Echos of Fresno

In an article published today in the Wall Street Journal, we get a taste of what a whistleblower is alleging in filings placed before the California Public Employee Relations Board (CalPERB), and our Purple Pals do not come out of this looking or smelling good...

The NUHW immediately called for a re-run of the election, challenging voting irregularities. The two unions have traded accusations since. But now, Carlos Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador who was on the SEIU's staff during the campaign, has come forward—so he says—to blow the whistle on his employer. Mr. Martinez went door-to-door canvassing the home-care workers during the 15-day election. Like him, many of them are native Spanish speakers; some are illiterate.

Speaking in an interview over a sandwich at a hotel in the Bay Area late last month, Mr. Martinez says he was instructed by superiors to tell the workers that if they voted against the SEIU, they could lose their medical benefits, see their green cards or citizenship revoked and possibly be deported. He says he and other staffers were also told to pressure voters to spoil ballots that had been filled out for the NUHW. In other instances he filled ballots out for them. He says he even took some to the post office, as did other SEIU campaign workers.

All of these actions, if true, are a violation of state or federal laws governing union elections. In all, he adds, he visited 550 homes. "We scared people. We took the secret ballot away from these people," he says. "It was wrong."

Mr. Martinez says he raised his concerns directly with Mr. Regan and other superiors. He also says he tried to submit a complaint with two state agencies but was ignored. He then repeated these charges under oath before an NUHW lawyer. Six other Fresno workers confirmed parts of his account in affidavits. For example, Adriana Gomez, a home-care worker, said that Mr. Martinez "took my ballot and made a mark for the SEIU team."

The NUHW last week filed a complaint with the Public Employment Relations Board, which has oversight over the workers in Fresno. The filing has been shared with the SEIU, but not released publicly. Describing himself as a medical case manager who is now in graduate school, Mr. Martinez, who says he fears for his safety, says he has gotten no money or other benefits from the NUHW.

I had been wondering why Brave Sir Regan has been so quiet of late. It's his mug that has been pasted all over the Fresno IHSS election fight, and if this turns out as stated in this article, then it is going to be Brave Sir Regan who will have to answer for this.

In any event, one has to wonder why SEIU always feels it necessary to lie, to cheat, to steal, to threaten, and to be otherwise generally unpleasant. They keep showing themselves as an organization that no one in their right mind would want to be part of.

And So It Begins...

Courtesy of Red Revolt, here's the latest "offering" that all of us in Hotel California are being required to pay for.

I am quite amused by the claims of a "proven track record." The only track record that Zombie UHW has proven is one of failure, as can be seen at Alameda Hospital, as well as multiple examples being seen from KaiPerm.

There are also multiple examples which can be seen from the NUHW website, such as this flyer detailing Zombie UHW's acceptance of LESS than what management was on record as offering one short year ago, or this example of two hospitals under the same ownership down in the LA area, and what the (now) NUHW leadership was able to achieve, versus what the Zombie UHW and SEIU team were able to "achieve."

The difference is clear. The only choice Zombie UHW has now is to claim the "track record" - but in doing so, they are trying to claim for themselves the successes won by the NUHW leadership.

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.

Report on the November 7th Panel Discussion...

Videos and stills along with an excellent synopsis provided by Michael Apiricio of Empire Report.

Go forth and check it out...

SEIU 1000 Keeps The Pimp Hand Strong...

Those lovable scamps at SEIU 1000 decided to have themselves a meeting the other night. This gentleman, by the name of Ken Hamidi, decided to go, as was his right as a CA state employee.

And here's what he got for his trouble...



This particular incident had news reports done on it from the CBS affiliate for MetroSac, KOVR, as well as from the NBC affiliate, KCRA. Video reports can be seen at both links.

Now, it's not like this guy just walked in off the street and got pounded for his trouble. This individual has a long history of not seeing eye-to-eye with SEIU activities, as can be seen below...




Now I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent reason as to why this individual went to this open meeting - as is his right - and ended up going to the ED after getting tuned up by members of the Purple Plague.

Right?

Bueller???

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Priest

Last week, Msgr. John Brenkle of the Saint Helena Catholic Church penned an op-ed which ran in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, explaining how he was disappointed in Zombie UHW in general - and Brave Sir Regan and Esquirol Medina in particular, over their continued obstruction and interference in the SRMH unionization fight...

On April 13, a majority of Memorial workers filed a petition with the board seeking union representation with the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Both the union and St. Joseph management have expressed willingness to sit down and negotiate ground rules leading to a fair election agreement.

