… so SEIU's Steve Trossman began carpet-bombing news outlets with his weapons of mass deception. In fact, even before the wellness walks had begun, SEIU published a press release announcing that “hundreds” of workers had already completed their wellness walks at just a single hospital in Southern California.

So what does it mean when a union's rank-and-file membership so thoroughly and completely repudiates their leaders? A large turnout for the wellness walk was supposed to signal the workers' support for Dave Regan's approach to negotiations with Kaiser. In the end, workers used their feet... but not to support Regan's concessionary approach to bargaining with Kaiser. Instead, workers registered a clear vote of "no confidence" in Regan just five days before he and John August begin negotiations with Kaiser's executives on March 6th.