Kaiser Permanente and SEIU in Southern California do not see eye to eye. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2010)So. Cal. Kaiser breaks SEIU stranglehold
Kaiser Permanente employees kick out SEIU and its radical political agenda in a vote today to join a union that will just focus on employer/employee relations. Healthcare workers throughout Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to quit the giant Service Employees International Union and affiliating with the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), a breakaway faction that is challenging the SEIU’s dominance and approach.
This excerpted and edited from the LA Now -
Kaiser Permanente workers vote to split from giant Service Employees International Union
By Patrick J. McDonnell, LA Now - January 26, 2010 | 5:25 pm
The defeat is a major setback for SEIU, the largest hospital and healthcare workers union in California, with some 150,000 members. The SEIU is engaged in a fierce battle for workers’ allegiance with the emergent NUHW, headed by former SEIU leaders ousted a year ago in a bitter takeover.
The breakaway NUHW has accused the SEIU of shutting workers out of negotiations and cutting deals with management -- allegations the larger union denies.
The SEIU calls its insurgent rival irresponsible and ill-equipped to represent workers. The row has split union and Democratic Party activists statewide.
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A total of 746 nurses voted to join NUHW, according to the labor board, while 36 cast ballots to remain with SEIU. Healthcare professionals voted 189 to 29 to join NUHW, while psychiatric and social service workers favored NUHW 717 to 92, according to the labor board.
“This is the beginning of a shift in the labor movement nationwide toward more democratic, member-driven representation, not leadership from the top down,” said David Mallon, a psychiatric social worker with Kaiser in Norwalk who favored NUHW.
NUHW is now setting its sights on some 50,000 other Kaiser workers across California currently represented by SEIU. The upstart union is pushing petitions among workers throughout the state to supplant the colossal SEIU, which claims 2.2 million members in North America, almost half in the healthcare sector.
Reference Here>>
This may strike most as a vote against an autocratic, one-party rule solutions much like we have seen happen in our political culture over these last two to three months. Entrenched Governors were replaced in Virginia and New Jersey ... and just last week, Massachusetts voters booted out the decades long one-party representation by Edward Kennedy (deceased) and the Democrat Party with the stunning election of Scott Brown to the US Senate.
Pro-citizen and self-representation takeover actions are happening all over ... with major votes that are disturbing the assumed set-up of the politically radical leadership that has an effect in all walks of life!
The fight to re-establish American freedom can take on many flavors and colors.
