Death and Taxes

It's been said that the only sure things in the world are Death and Taxes.

Well, to that list can be added the appeal of a close loser to an election before the NLRB...

Memorial Hospital administrators have filed objections to the recent election during which hospital employees voted to join National Union of Healthcare Workers, alleging that the union, union agents, and/or third parties negatively affected the election. Did articles published on EmpireReport.org contribute to a flawed election? Disclosure- This report involves allegations that may implicate the author of the report.

On Tuesday, December 29th, only 11 days after voting to unionize with National Union of Healthcare Workers, Memorial Hospital employees received an administration memo notifying them that the administration filed election objections with the National Labor Relations Board.

According to the memo, which was signed by the hospital's Vice President of Human Resources, the objections were filed because the administration was "concerned that NUHW's conduct during the weeks leading up to the vote created an atmosphere of confusion and fear," an atmosphere which "compromised our employees' rights and ultimately unlawfully affected the outcome of the vote."

The memo does not note if any hospital employees 1) expressed fear or confusion, 2) stated fear or confusion affected their vote, or 3) alleged that their rights were violated.

However, instead of including the objections in the memo, or sending the document containing the objections through email, the administration memo contained an italicized passage emphasizing that employees would have to log into the hospital's computer network to view a copy of the objections filed with the NLRB.

Employees who did so found a December 28th document titled "Employer's Objections to Conduct Affecting the Election."

While the hospital administration's memo to its employees limits its allegations to "NUHW's conduct," the December 28th document lists objections against the union, union agents and/or third parties, and even the National Labor Relations Board itself.

SRMH management is evidently protesting some of the video newsgathering conducted by Empire Report, as well as complaining about the "font" that the "no union" option was printed on with the ballots, e.g. the "no union" selection was significantly smaller than that for NUHW or Zombie UHW.

The only real effect this protest is going to have is to postpone the inevitable. Because of this filing, the disposition of the 17 challenged ballots will probably be put off indefinitely (the challenges filed at San Pablo Doctor's Hospital are still yet to be resolved), but NUHW has already achieved the tactical victory it needed over Zombie UHW going into the Kaiser SoCal election.

Let's Go And Have Us An Election

Or at least so says the NLRB, courtesy of Ashley Furness of the NorthBay Business Journal...

The last-minute scheduling of a union election for about 600 Memorial hospital workers came as a bitter-sweet surprise last Monday morning, even within the context of a high-pitched battle between two Northern California unions.

Three days after a labor official said he did not expect the parties to agree on election terms any time soon, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Service Employees International Union and the National Union of Healthcare Workers all signed a ballot agreement.

The document was finalized minutes before a hearing on the matter was scheduled. The groups had convened in private for about 45 minutes before the meeting, agreeing to schedule the vote Dec. 17 and 18. It is possible that either union could file an unfair labor practices complaint and further delay the vote.

Three Memorial organizing committee workers who attended the canceled hearing were overjoyed to finally have a vote scheduled but said the weeks until the December election will mean an onslaught of campaigning.

“We were all surprised. I fully expected one of the unions to seek a delay. [SEIU] had delivered all sorts of information suggesting a strategy to litigate unless changes were made to the bargaining unit, which would have posed an enormous time sink to the process,” said Tim Peck, assistant to the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in San Francisco, where the hearing was meant to take place.

SEIU officials had also said during a North Bay Labor Council meeting Oct. 28 that the election wouldn’t happen until January, but a spokesperson for a group said the statement was based on speculation.

The six-year unionization saga of hundreds of Memorial nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and other health care-related technicians’ has been one fraught with tactics to obstruct the process, but oddly the most recent six months of delays were not the work of an employer but one of the unions.

“If it wasn’t for SEIU, we would have had our election scheduled back in April, and I hope the [election] agreement this morning means they finally got the picture from the community that we are clearly tired of their attempts to delay our vote,” said organizing committee member and eight-year Memorial imaging technician Christine Hoex.

Supporters of the SEIU effort were not available to comment.

In April, it appeared Memorial workers would finally have an election after the labor board approved a petition filed with NUHW. But on the eve of the election, SEIU charged unfair practices by the competing labor group, effectively stalling the vote in time to also get on the ballot.

