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.

Kaiser's Partnership Pals Hold Birthday Celebration as Rebellion Breaks Out in Partnership Ranks

Wellness walks? Dance-a-thons? Contract buddies? Purple pedometers?

Meg Niemi and Dennis Dabney

In case you thought you'd seen it all, here's the latest from the Disneyland world of partnership bargaining, which resumed this week at the San Jose Marriott Hotel (April 28-30).

It comes from the twitter account of Meg Niemi, the President of SEIU Local 49. Niemi was last seen hugging Kaiser Permanente's top HR executive, Dennis Dabney, during recent bargaining meetings.

On Friday, Meg sent out the following tweet after SEIU members delivered "happy birthday” cards to Scott Allen, Kaiser’s Director of Labor Relations in Washington and Oregon, to celebrate the partnership's birthday. Looks like the officials atop the partnership unions are gearing up for a real knockdown drag-out fight with the Boss, right?

Here's the pic, with the smiling HR official standing in the middle. (Btw, not too many signatures on those b-day cards, right?)

Interestingly, it looks like another partnership union didn't get the memo about the all-smiles-and-hugs approach to Kaiser and its HR department.

UFCW Local 400 -- which is part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a “partnership” union – has sued Kaiser in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for violating its members’ contract, according to a Courthouse News article published April 10, 2015.

Local 400 -- whose members include RNs, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Mental Health Professionals, Substance Abuse Counselors, Audiologists and other professionals at 33 Kaiser outpatient facilities in DC, Maryland and Virginia -- says Kaiser is violating basic provisions of its labor contract and giving substandard care to patients so it can boost its profits.

The union has filed more than 60 grievances in an effort to get Kaiser to fix the problems. But Kaiser won't even follow the contract's grievance procedure!  That's why Local 400 is suing Kaiser in federal court.

Yesterday, UFCW Local 400 posted the following statement on its website: “Kaiser Worker Treatment Cause of Concern.” 

The statement details problems with off-the-clock work, inadequate staffing levels that underminethe quality of care, Kaiser’s profiteering at the expense of patients, and the HMO’s refusal to give benefited positions to workers. Here are some excerpts:

Once a model of labor-management cooperation, Kaiser Permanente has made troubling changes in the way it treats its health professionals, bringing in managers lacking experience in a union environment, disregarding the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, and focusing more on profits than the well-being of its employees and patients. 

As a result, an unprecedented number of grievances have been filed in the Mid-Atlantic region over the past year.

“Kaiser was once a model employer and we hope it will be again, but right now it’ s anything but,” said Local 400 Secretary-Treasurer Lavoris ”Mikki” Harris... 

“Kaiser’s recent behavior leads me to wonder whether the for-profit cart is dragging the non-profit horse,” Harris said. “As a result, Kaiser’s vaunted Labor-Management Partnership is not what it once was, with Kaiser’s health professionals being treated not as its most valuable resource, but rather as a cost to be minimized. Together, we will reverse this unfortunate turn of events.”

Way to go, Local 400! 

It sounds like the local’s members -- many of whom do the same work as NUHW’s members in California – have borrowed a page from the red union's playbook. 

More to come? Stay tuned.