******
IV. The National Union of Healthcare Workers Union —
Still Waging the Struggle for Democratic & Militant Trade Unionism in the USA
“Although the road, be rough and rocky,
And the hills be steep and wide,
We will sing as we go marching,
And we’ll win that one big union by and by.”
(Final Refrain from union song, “You Got to Go Down”)
Births are painful and joyous. The new democratic and rank and file-led National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) was born in 2009 in the bitter struggle against the bureaucratic, dictatorial and class collaborationist Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their takeover of the democratically run 150,000 member SEIU United Healthcare West Local Union then led by Sal Rosselli and other progressive leaders. NUHW entered 2011 smaller than had been envisioned, but standing and viable.
This is an important accomplishment for as we pointed out last year, “The NUHW faces tremendous obstacles on the path to democratic and militant rank and file unionism. These obstacles take the form, in particular, of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union in the USA today, its bureaucratic leadership under the baton of Andy Stern and the SEIU’s powerful corporate and national Democratic Party connections.” (“A Crusade to ‘Organize the Unorganized’ is on the Order of the Day in the USA! California Healthcare Workers and Appalachian Coal Miners Are Key,” Ray O’ Light Newsletter #60, May-June 2010)
The NUHW now has over 8,000 members (the vast majority comprising workers formerly in the SEIU) and represents over 15 bargaining units. In numerous elections the workers voted overwhelmingly for a union they could be proud to call their own. With a few more significant elections scheduled soon, the NUHW is currently consolidating, with a focus on obtaining strong union contracts in the existing bargaining units, as a basis for expanding in the near future on a strong foundation.
The Kaiser “Services and Technical” Campaign
Most instructive regarding the obstacles faced by the fledgling NUHW was the union election of the “Services and Technical” California-wide unit of 44,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente, the behemoth of the medical-industrial complex. (This Services and Technical unit is separate from the Kaiser “Professional” units in southern and northern California) It is the single largest bargaining unit in the hospital industry.
In October 2010, NUHW lost this critical election, 18,290 votes for the SEIU to 11,364 votes for the NUHW. The results of this election are still rightfully being contested by the NUHW due to widespread labor law violations on the part of the company and the SEIU. What happened?
First, and foremost, SEIU succeeded in using their political power to gain a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) delay in the election for almost 18 months from when the workers first filed petitions to join the NUHW. Had a timely election been held, it would have been a resounding victory for NUHW. The more time that passed, the more workers began to believe they would have “to learn to live with” the SEIU. Furthermore, during those 18 months, the SEIU controlled the stewards’ system and harassed NUHW activists, many of the best fighters against the bosses over the years, thus intimidating the entire workforce. During this extensive delay the SEIU ran a non-stop disinformation campaign against the NUHW.
Second, the Kaiser Permanente corporation (illegally) backed the SEIU. For example, NUHW organizers were denied access to hospitals while outside SEIU staffers were allowed access to off-limit areas of the workplaces and SEIU representatives were paid by the company to campaign against NUHW.
Third, the SEIU had far greater resources in terms of money and people. Even with outstanding and principled support from UNITE-HERE and its President John Wilhelm, NUHW was vastly out-resourced across the board – on organizers, on mailings, on phone calls, on house visits.
Fourth, the SEIU maneuvered for an early settlement of a new union contract with Kaiser, so it would be ratified and in place prior to the election. (The contract was ratified with concessions on healthcare and other issues.) SEIU then used fear tactics (“workers will lose what they have”) and futility (“these are tough economic times so we can’t do any better”) to disorient the Kaiser workers. These are tactics similar to the union busting efforts of many corporations, but how much more effective for the corporation when coming from the union!
Fifth, a Labor-Management Partnership (LMP) between Kaiser and the SEIU was established in the mid-1990’s while the Local SEIU was still led by Sal Rosselli and others who became the core leadership of NUHW. Whether it was initially correct to establish the “partnership” is open for debate, but it was a tactical error to leave this partnership agreement in place for an extended period of time. The LMP helped disarm and disorient the workers by creating illusions about how much corporate cooperation was possible, blurring the lines between the working class and the capitalists. It diluted unity, struggle and direct action of the workers in relation to the boss and fed right into the “strength” of the class collaborationist practices and culture of the SEIU.
Sixth, given their limited resources, NUHW did not concentrate early enough on the Kaiser campaign. While Kaiser workers were left in the grasp of the SEIU for well over a year, the NUHW was making serious organizing efforts among other hospital and home care workers. The resources of NUHW may have been better spent focused on building the base in the large Kaiser unit, especially once resounding NUHW victories with the Southern California Professional Kaiser workers were achieved over SEIU in January 2010, victories which had great potential for igniting the struggle of all Kaiser workers to “take their union back.”