In September, NLRB officials made an unprecedented decision to move forward with the election without resolving the unfair labor practices charge, but the process was further stalled when SEIU asked that NUHW’s attorney be disqualified. The labor board and a state superior court judge rejected the request.

“We can deal with [SEIU] on the ballot, and we can deal with them knocking on our doors and calling our homes, we just want them to stop delaying the election,” said Memorial oncology care partner Melissa Bosanco, who also attended the Nov. 2 hearing.

On Sept. 29, the North Bay Labor Council, which is not affiliated with either group, sent a letter saying, “Memorial workers have chosen NUHW as their union,” and asked that SEIU stand down from the election. A few days later, 75 Memorial workers delivered a letter to the local SEIU office with a similar request.

The NLRB could not release the exact number of workers that signed either union’s petition, but NUHW was required to garner at least 30 percent of workers to be approved for an election, and SEIU needed “a showing of interest,” or at least one signature.

“This whole case has been highly unusual since the get go,” Mr. Peck said.

“Prior to this, cases like this deal with actions brought on by the employer, but again we’ve never seen this kind of situation where you have one union essentially competing with a break-away union composed entirely of its former officials.”

NUHW was formed by about 150 former leaders of the Northern California branch of SEIU. The stewards, who were elected by workers, resigned from the mega union after they were removed from leadership following a trusteeship of Northern California offices. The takeover was implemented in January following ongoing resistance to structural changes implemented by SEIU national, according to trusteeship hearing documents.

Since the division, NUHW has won three elections in Northern California covering about 400 employees and filed about 360 petitions potentially covering 100,000 workers, according to union officials.

It remains to be seen how SEIU will conduct themselves in this runup. Keyser Söze at Red Revolt speculates that this will be "our own little Fresno." However, in my mind the facts and history point more toward the Doctors Hospital example, where SEIU filed to intervene late in the election and ended up getting crushed for their efforts - and then turn around and intervene legally after the votes are submitted (and possibly even preventing the count, as they have already done at Providence Tarzana).

That's not to say we NUHW partisans should not be prepared for some Olde Tyme SEIU Hijincks up Santa Rosa way in the next month or so.

For when dealing with SEIU, it never hurts to think of the worst thing that can happen - and then plan for something even lower than that.

Paul Pringle Pwns Purple Plague...

Okay, I couldn't resist the temptation to alliterate on that one, but Paul Pringle of the LA Times has once again totally punked SEIU...

SEIU borrows business' anti-union tactics to fend off a rival

The Service Employees International Union alleges that the upstart National Union of Healthcare Workers is intimidating and misleading workers.
By Paul Pringle
June 24, 2009

For years, the powerful Service Employees International Union has played a lead role in the campaign for a landmark federal law that would allow workers to join a labor organization simply by signing petitions.

Now, as part of a high-stakes battle in California, the union is urging federal officials to throw out petitions signed by tens of thousands of its own members who have asked to be represented by a rival upstart group.

The David-vs.-Goliath face-off pits the SEIU, its $300-million annual budget and its legions of staffers, lobbyists and lawyers against a band of about 150 insurgents who are either volunteers or being paid from donations. Most have defected from the SEIU's 2-million-strong ranks.

In lodging legal challenges to the roughly 80 petitions filed by its fledgling competitor, the SEIU has moved to block organizing elections at hospitals, clinics and nursing homes up and down the state. And it has used some of the same tactics that employers often use to thwart union drives.

One of the giant union's allegations echoes a key argument that corporate interests make against the proposed law, the Employee Free Choice Act: that labor activists can intimidate or mislead workers during organizing campaigns.

"The SEIU is advocating free choice for every employee in the United States, unless you're an SEIU member," said John Borsos, an interim vice president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which says it has enough signatures to represent nearly 100,000 employees. "The only reason the SEIU doesn't want elections is that they know they would lose."

SEIU President Andy Stern said his union has a legal responsibility to object to the elections because it believes the leaders of the new group have violated labor laws. He accused them of stalling wage-and-benefit negotiations with employers to keep contracts open and leave the SEIU vulnerable to membership raids.

