NUHW Celebrates a Decade

This month marks ten years since the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) was founded on the heels of a disastrous trusteeship imposed by SEIU’s Purple Palace in Washington DC.

Since 2009, NUHW has grown to more than 15,000 members. It has built a democratic and member-controlled union while waging militant fights and repeated strikes against healthcare corporations like Kaiser Permanente... winning it a reputation as a "giant killer." Last year saw NUHW’s expansion to Hawaii.

Meanwhile, SEIU-UHW has pursued a very different strategy: becoming the boss’s best friend.

SEIU-UHW has given up massive concessions to California’s biggest healthcare corporations. It’s given away workers’ defined-benefit pension plans, eliminated workers’ fully employer-paid health insurance, and allowed corporations like Dignity Health to impose wage freezes on 15,000 workers.

Forget strikes, says SEIU-UHW’s Trustee/President Dave Regan. In fact, SEIU-UHW has carried out only one or two strikes during an entire decade. SEIU-UHW even teamed up with Kaiser's execs to organize against workers' strikes.

What, then, is SEIU-UHW’s strategy for winning some measure of justice from the giant corporations that dominate the US economy?

During a TV interview with Los Angeles’s KNBC TV station, Regan famously admitted that SEIU-UHW is not interested in fighting employers on behalf of workers and their patients. The era of "adversarial relationships" between workers and corporations is dead, says Regan.

Instead, SEIU-UHW pursues “collaboration” and “teamwork” with corporations... as memorialized in Regan’s backroom deals with executives that force workers into cheap, pre-negotiated labor contracts. Check out this quick excerpt from his TV interview.

At first, corporations were all too happy to accept Regan’s boot-licking approach.

Later, when Regan’s usefulness had been exhausted, the execs kicked him to the curb like a two-bit punk. Gone were the days when Diamond Dave could prance around hotel suites with pinstriped execs.

Since then, Regan -- his ego on crutches -- has latched onto ballot initiatives, rather than worker organization, as his latest lame strategy for “winning for workers.”

Congrats to NUHW for all of its accomplishments and its perseverance during a time of ascendant corporations and intense need for worker organizing!

It’s been quite a decade, with more battles ahead.

For coverage of NUHW’s 10-year anniversary, see Steve Early’s article published earlier this week, with a few excerpts pasted below. (Steve Early, “A Trusteeship Diaspora: How SEIU’s-Inflicted Loss Became Labor’s Gain,” Beyond Chron, January 29, 2019.)

[Former SEIU President Andy] Stern’s military style take-over of UHW greatly tarnished SEIU’s reputation for being “progressive.”  It generated bad press for the entire labor movement because the trusteeship lent credence to anti-union propaganda about “union bosses” running roughshod over the rank-and-file and misusing their dues money…

Post-trusteeship UHW quickly lost the respect of other California unions and their political friends in Sacramento. In recent years, the Stern-installed leadership of UHW helped fracture a multi-union bargaining coalition at Kaiser Permanente, wasted more than $30 million on failed ballot initiatives, and lost a third of its membership….

Rosselli and other UHW members succeeded in building a new statewide healthcare workers organization that is independent of any national labor union… NUHW now has a statewide membership of 15,000 in about forty bargaining units. The union is known for its militant contract campaigns and involvement in progressive causes like Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and the on-going fight for single-payer healthcare.

…full-time staffers once employed by UHW have gone to work for other unions, central labor councils, labor reform struggles, community organizations, and political campaigns across the country. This new diaspora—from a once exemplary SEIU local– is helping thousands of workers win high profile organizing campaigns and strikes, like the recent LA teachers walk-out, and rejuvenate the unions involved.

SEIU’s Andy Stern Joins Billionaires, Not Union Members, in Election Campaign

SEIU's Andy Stern

SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern has once again shown his true colors.

In an upcoming election for a seat in California’s legislature, Stern has jumped in on the side of billionaires to back a corporate Democrat who’s challenging a union member supported by progressive organizations, multiple local unions, Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and California-based unions inside SEIU.

The November election pits Jovanka Beckles -- a Teamster, two-term Richmond city councilmember and DSA member -- against Buffy Wicks, a former White House official and Clinton Super PAC director who recently relocated to California and has never held elected office.

According to records from the California Secretary of State, Stern has made two contributions to Wicks this year. When contributing the funds, Stern identified himself as a “consultant” for Grandview, LLC, a corporation founded by Stern soon after he resigned as President of SEIU in April 2010. (See below.)

Incorporation documents confirm Stern’s role in the company (see below). Stern may use the corporation as a vehicle for his consulting gigs with tech companies like Uber and AirBnB. Stern’s company is registered to a Washington, DC apartment -- presumably Stern’s -- which appears to have a “grand view” of the Potomac River.