The 2% Struggle: Collaboration of Kaiser, SEIU and the Government
In January 2010, 2300 Kaiser workers in three Southern California “Professional” units voted overwhelmingly for the NUHW. (For example the Los Angeles nurses voted 746 for the NUHW vs 36 for the SEIU!) These stunning NUHW victories sent shock waves through Kaiser management and the SEIU bureaucrats. Their joint goal became how to hold the huge 44,000 worker “Services and Technical” unit for the SEIU, the union of class collaboration. (The SEIU had already proven its worth to Kaiser with mid-contract concessions on retirement benefits, staffing, job classifications and lay-off protections.) Their main weapon was the “2% plan.”
All Kaiser workers (including the three “Professional” units in Southern California which had already voted to move to the NUHW) were due a 2% raise in the Spring of 2010, either under existing Collective Bargaining Agreements or due to the legal mandate to maintain the “status quo” regarding wages and benefits while negotiating a new union contract. Kaiser refused to implement the raise (and also withheld a tuition reimbursement benefit) for the three Southern California “Professional” NUHW units. At the same time, Kaiser implemented the 2% raise for everyone else including the 44,000 “Services and Technical” workers. This was a clear violation of the law. But Kaiser’s (illegal) message to the workers was clear: change to the NUHW and you will lose!
Behind the bosses’ violations came the coordinated propaganda campaign of the SEIU. Flyer after flyer, phone call after phone call, parroted the company line: “If you vote for the NUHW, you will lose!”
Now enter the government and its National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under a Democratic Party administration. Charges were filed by the NUHW based on Kaiser’s blatant violation of the law. The NLRB took no action for over six months. Only after the 44,000 Kaiser workers had already voted in the election did the NLRB declare that Kaiser did owe the 2% raise (as well as the other withheld benefits) to the Southern California professionals!
This collaboration between Kaiser, the SEIU and the monopoly capitalist state apparatus overwhelmed the workers and the NUHW.
A “Knock-Out” Blow or Does the Struggle Continue?
One might have thought NUHW’s loss among the 44,000 “Services and Technical” Kaiser workers would have been a “knock-out” blow. But just one month after the defeat, two Northern California Kaiser Professional units of nearly 1500 mental health professionals and optical workers voted to leave SEIU and join NUHW! This victory breathed new life into the NUHW and bodes well for its future potential.
Since that time, the dedicated workers and core of leaders and organizers of the NUHW are waging determined struggles to win good union contracts, without the SEIU concessions given to the various healthcare corporations. At Salinas Valley Memorial and USC hospitals, informational pickets have been held demanding quality patient care, safe staffing levels and good faith bargaining in negotiations with the union. Similar protests have been waged at nursing homes and retirement centers. At the Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center, NUHW nurses have had two single day strikes demanding Kaiser negotiate a fair contract that includes enforcement mechanisms for needed staffing levels. Kaiser has now been forced by the NUHW to pay the 2% withheld raises and other benefits to the southern California “Professional” workers, not only enforcing these workers’ rights but exposing the “big lie” of Kaiser and the SEIU that workers will lose wages and benefits if they vote to join the NUHW. At Doctors Hospital, the 300 caregivers who represented the very first group of workers to leave the SEIU for the NUHW, finally succeeded in wading through SEIU’s delay tactics of frivolous appeals. They have received union recognition and have begun collective bargaining of a union contract.
The NUHW has united with the workers and community groups to fight against the large Sutter Hospital corporation’s plans to build a “high end” hospital and close down some Sutter owned CPMC community located hospitals that serve a high percentage of low-income patients. (SEIU, currently the bargaining representative at CPMC, endorsed the company’s plans.) With high hopes of reclaiming their union, the 900 caregivers at CPMC will be voting in their union election in early May. This vote is coming on the heels of two recent lopsided victories at the Cottonwood and Woodland nursing homes, where workers left the SEIU and joined NUHW by over a 10-1 margin. And all the way from the state of Michigan, workers at two nursing homes currently represented by the SEIU have petitioned to join the NUHW. (While it shows the country-wide potential of NUHW, the currently California-based NUHW should be careful to avoid overextending its still fragile infrastructure.)
So the struggle for democratic, militant, rank and file based trade unionism continues. Whatever the “rough and rocky road,” whatever the NUHW’s current limitations, the success of the National Union of Healthcare Workers is vital to rebuilding the U.S. labor movement.
******
As a result of years of corporate attacks on organized labor, and the refusal of the corrupt labor leadership, with its deadly embrace of the Democratic party, to organize the vast mass of unorganized workers and to empower workers in militant fight-backs, the union movement is in sharp decline. And it is under sharp attack as the Wisconsin crisis has demonstrated.