Yet what should be a time of reconciliation is instead a time of disheartenment, as workers must continue to wait for their day to vote. Sadly, the delay now comes not from management, but by another labor union – the Service Employees International Union – bent on stalling and suppressing workers’ voice. SEIU has been misusing labor law as a means for delaying an election as long as possible and refusing to come to the negotiating table with the other parties.

I am not prepared to take sides in the broader conflict between the unions. I am sure that both parties have made mistakes in their dealings with one another. But as I have written before, the decision about unionization should be in the hands of workers alone. At Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, workers have clearly chosen to cast their lot with the NUHW. SEIU’s continued delay of the workers’ election, and its refusal to agree to ground rules for the election at Memorial, flies in the face of Catholic social teaching and contradicts SEIU’s own national advocacy for exactly the types of agreement it is now trying to thwart.

For the past several years, SEIU has been involved in a national discussion with Catholic hospital systems, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on organizing in Catholic hospitals. The result, “Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Healthcare and Unions,” was released earlier this year and lays out a “fair and just organizing model” much like the model the Santa Rosa Diocese endorsed in March 2007. But SEIU refuses to adhere to this model here in Santa Rosa.

For those of us in the faith community who have dedicated our efforts to establishing a new model of union elections that truly protect and respect workers’ rights, this is most discouraging. SEIU’s actions undermine the work of labor, Catholic health care employers, clergy and workers who have endeavored for years to achieve ground rules at St. Joseph and other faith-based health systems. This why I have been joined by many members of the faith community in signing a letter to SEIU Vice President Eliseo Medina calling on him to reconsider the union’s position against fair election ground rules.

Labor unions, like all human enterprises, are imperfect institutions. But this should not distract from the principles of dignity, justice and voice for which they stand. I remain firmly committed to seeing workers at Memorial Hospital have the opportunity to vote on whether they wish to unionize. After five years of organizing, it is high time workers get that chance. SEIU should end its puzzling anti-union campaign of delays and enter into discussions with NUHW and St. Joseph to set ground rules for the union election at Memorial based on the principles we have all worked so hard to achieve.

True to form, Esquirol Medina wrote a letter back to Msgr. Brenkle, with copies to all the other members of the community of faith which had sent a letter to SEIU asking them to withdraw themselves from the SRMH election. And also true to form, Esquirol Medina continued the Zombie UHW position that only Their Way was The One True Path...



We'll transcribe, and then provide commentary, but this one's a beaut...

I want to thank you for your letter of October 23, 2009, and for your longstanding support for the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital workers in their efforts to achieve a fair union election.

All of us at SEIU are as disappointed as you are by the tragic turn of events that now threatens the hospital workers' opportunity to form a union with SEIU-UHW and joint with 150,000 other healthcare workers in California and more than a million nationwide.

The only tragedy for you, Esquirol Medina, is that a clear majority of the workers at SRMH told you and your cloven-hooved minions to go pound sand.

We cannot in good conscience take any action that would suggest that "NUHW" is a legitimate alternative to the union that for nearly a century has been representing and raising standards for healthcare workers. As you know, the effectiveness of a union comes from the strength and unity of its members - not the words or actions of any individual union officials or staff. We are deeply troubled by the prospect of Santa Rosa hospital workers making a choice based on the promises of individuals with whom they are familiar - without considering that NUHW has no real membership base and its future viability as an organization is questionable at best.

I know not where to start with the above paragraph, except to state that it is absolutely stunning in both its arrogance and in its absolute rejection of reality. First off, it is the PEOPLE of NUHW who have been representing and raising standards, not the people of SEIU. The effectiveness of the union comes from the PEOPLE, and not from the Stern-appointed lackeys who get parachuted in from Dupont Circle every time Our Glorious Maximum Leader needs additional dues money to replenish his scarf collection. The workers at Santa Rosa are making a clear-headed and foresighted decision - and according to Esquirol Medina, this must not stand.

We believe the hospital workers' best interests would have been served had they been able to choose whether to unite with SEIU-UHW through a bilateral agreement with the employer based on the principles issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in June. Those principles, which are the result of a decade-long dialogue between labor, Catholic health systems, and Bishops, were intended to ensure that workers can make a decision without undue influence from either management or union officials. They explicitly were not designed to covern a contest between unions. An attempt to apply the principles to the current situation at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital would jeapordize their integrity and credibility and make it far less likely that they will be honored by other faith-based health systems.

Translation: Come back to Our Way of Thinking, or you'll see trouble elsewhere.