Jovanka Beckles (left) and Buffy Wicks (right)

The race for the California legislative seat has features similar to recent electoral contests in the US including the one between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Crowley.

During this spring’s primary election, Wicks received $1.2 million from “wealthy donors tied to Lyft, Uber, and Bay Area tech firms, charter school interests, major landlords, a health care industry PAC, and Govern for California, a business-oriented Super PAC created by the board chair of Walmart and a former top advisor to Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,” according to an article authored by labor journalist Steve Early. (Steve Early, “Teamster Tackles Corporate Democrat in California Assembly Race,” Labor Notes, August 31, 2018)

The "grand view" of the Potomac from the DC apartment

If you’re curious about Wicks’ donors, check out this interesting website -- buffywicks.money -- which offers details about Wicks’ donors including billionaires Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman.

“In contrast,” says Early, “Beckles raised and spent only about $160,000, mostly in smaller, in-state donations. She ran as a “people-powered” candidate, free of corporate money and relied on few paid staffers or outside consultants.” Beckles supports “workers’ and tenants’ rights, single payer health care, and getting big money out of politics,” says Early.

Here's an interview with Beckles in Jacobin Magazine: "We Need a New Economy That Works for the Many” 

Early writes:

Ex-SEIU President Andy Stern is an individual endorser of Wicks—despite the fact that two major SEIU locals and their state council favor Beckles. Since leaving the union, Stern has become a corporate board member and gig economy consultant… In the Assembly District 15 race today, California single-payer advocates favor Beckles over Wicks, whose position on health care reform is much weaker.

If Beckles’ consistent solidarity with local labor causes is reciprocated through sufficient union voter turnout and spending on her behalf, she may indeed be joining the Assembly in January.

And there, she will be a rare “corporate-free” voice for many other working class and poor Californians whose interests tend to be overlooked by state legislators who do take money from business PACs and industry associations.

Beckles is backed by multiple unions including the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Transit (ATU) Local 192, University Professional and Technical Employees (CWA), Teamsters Joint Council 7, SEIU Local 1021, the Alameda and Contra Costa County Labor Councils, the California Labor Federation, both statewide teachers’ unions, AFSCME, and the California Nurses Association.

Workers Battle SEIU over Chicago Trusteeship

May Kay Henry and Eliseo Medina

Members of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago are making headway in ending SEIU’s nearly two-year-long trusteeship of their local union, according to inside sources and federal court documents.

In fact, one source says SEIU may be forced to hold internal officer elections sometime during the summer or fall. They say SEIU officials have already picked out an SEIU staffer to serve as their candidate for president of the local.

Here’s the latest:

On February 7, 2018, several members of Local 73 filed another lawsuit in federal court asking a judge to end SEIU’s trusteeship and to order SEIU to hold democratic elections so union members can choose a board and officers to run their local union. The lawsuit – which names SEIU, Mary Kay Henry and Eliseo Medina as defendants -- is based on a federal law that says a trusteeship “shall be presumed invalid...” after 18 months. (See below for a copy of the lawsuit: Hunter et al v. Service Employees International Union et al.)

Even though the trusteeship is now more than 20 months old, SEIU hasn’t taken any steps to end it. In fact, says the lawsuit, SEIU officials have tried to suppress members’ efforts to restore local control. Here’s an excerpt from the lawsuit:

At the last general membership meeting on September 23, 2017, a nomination from a member on the floor was made to commence elections, it was properly seconded by another member, yet then Trustee Denise Poloyac unilaterally rejected the Motion and declared, contrary to previous representations, that the meeting was not a “general membership meeting.”

…The Plaintiffs and the general membership of the Local 73 will suffer harm if the current Trusteeship is not discontinued because it would deprive the general membership of the officers and executive board members of their choosing, from inside their membership, rather than the leadership and direction improperly imposed upon them from the International Union when the same is invalid as a matter of law.

Next, things got worse.

According to the lawsuit, union members created a slate of candidates called “Members Leading Members,” established a website, and collected signatures from more than 2,000 members in support of the slate.

Just four days after the website went live on January 4, 2018, “seven of the officer candidates listed on the slate posted on the “Members for Members” website were unilaterally suspended, without notice and without due process or hearing,” according to the lawsuit. Two days later, all seven of the candidates were fired by the SEIU trustees. (These candidates were members of SEIU Local 73’s staff.)

Yesterday, a federal judge held a preliminary hearing on the latest lawsuit during which she rejected a motion by SEIU’s attorneys and “encouraged [SEIU and the members who are suing it] to negotiate conditions for reasonably prompt resumption of local control, and free and fair elections.” Another hearing will happen in three weeks.

So which SEIU International staffer has been fingered to run as SEIU International’s candidate for president of Local 73?

