The press and the blogosphere is beginning to realize and to document the EPIC level of FAIL demonstrated by SEIU and Zombie UHW in the Santa Rosa election...
"The result was a crushing defeat for the SEIU..." according to the Los Angeles Times.
"NUHW is Decisive in Santa Rosa, SEIU Tries to Postpone Defeat" per Labor Notes.
The article in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat had this quote from Zombie UHW:
Adriana Surfas, an official with SEIU-UHW, said of the vote, “We are disappointed, and we wish the Santa Rosa workers well.”Much like Forrest Gump, that's about all they gotta say about that.
Randy Shaw at BeyondChron has weighed in, and in the article SEIU is laid low...
After a relentless campaign attacking NUHW, its staff, and its very right to call itself a union, SEIU lost 283-13 among workers desiring a union. It’s going to take a heckuva spinmeister for SEIU to explain to workers in other hospitals why they should trust SEIU over NUHW when those at SRMH clearly did not.This election may well be having downstream consequences down at KaiPerm in SoCal as well, according to Tasty...
SEIU’s brand is badly tarnished in California, both from its fight against NUHW and its failed struggle against UNITE HERE. The union has alienated multiple local labor councils, threatened John Burton (the state’s leading progressive and union hero), and is burning bridges with the religious community.
SEIU paid a steep price for its all-out campaign in Santa Rosa, and should have withdrawn from the election months ago, as many urged. Now, it has undermined its ability to compete against NUHW for the nearly 9000 other non-union workers in the St. Joseph's Health System chain, and will be under statewide pressure to withdraw from contesting NUHW's organizing rights in these facilities.
How does a union spend that much money, using messaging produced by the highly regarded San Francisco-based BMW political consulting firm, only win 2% of the total vote? And only 2% despite multiple attack pieces on NUHW, while the victorious union only could afford a single glossy leaflet during election week (the NUHW piece was designed at no cost by San Francisco political consultant Eric Jaye, and explained why workers needed a union and only referenced SEIU as a purple grinch in the corner)?
NUHW spokesperson Jon Borsos thinks he has the answer. He described NUHW’s win as a “tremendous victory for democratic unionism, as health care workers stood up to corporate health care and to corporate unionism.” Longtime SRMH union supporter Nancy Timberlake echoed Borsos, adding “to win against a behemoth like SEIU and our employer’s own anti-union campaign is true vindication and a true miracle.”
Tis the season for miracles, something SEIU also overlooked when it successfully delayed the election until a week before Christmas.
Sources report that very high level SEIU staffers in DC are saying that SEIU is going to lose the Kaiser Pro election.Now it's on to SoCal Kaiser...
Behind the scenes the word is, "...there is no way to win this election. The workers simply won't talk to us."
Tasty doesn't know if that is true, but it seems like DC doesn't have much confidence in the Trusteeship Team.
SEIU suffered a crushing defeat in Santa Rosa. None of SEIU's anti-union tactics worked. Instead of losing confidence or being intimidated by SEIU and management, Memorial workers stood together and voted their conscience.
ReplyDeleteMost health care workers in California don't trust SEIU. I believe that this is so because of SEIU's corporate style unionism which Andy Stern believes is the new way for all unions to grow. Stern is wrong about his "new" way to grow union members. Slowly but surely, working people are realizing that corporate unionism is essentially colluding with the employers at the expense and detriment of workers in America.
SEIU's experiment with the lives of working people has backfired and is doomed for all time.