SoCal KaiPerm Election Dates Announced

From a NUHW E-mail...

On Monday, January 4 the NLRB will mail ballots to members of the Psychsocial Chapter and the Healthcare Professionals Chapter. The AFN-RN unit will vote at Kaiser LAMC on January 6 and 7, 2010. This is our election and our chance to put Kaiser professionals in charge of our contract and our future.

In NUHW, we'll have a voice again to solve problems and work together on our professional practice issues. We'll vote on our stewards, our bargaining teams, and our contracts again.

In contrast, SEIU has done everything in their power to stop us from voting. Just last week, SEIU filed a new motion to stop our election. Despite SEIU's efforts our election is now set.

We want to share a letter from Dr. Winnie Allen, one of the very first members of the Kaiser Psychsocial Chapter. Dr. Allen helped organize our Chapter in 1975, and shares her perspective on how our chapters have historically led the way in Kaiser, including being the first to develop the tools of the LMP. Click here to read her letter and share it with your co-workers.

We are excited that we have a date to take back our union. When you get your ballot in the mail, it will come to your home. We enthusiastically encourage you to fill it out and send it back. This will be a vote for unity, integrity and democracy in our union at Kaiser. Our vote is for NUHW.

The letter referred to in the E-mail above reads as follows...

My Fellow Professional Chapter colleagues:

My name is Winnie Allen. I have been a steward and a member of the Kaiser Psychsocial Chapter since we organized our union in 1975, becoming the first union in the country for professional workers.

I strongly endorse our chapter’s certification of NUHW as our future union. We are on the threshold of an historic event. Soon, we will participate in a federally sanctioned vote conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. That vote will determine what kind of union we will be part of: SEIU, the union that has imposed a trusteeship and eliminated all membership rights and structure, or NUHW, our union that actively seeks our input and participation on how to move forward on labor issues critical to us. Our choice will have a sweeping and positive influence not just throughout Kaiser, but throughout the entire labor movement.

As clear as this choice is for me, I am aware that SEIU is trying to create doubt and fear among many of us. They have said that when we choose NUHW, we won't be "big enough" to negotiate successfully with Kaiser for the wages, working conditions, and level of participation in the Partnership that we want. Let me diminish that fear by sharing some bargaining history from the Kaiser Psychsocial Chapter.

Over the past 25 years, our chapter bargained its contracts with Kaiser approximately every three years. I know this because I was on many of those bargaining taskforces. In the 1990s, it was our Psychsocial unit that introduced the partnership tools of issue resolution, consensus decision, and interest-based problem solving into the bargaining process.

This was years before the first National Agreement enshrined the tools of partnership, long before the Coalition even came into existence, and long before partnership was universally desired by KP and the unions. The LMP that our chapter spearheaded in our contracts became the basis of the major goal of the first National Agreement.

We have long led the way in making Kaiser a better place to work—not because of SEIU, but because our chapters have always had the autonomy and democracy to make our voices heard. Joining NUHW will continue that tradition and keep our chapters strong.

Please join me in voting for NUHW.

Winnie Allen, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Kaiser Watts and Kaiser Sunset

Thank you, Dr. Allen.

LMP should be bigger than Andy's ego - this upcoming vote in January is certain to put that concept to the test.