According to Tasty’s sources, it’s Jeffrey Howard. 

SEIU assigned Howard, an “Assistant Area Director” for SEIU International, to work at Local 73 just four months ago. Under SEIU's rules, a person must be a member in good standing of the local union for at least two years in order to qualify as a candidate for office. So how can Jeff Howard actually run to become president of Local 73?

“Jeff was asked about the fact that he has only been a member of Local 73 for four months,” says a source, “and his reply was Mary Kay [Henry] has waived the two-year membership requirement!”

For more information about SEIU’s trusteeship and a look back at Dave Regan’s violent attack on a nationwide meeting of union reformers some nine years ago (during which one SEIU member died), check out an article by labor journalist Steve Early:  “Purple bullying, ten years later: SEIU trustees trample membership rights,” Monthly Review, April 1, 2018.

   Hunter el al v. SEIU: Lawsuit on SEIU Local 73 Trusteeship (02-07-2018) by tastysternburger on Scribd

UFCW Local 400's lawsuit against Kaiser... and two news articles

Three quick items:

1. Here's a copy of the lawsuit filed by UFCW Local 400 against Kaiser Permanente in federal court for refusing to follow their collective bargaining agreement, negotiated under the labor-management partnership. Tasty mentioned the lawsuit in this post.

2. Check out an article by labor journalist Steve Early entitled “AFL-CIO Delays CA Hospital Vote: What Happened to Employee Free Choice?” The article describes how SEIU recently enlisted the AFL-CIO’s Rich Trumka to delay an NLRB election requested by 700 California hospital workers who, on March 30th, requested an election to dump SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

Early takes Trumka/SEIU to task for turning their backs on "employee free choice,” the labor movement's top legislative priority for years.

So why are workers at the hospital in Chico, Calif. bolting Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW? Here's what one worker tells Early:

“In our last contract, SEIU bargained away important language and put up absolutely no fight for livable wage increases. Then they rushed a contract ratification vote, giving us little notice and no copies of the contract they had bargained…Only 100 out of 700 employees voted. This is not how a union should behave.”

Yo Diamond Dave: Is that what SEIU calls "free choice" and worker democracy?

FYI, journalist Cal Winslow has also published an article on the campaign by hospital workers in Chico: "California Healthcare Workers Fight for a Union that Will Fight for Them."

3. Lastly, see another article in “New York Capital” describing SEIU 1199 New York’s tight relationship with the hospital industry -- the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) -- and 1199NY’s split from the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), the state's largest nurses' union with 37,000 members. 

The two unions' opposing philosophies reflect a similar split among California’s healthcare unions, where SEIU-UHW has climbed deep inside the pocket of the state's hospital bosses and joined the bosses in attacking California's patient safety laws.

"Save Our Unions"!

If you’re interested in a good read, labor journalist Steve Early just published a new book called “Save Our Unions.” The book, available from Monthly Review Press, has chapters with titles like, "A Stewards' Army Uprising."

One chapter -- “Partnering or Picketing?” -- describes the giant strikes that 21,000 members of NUHW and CNA recently waged against Kaiser Permanente. He describes how Purple officials like SEIU-UHW Executive Board member Shawna Stewart teamed up with Kaiser’s bosses to fight the strikes.

In another chapter called "The Corporate Wellness Scam," Early profiles the newest flavor of corporate ripoffs designed by Pepsi and other giant corporations -- which is actively being pushed by SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan in partnership with the corporate fatcats. For example, Early describes this episode:

At Daughters of Charity, the new "wellness program" negotiated in April 2012 by SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers-West comes, per usual, with more familiar forms of cost shifting. Three thousand UHW members at five hospitals will now pay 25 percent of the monthly premiums for PPO coverage that was previously fully paid by their employer. Out-of-pocket costs for medical plan utilization (doctor visits, prescriptions, etc.) will double and the premiums of workers who fail to meet new standards for personal healthiness will be 20 percent higher than those for their coworkers. To get these concessions approved, UHW conducted a rushed two-day ratification vote that began less than 12 hours after a tentative agreement was reached. The SEIU Constitution requires three days' advance notice of ratification votes; workers at Daughters of Charity got only nine hours. According to workers who complained, in writing, to SEIU president Mary Kay Henry, UHW reps refused to provide them with copies of the agreement they were voting on.

And Early finds hopeful lessons from workers' recent battles:

The goal of "saving our unions" is best pursued in ecumenical fashion, from the bottom up, with no false dichotomy between "external” and "internal" organizing… Wherever the traditional route of union reform is blocked and workers remain trapped in labor-management relationships that deprive them of any meaningful, independent voice, a militant minority will soldier on. Its usual friends and allies will continue to lend a hand because they know that the magic kingdom of labor-management partnering is no laboratory for creating a more democratic, inclusive, and social justice-oriented labor movement. It's far more likely that elements of such a movement will emerge from worker resistance to company unionism, where the first glimmers of something better are already visible and inspiring at Kaiser.

