The backstory behind this filing is not just your basic "we hate SEIU, we want out" story. The workers at Centinela had, prior to the trusteeship, won an informal arbitration that was a trendsetter in the area. However, the Centinela management rejected the arbitrator's finding and demanded a formal arbitration, which was before the same arbitrator.Workers at Centinela Hospital Medical Center have filed a petition to quit the scandal-plagued SEIU and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) instead, joining 1,600 workers at four other Southern California hospitals who petitioned on Sept. 24.
“As a union steward it’s always been my job to stand up for my co-workers and for good jobs in our community.” said Toni Rangel, a pharmacy technician at Centinela. “But SEIU has taken away our voice to do that. The only way we can protect our jobs and wages is to join the union we built, NUHW.”
Three months later, the Zombie scabs tried to get the Centinela workers to accept the management's "version" of the arbitration settlement. The rank-and-file forced an unwilling Zombie UHW back into arbitration, but UHW removed two members from the bargaining team that had won the settlement prior to the trusteeship. And so, when the undermanned Centinela bargaining team went back into arbitration, the arbitrator came down on the side of management.
Or so SEIU says - much like with KaiPerm, and much like the Sonoma County IHSS consortium, SEIU will not let anyone see what they agreed to on the workers' behalf. Instead, it was only management representatives that informed the workers what their wage scales had been "agreed" to be. The details of this travesty of "representation" can be found here.
Needless to say, the folks at Centinela are quite motivated to kick SEIU to the curb. The only question remaining now is whether or not SEIU will, once again, block the express wishes of the people it purports to represent.
There can be no doubt, in my opinion, that the plague-ridden SEIU will throw up blocking charges against the Centinela workers. The scabs are all about extorting union dues from the healthcare workers and aren't really interested in bargaining contracts that will benefit workers. On the contrary, SEIU is notorious for making backroom deals with the BOSSES. They're sell-outs disguised as supporters of workers' rights and union democracy. If workers really want a democratic union that understands that it's the members who make up the union--decert SEIU and petition to have NUHW as your union!
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