Stern said his union's actions have not undermined its position on the free choice act.

"There is a policy question and there's a legal question," he said in an interview. "This is a legal proceeding. . . . Ultimately there will be a vote."

Er...Okay, Glorious Maximum Leader, when exactly might that be? Or should I be watching for monkeys flying out of your arse?

The SEIU has turned for help to an agency that it has frequently scorned and whose ways the free choice act aims to reform: the National Labor Relations Board. The union has filed a welter of unfair-practice charges with the board, alleging in part that the new group has restrained and coerced workers in plotting to launch the breakaway organization.

The healthcare union says that the charges are frivolous. It has successfully petitioned for three elections outside the labor board's jurisdiction.

Alleging improprieties, the SEIU had sought through the state to block the first vote, to represent employees at a San Pablo hospital, then lost in a rout: 158 to 24. In a second, much-larger election -- for 10,000 home-care workers in the Fresno area -- the SEIU did not ask state officials to halt the balloting. It deployed about 900 people to campaign and won narrowly, 2,938 to 2,705. The new union says it is challenging the Fresno result.

The third election is underway by mail.

Heading the healthcare union are former SEIU officers ousted after their Oakland-based local was removed from their control and placed in the hands of trustees early this year.

The Oakland officers broke with SEIU's leadership after accusing them of weakening the union through forced mergers of locals and sweetheart deals with employers. The SEIU called those complaints a smoke screen, saying the dissidents had resisted a program to modernize the union to position it for growth.

So I take it that the "financial improprieties" charge is no longer operative?

One of the SEIU's allegations in the petitions dispute has raised eyebrows in labor and Democratic Party circles. The SEIU contends that the new union is "dominated by employers," and thus illegal, because former Bay Area political consultant Clint Reilly, who employs janitors as a commercial landlord, had helped its organizers raise money before they formed the group.

He "is trying to destroy our union," said Dave Regan, an SEIU executive vice president.

Reilly, who once ran for San Francisco mayor and has a decades-long record as a pro-labor Democrat, said he has worked alongside the SEIU in the past. He has managed political campaigns for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both of California. During the 2008 presidential election, Reilly said, he hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton in a building that he also made available to the new union's leaders, who at the time were still in the SEIU.

He said the janitors are SEIU members. But the accusation that his status as an employer has tainted the new union is bogus, he said, particularly because he is not in the healthcare field.

"Why the NLRB is even pursuing this as a serious claim is beyond me," Reilly said.

For its part, the healthcare union, known as NUHW, has filed charges alleging that the SEIU has colluded with employers to defeat the new group.

Starla Rollins, an administrative worker at a San Bernardino hospital, said she began circulating petitions after concluding that the SEIU had become a "top-down" organization that cut members out of contract talks. Rollins said about 400 of 600 workers signed the petitions, and "people are very upset" that the elections have been blocked.

"It is our right as workers to choose who we are represented by," Rollins said.

The free choice act has been labor's No. 1 legislative priority, seen as a vehicle for reversing the long slide in union membership nationwide.

Under current law, workers cannot unionize by signing petitions unless their employers agree to that method, known as "card check." The more common scenario is that unions collect the signatures of a minimum 30% of workers -- the mandatory threshold -- and demand a secret-ballot election.

The SEIU and other backers of the free choice act say employers routinely derail union campaigns by intimidating workers in the run-up to elections, or by engineering delays through the national labor board. The act would permit workers to have union representation as soon as a majority signs petitions.

The SEIU has thrown its financial and political clout behind the measure, although the bill's prospects are uncertain.

The only place SEIU has thrown EFCA is under the bus, as has been reported here earlier.

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the House's principal sponsor of the act, declined to comment on the California fight and any implications it might have for the proposal. But Miller and two other House Democrats sent a letter to the labor board calling on the agency to process the petitions and SEIU charges in a "timely manner."

That was 2-1/2 months ago. Labor board representatives say they don't know when, or if, the elections will be held, because investigators continue to sift through the claims. The board has found that existing SEIU contracts bar elections for the time being at a number of hospitals and clinics.