Once again we see the breathtaking arrogance of SEIU on display (speaking in such a lordly manner of the "best interests" of the hospital workers after having abandoned them), but Medina also, in this paragraph, admits that NUHW is, indeed, a rival union, even though he claimed that was not the case in the prior paragraph. Pick one and go with it, Esquirol...

In our view, the only solution would be for "NUHW" to step aside and allow the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital workers to make a free choice about forming a union with SEIU-UHW.

Oh. My. Freekin'. Gawd. I realize this guy knows he's going to get beat, but does he really think that NUHW is going to step aside after having achieved absolute majority on the signup petition? I know the Purple Kool-Aid is strong, but somebody needs to cut this guy off before he goes and writes another letter.

Although we may not see eye to eye, we hope you recognize that we are trying to do what's right - not only for the Santa Rosa workers but for all of the healthcare workers in California and throughout the nation who have built a strong union and who need to stay united and strong so they can keep making forward progress instead of going backwards.

If you would like to discuss these concerns further, please don't hesitate to let me know.

The last line of togetherness and commonality of purpose before...

cc: Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
Bishop William F. Murphy
Bishop Daniel Walsh

For those who are wondering, Cardinal Thodore McCarrick is the bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and arguably the second most powerful man in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Bishop William F. Murphy is the Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Maryland, and works for Cardinal McCarrick. Bishop Daniel Walsh is the current Bishop of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, California, and his prelate oversees the Saint Helena Catholic Church parish.

So it seems that Esquirol Medina has decided to report the Good Monsignor to his bosses for the mere fact of publishing an op-ed in a newspaper that runs counter to Esquirol Medina's dream of power.

Can't you just feel the union togetherness coming from Zombie UHW?

SRMH: Three Letters, No Doubt...

Last month, Randy Shaw wrote a column describing SEIU's attitude toward ground rules for the upcoming representation election at Santa Rosa Memorial. In that article was this paragraph:

As I have previously described, SEIU believes it has a moral right to defeat NUHW at any cost, even if, as in Santa Rosa, it means denying workers the right to union representation. SEIU-UHW trustee Eliseo Medina stated in a September 25 letter to St. Joseph’s and NUHW obtained by Beyond Chron that NUHW’s claim to be a labor organization was “wishful thinking,” and that “it does not serve the interests of the workers” to have any involvement with NUHW.

I had been hunting high and low for that particular letter on the 'tubes, and true to form that North Bay Badass, Red Revolt's Keyser Soze, has come up with the goods.

First, let's look at the initial offering from NUHW:



Very measured and neutral, yes?

Now, let's take a peek at SRMH's offering:



SRMH is "open and willing to meet with both unions and discuss mutually agreeable ground rules..."

Of course, that requires mutual agreement - and that takes us to what Esquirol Medina has to say about things:



Nice work there, Esquirol Medina. I especially enjoyed this paragraph:



We'll see how you feel about that "third party" after it kicks your sorry ass to the curb in December.

Hurry Up And Wait

Much is being said about the NLRB's decision rendered today to schedule an election for the representation petition at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, to be conducted on December 17th.

While I am happy for the workers that they are going to (finally) be able to render their choice as to who will collectively represent them before management, one question needs to be asked:

Six weeks?

No, let me rephrase...

SIX M-F'ING WEEKS?!?!?!?

Make no mistake - six weeks could seem like an eternity for the SRMH workers who have fought so valiantly since March to get themselves to the point that they can actually choose to engage themselves with a union of their choosing. These next six weeks are going to suck for some people, because Zombie UHW is going to try to (quite possibly literally) beat people senseless with its noise machine. Some examples of the SEIU noise machine can be seen over at Keyser's place.

This is an election that could, and should, take place within the next two weeks. That the NLRB decided to give Zombie UHW another extra month beyond that to try to coerce, intimidate, misinform, and otherwise BS people into voting their way just shows how far into SEIU's corner the NLRB is.

I take pleasure in the fact that an election is now finally going to occur. I just regret that it is being delayed for no good reason other than to give the Zombies additional time to muddy the waters.

To my brothers and sisters at SRMH: Stay strong, stay united, stay focused. This is the big one. This is going to be the first major hospital-wide contest between NUHW and Zombie UHW, so make this one count.

And let me know if y'all need any earplugs or sunglasses to divert from the Zombie noise machine.

Happy Halloween From Zombie UHW...

See you in November...

Sonoma IHSS Retrospective

Seven minutes of must-see TV...

Pharmacy Agreement Going Down To Defeat?