Here’s more info on the book. Check it out!

SEIU Deals Setback to Union Demcracy via Lawsuit against Dissidents

Labor journalist Steve Early has penned an interesting article about SEIU’s ongoing assault against union democracy.

No… it’s not about Dave Regan’s show trials against union members for “disloyalty.”

Instead, the article describes how SEIU’s civil lawsuit against NUHW’s founders has rewritten federal case law so as to strengthen the Purple Palace’s top-down control over union members.

The legal ruling stems from SEIU’s disastrous trusteeship of SEIU-UHW. Back in 2009, SEIU’s head honchos in Washington, DC ordered UHW to transfer 65,000 of its members to a corrupt union headed by Tyrone Freeman, who was later convicted of 11 criminal counts.

In January of 2009, SEIU seized control of UHW and sued its leaders after UHW’s 100-member Executive Board voted unanimously to oppose the transfer unless the affected union members were first given a right to vote on the transfer.

Here’s where SEIU’s harmful legal precedent comes in.

In court, UHW’s former leaders -- who subsequently helped create NUHW -- said they acted properly because they simply followed the explicit directions of their union’s members, who overwhelmingly opposed the undemocratic transfer. The former leaders argued that their first responsibility was to the local members who elected them to office, served on the union’s 100-member Executive Board, created UHW’s constitution, and paid their salaries.

The Purple Palace argued the opposite… basically saying, “Screw the members. We call the shots!” SEIU claimed that local union leaders’ primary responsibility is to SEIU’s headquarters in D.C. -- some 3,000 miles away! Here’s how Early describes it:

The gist of SEIU's case was that the connection between a national union and any of its local affiliates is just like the Bank of America's relationship to branch banks. If the parent company (in this case, SEIU) wants to reorganize a local branch or change its management in any way, there's no legal basis for objecting. Despite being elected by the members, local officers owe a greater “fiduciary duty” to the international union than to anyone else. They must comply with any headquarters directive, even if the workers they represent are opposed to it.

And that’s what the court decided, thereby dealing a big setback to the cause of workers and union democracy.

Dan Siegel, a lawyer who’s handled similar cases since the 1970s and defended NUHW’s leaders against SEIU’s lawsuit, put it this way:

"This is really a very nefarious decision. It turns the law of fiduciary duty on its head. Local union officials can be accused of breaching their fiduciary duty if they disobey directives from national union officials contrary to the interests of their members."

Siegel fears that:

“more local union officials will be faced with a conflict of interest when their national union and their members tell them to do different things. If they stick with the workers, they could face a lawsuit for damages, measured by the entire budget of the local.”

Another legal observer describes the court’s unhelpful judicial "preference for a top-down style of unionism, favoring hierarchical, organizational discipline over the principles of internal union democracy and member control of unions."

And here’s another indication of how bad the court’s decision is:  The court said UHW’s former leaders violated their “fiduciary duty” by resisting the transfer of the 65,000 workers... even though SEIU itself has NEVER EVER transferred the workers since it seized control of UHW in 2009!

What about NUHW’s leaders, who are personally on the hook as a result of the court’s horrible decision? Here’s what John Borsos, Secretary-Treasurer of NUHW, told Early:

“I wasn’t elected by the international union. I was elected by the rank-and-file members. That, in my opinion, is who I owed my duty to, which is why I don’t have any remorse about listening to the voice of our members at the expense of the international union. If we had to do it again, we’d do the same thing.”

Here’s a link to the full article on ZNet.

News Coverage of Kaiser Election

Here's an article from Steve Early, a labor journalist who's written extensively about the labor struggles in California's healthcare industry. The following is an excerpt from the full article, published by Labor Notes.

“We were hopeful this time would be different than last time,” said Roberto Alvarez, a 17-year Kaiser X-ray technician from southern California. “In Orange County, we tripled the support for NUHW, so it was a great leap forward for us there. We know what the future is with SEIU, so what we have to do now is keep on fighting.”

That future, according to Alvarez and others interviewed yesterday, will include further deterioration of working conditions, weak enforcement of the “best contract in the country,” and, at some point, major SEIU give-backs on pensions, job security, and medical coverage for active employees. These takeaways have already been won by Kaiser competitors like Dignity Healthcare and Daughters of Charity Health System.

“My theory is that SEIU has promised Kaiser a lot of stuff, cuts that are coming down sooner or later, now that the election is out of the way,” Alvarez said.

“We’ve got to stay organized, support each other, and remain defiant,” said George Wong, who works for Kaiser in San Francisco. “There’s going to be another day, and the fight will continue—because it has to.”