"This is not your normal situation we're dealing with here," said Will Baudler, an attorney for the board's Oakland region. "This is a massive amount of charges."

Almost all of which are boilerplate exact copies no matter the size of the organization at issue, and each of those charges are designed with one intent: An intent on the part of SEIU to delay its membership from expressing its desire to get out of SEIU.

He said the board is handling the case as a "top priority."

(insert eye roll here)

But the interim president of the new union, Sal Rosselli, said the board appears to be dragging its feet because of the SEIU's influence with the Obama administration. The SEIU was one of President Obama's biggest supporters during his White House run.

"The average election is scheduled in 60 days, and nothing has been scheduled here," Rosselli said, noting that many of the signed petitions were filed in February.

Baudler and another NLRB representative said they had felt no political pressure. SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette denied the union has tried to get the administration to intervene with the board.

Meanwhile, in the San Pablo election, the SEIU has alleged misconduct by the new union and the employer.

A state panel issued complaints based on the charges, and a hearing is pending. The other election beyond the labor board's purview is for a Hollister hospital and two nursing homes. The votes will be counted Thursday.

I was unsure as to when the Hawkins vote was going to occur - perhaps in all the runup to Fresno it got lost in the shuffle, which is too bad.

It should be illegal what Pringle has done to SEIU in the pages of the Times. I'm glad it's not, though...

A Beatdown So Good...

...you could cut it with a fork!

Reading Through The SEIU Spin...

"Nobody voted for NUHW! Yeah...That's the ticket!"

As we all know by now, SEIU is now bleating to all that would listen to them that the recent outcome of the representation at Doctors Hospital in San Pablo is "flawed." The infamous PerezStern has gotten a hold of an internal Zombie UHW memo which outlines the spin that SEIU is going to attempt to put on their having gotten absolutely punked by NUHW:

From: Kim Evon
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 3:54 PM
To: All Staff
Subject: Doctor's Medical Center

SUBJECT: Sent on behalf of Debbie Schneider, Deputy Trustee and Chief of Staff

We know that many of you may have already heard about the election results at Doctors Medical Center. For those of you who have not, the Public Employee Relations Board has certified that NUHW did win the vote count there. We wanted to take a moment to make sure no one loses focus on the very important facts surrounding this and other PERB elections.

Our focus on protecting the rights of homecare workers in Fresno and all SEIU UHW healthcare workers continues across the state. One tainted election that ultimately may not stand will not alter the facts: SEIU UHW is a strong union with deep resources and 150,000 members, and we have already won many prior fights to keep thousands of our members – namely at Kaiser, CHW, Alameda Hospital and elsewhere.

Make no mistake: The Doctors election was tainted. The PERB has issued three separate charges – two against management and one against NUHW – that make it clear that both the employer and NUHW acted illegally during the election. These complaints are very serious and may overturn the results of the election on appeal. The employer clearly wanted NUHW. According to PERB, management allowed NUHW organizers full access to the hospital floors while greatly restricting the access of SEIU UHW organizers. PERB also found that NUHW illegally instructed workers to hand ballots to NUHW supporters. This is a clear violation of the law and undermines the integrity of the voting process.

Contrast that with the Alameda Hospital experience. Alameda was the only other public hospital previously scheduled for a representation election. Hospital administrators stayed neutral, the members were able to build a strong internal organization, and they bargained a strong contract (You mean this contract?) – a contract finalized after NUHW was forced to withdraw their challenge because they had no support.

After we do our job, the story will be different in Fresno too. The 10,000 SEIU UHW homecare workers won’t be distracted by management collusion. In the face of California’s dire economic condition, Fresno workers know that they need:

* A powerful 150,000 member SEIU UHW
* In unison with 700,000 California SEIU members
* Supported by the 2million member strong SEIU-UHW to beat back the drastic cuts they face.

Finally, we will be protesting the tainted Doctors election. The NUHW election results may be written in sand, but they are not etched in stone.

