New Union Challenges SEIU’s Victory in Battle Over Kaiser Employees
On Thursday, the National Union of Healthcare Workers filed documents with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to overturn and redo a recent election to represent about 43,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers in California, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
Background
Last week, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West won 60% of the 30,295 mail-in ballots to continue its representation of the Kaiser workers, according to NLRB.
NUHW -- an upstart union formed by former leaders of SEIU-UHW -- won 37.5% of the vote
NUHW's Allegations
In a statement, NUHW said the documents filed with NLRB describe "a number of overt and unfair labor practices by Kaiser management against its workers."
According to NUHW, Kaiser illegally withheld more than $1 million in wages and benefits from 2,300 Southern California employees who voted to join NUHW earlier this year. The upstart union said Kaiser threatened to use similar tactics to influence the latest union vote.
NUHW also argued that Kaiser provided logistical and financial support to SEIU-UHW's campaign.
Kaiser officials could not be reached for comment, according to the Business Times.
SEIU Response
SEIU spokesperson Steve Trossman said NUHW's allegations are "baseless." He said, "When you lose by a significant margin and get repudiated by workers by a substantial margin, I can see why you'd want to save face."
SEIU also released a statement noting that more than 124,000 members of its local UHW branch recently participated in union elections and that 120,000 of such workers voted for SEIU representation (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 10/14).
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