That seems to be the word from NUHW headquarters, as enumerated in the following flyer that's going around to the KaiPerm offices throughout KPNC (click to enlarge)...



The fact that SEIU refused to openly count the ballots (in contravention to long-standing UHW tradition) is an indication that either a) the result was pre-ordained, or b) they don't trust their best-and-brightest stewards to get the "correct" result.

Either way, this was Zombie UHW's first real test within KaiPerm, and it appears that they are flunking that test. This one should have been a slam-dunk. The Zombies have been putting out press releases far and wide about how they have "saved 150 pharmacy jobs," but they forgot that one little part about how their agreement had to be actually ratified by the a bunch of workers whom were getting their hours cut conceivably by 40% in order to "save" those jobs.

Just another day at Zombie UHW HQ...

If At First You Don't Succeed...

...prevent the other guy from success by any means fair or foul.

EVS workers at Providence Tarzana are voting right now to join NUHW—but SEIU is having the ballots locked in a safe immediately after the election, to hide the result from workers and the public until the labor board sifts through a new string of frivolous charges. This will delay workers from negotiating with their employer for affordable health insurance and wages that can support their families.

Ya want more detail? Here it is...

EIU has been denying EVS workers at Providence Tarzana the right to form a union for years.

• First, SEIU signed a secret deal with their employer and agreed not to let the workers join any SEIU local.
• When a majority of the workers filed petitions in February to join NUHW, SEIU delayed their election with a frivolous charge at the NLRB. That blocking charge was rejected.
• On Oct. 13, just one day before the election, SEIU filed more baseless charges and asked the NLRB to cancel the election. That request was also rejected.

Now, SEIU has gotten the NLRB to agree to lock the ballots in a safe immediately after the election, so no one will know the results until after the labor board considers SEIU’s charges. This will further delay these 54 workers from negotiating for more affordable healthcare and wages that support their families.

This is probably the same tactic that SEIU is going to use at SRMH - to delay and obfuscate until such time as people are so frustrated that things will return to the status quo.

According to the Zombie mouthpieces, this is called "representation."

Let's see what some of those who are actually involved in this fight have to say:

Environmental services workers at Providence Tarzana Medical Center are voting today in a government-supervised election to form their first union, despite a last-minute effort by SEIU to stop them. SEIU's latest request to block the election was rejected by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) yesterday, but ballots will be held and not be counted until the board resolves a string of frivolous "blocking charges" that SEIU filed to delay the vote.

The 54 workers are employees of Crothall, a subcontractor at the hospital. A majority intend to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), an independent union founded by SEIU reformers that sparked a mass exodus from the troubled union.

"All we want is a voice to stand up for wages and healthcare to support our families," said Sandra Quintanilla, one of the workers. "But SEIU would rather leave us with no union at all than let us join NUHW. They want to destroy NUHW at all costs because they know as long as healthcare workers have a choice, we'll choose NUHW."

In the last three weeks, workers at Los Alamitos Medical Center and The Sequoias-Portola Valley assisted living facility also voted to join NUHW. SEIU was forced to withdraw from the election early at Los Alamitos, and at the Sequoias they failed to even qualify for the ballot.

SEIU has filed "blocking charges" with the NLRB to delay hundreds of elections by SEIU members who want to join NUHW. One of SEIU's charges has been blocking Crothall workers' election at Providence Tarzana since February, when a majority of the non-union workers filed petitions to join NUHW.

When the labor board rejected SEIU's charge last month and scheduled the election, SEIU put their "Service Workers United" (SWU) affiliate on the ballot and tried to compete. Despite sending a dozen SEIU staff to workers' homes and into the hospital to campaign for SWU, they were unable to win majority support and tried to have the election cancelled to avoid another defeat.

Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed "Service Workers United" as a project to increase SEIU's membership by making secret deals with the nation's largest employers to enroll low-wage workers into the union. The employers help SEIU sign workers up for relatively high union dues, and in return SEIU agrees to secret concessions that are not disclosed to members. The very existence of the deals is kept secret from workers. (Wall Street Journal: http://bit.ly/wsj-swu)

SWU has just such a secret agreement with Crothall's parent company, the Compass Group. Ironically, one of the frivolous charges SEIU has used to obstruct the ballot count alleges that workers' chosen union was "assisted by the employer."

Gee whiz. Keeping ballot results secret. Secret backroom deals with management. Accusing other labor organizations of being assisted by the employer when you are already working hand-in-glove with the employers yourselves.

Sounds like just another day at the office for the Purple Plague.