Kim Evon
Deputy Trustee, SEIU-UHW
510-869-2227

We have to remember here that when SEIU sent out the advisory ballot back in December of 2008, the question asked was fatally flawed, asking everyone in 521, 6434 and UHW whether they wanted a) all LTC workers to be yanked out of 521 and 6434 and UHW and plunked into a new local with appointed leadership, or b) ALL healthcare workers of 521, 6434, and UHW plunked into a new statewide mega-local with appointed leadership. The results of that election were as predictable as the sunrise - not only did people overwhelmingly NOT return their ballots, SEIU received protest cards and letters from people objecting to the premise of the election at a rate six times that of all the ballots returned from SEIU. In all, less than 8% of the eligible ballots were returned, while in excess of 45% of the eligible voters indicated by protest or letter that they wished neither of the options that SEIU was offering.

In a presser, SEIU International flacks tried to characterize that vote as a "celebration of union democracy," even though only 8% of the eligible voters actually voted, but 48% objected to the premise of the question.

And so it goes with the results from yesterday. SEIU has to do something, anything to obscure the facts on the ground about what happened. What they cannot get around, though, is this one fact: When given the opportunity to make their voices heard, only 24 out of 290 eligible voters opted to continue representation by Zombie UHW.

That result above is not written in sand, it's written in purple blood.

NUHW out-hustled SEIU, they out-organized SEIU, and at the end of the day NUHW just had a better message for the workers than did SEIU. Telling everyone you can find that you are part of the biggest, most powerful union in the world is great - but when you have a proven track record of not using that power to the benefit of your dues-paying members, eventually the word is going to get out. The only place where SEIU is winning is in the governmental bureaucracy in their continued efforts to block the voices of the actual members. Folks, that's not representation - that's obstruction. And of late, obstruction is the ONLY thing that SEIU is good at.

SEIU would do well to retune its message to its membership, because they are compiling a string of losses that is going to make a lot of people wonder just how powerful the Purple Plague really is, and whether or not it's just really a great, big, Purple Paper Tiger.

The Zombie UHW Response to Defeat...

Oy, vey. They just can't take defeat gracefully, can they?

OAKLAND, Calif., May 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (SEIU UHW) is protesting the recent decision by the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) to allow the decertification election at Doctors Medical Center (DMC) in San Pablo to continue. The PERB issued its ruling in the face of clear violations of labor law by DMC management and organizers of NUHW, which is seeking to decertify SEIU UHW at the hospital.

"Management gave NUHW a free hand to organize in our hospital and to confuse our members about who their union really was," says Martha Torrentes an EVS at Doctors. "The same people who failed to help us get a new contract last year are now abusing the law to win a tainted election."

Sure, Zombies. It's okay when Kaiser and CHW and Sutter and DoC staffers block any kind of access for NUHW partisans, but when the folks at Doctors did NOT do so, that's when you cry foul?

The PERB has issued three separate charges -- two against management and one against NUHW -- that make it clear that both the employer and NUHW acted illegally during the election. These complaints are very serious and may overturn the results of the election on appeal. The employer clearly wanted NUHW. According to PERB, management allowed NUHW organizers full access to the hospital floors while greatly restricting the access of SEIU UHW organizers.

The people "restricting the access of SEIU UHW organizers" were the people that SEIU UHW were trying to organize, as can be seen below:




Still and all, it's nice to see SEIU having to now be on the ass-end of an appeals process.

"Everyone knows why management supports NUHW," says Jose Quinto, who works in the hospital's surgical operation. "They know they will be the ones who benefit when their workers are the only members of their own union and have no resources or clout."

Yo, Jose - everyone also knows why management supports NUHW- that's because their employees support NUHW as well, and since they actually want to have an environment where patient care comes first and warfare between management and labor comes last, it behooves the management folks to actually listen to what the rank-and-file are saying - which is that they want out of SEIU.

Adding to the damage, the PERB also found that NUHW illegally instructed workers to hand ballots to NUHW supporters. This is a clear violation of the law and undermines the integrity of the voting process. NUHW has a history of ethical violations: They misused members' money when they were in office; they harmed the union's ability to represent the workers once they left office; and they have now illegally interfered with an election.

The only thing that NUHW interfered with was the SEIU plan to take over the union destiny of 300 workers at Doctors Hospital, who have made it clear that they DO NOT WANT The Purple Plague to be their representative.