From a unionization rate of some 35% of the U.S. workforce in the early 1950’s, the percent of wage and salary workers in the U.S. in labor unions has declined to 11.9% in 2010. In the private sector the unionization rate fell to 6.9% from 7.2% just a year earlier. This represented a one year decline of 612,000 union members with just 14.7 million workers currently in unions.
In defense of its basic economic and political interests in the battle against capital, the U.S. working class needs to rebuild the union movement on new foundations along the “old” principles of the CIO – organize the unorganized, militant struggle against the bosses, democratic worker-controlled unions and “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
As we observed in 2009: “... for the entire U.S. labor movement, saddled with a leadership corrupted and ossified by sixty years of collaboration with the bulwark of world capitalism, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class of the hegemonic imperialist power, ... [NUHW] helps raise up the banner of union democracy and militant struggle against capital. In this time of capitalist economic crisis, in the absence of militant class struggle by the working class in its own defense, the current epidemic of unemployment can only lead to drastic reduction of wages and intensification of exploitation for those ‘fortunate’ to still have a job. NUHW success, based on militant and democratic union principles, points the way forward; it helps to illuminate the working class path of escape from the stranglehold of U.S. finance capital and its government.” (“The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) – A New Union for Workers in Hard Times,” Ray O’ Light Newsletter #55, July-August 2009)
V. Oppose U.S. Imperialist Attacks – in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and the USA!*
*NOTE: [Our Leaflet Distributed at Anti-War Demonstrations in New York and San Francisco on April 9th and April 10th, 2011]
Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA – April 9/10, 2011
The Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA joins together with anti-war demonstrators in New York City April 9 and San Francisco April 10 in response to and in support of the United National Antiwar Committee’s (UNAC) call to March and Rally against the U.S. imperialist war on working and oppressed peoples at home and abroad. We officially endorsed the UNAC call.
We also support the March 1st “UNAC Statement on U.S. Non-Intervention in Libya and Other Countries,” including the following: “We recognize that the U.S. has been directly involved in supplying weapons and other forms of support to regimes that have committed atrocious human rights abuses against civilians. ...We have seen the horrific consequences of U.S./U.N. operation of ‘no-fly zones’ over northern and southern Iraq, prior to the U.S. Shock and Awe attacks and invasion. We therefore oppose any form of U.S. military or economic intervention in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and other countries where movements are rising in opposition to dictatorships and military rule.”
The following are excerpts from the March-April Ray O’ Light Newsletter (written prior to the actual U.S./NATO military attack on Libya) regarding the mounting U.S. imperialist-led military campaign against Libya and the situation in Arabia:
“For revolutionaries, freedom fighters and justice loving people all over the world, the popular struggles being waged by the Arab masses against their autocratic rulers ... beginning in Tunisia and rapidly breaking out and spreading throughout the entire Middle East, have been a tremendous source of inspiration. Quite dramatic has been the popular uprising and workers’ strike wave, spreading across to the European side of the Mediterranean – to Italy, Greece, Albania, shaking these reactionary regimes, and even spreading across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the USA, where U.S. workers have consciously taken a more militant stance against the reactionary state governments of Wisconsin, Indiana and other states in the Midwest.”
“The U.S. imperialist government is responsible for virtually all of the secular military dictatorships and Muslim monarchies in the Middle East that have kept their people repressed with the most barbaric police state methods and are currently in danger of being overthrown by the aroused Arab masses. The U.S. imperialist-led invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in over one million civilian deaths. Yet this same shameless U.S. imperialist state apparatus now claims to be ‘concerned’ about the killings of people in Libya by the Gadhafi government only. And the Libyan military situation is marked by the fact that a number of military units have joined the Libyan rebels and that the rebels are using powerful modern weapons of war against the Gadhafi regime in what has become a civil war based on tribal loyalties and U.S. imperialist machinations.
“And now, a Democratic U.S. president, elected in no small measure on the basis of his opposition to the U.S. military attack on Iraq (as an Illinois state senator in 2003) is threatening to invade Libya, after ordering the head of the Libyan government to leave the country and confiscating (stealing) Libyan national assets.
“In almost a carbon copy of the actions of the brutal and arrogant George W. Bush toward Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, U.S. President Obama is busy trying to dictate the conditions under which the Arab people will live.
“U.S. imperialism has taken these drastic actions on the basis of the flimsiest of pretexts. It is using media ‘reports’ from Libya, Egypt and elsewhere packaged by the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), established in 1981 and trained and financed by the U.S. CIA ever since. The NFSL and other such organizations are being used to ‘document’ that the Gadhafi government is killing Libyan protesters, allegedly in greater numbers than the U.S. client governments all over the rest of the Middle East are doing.
******
“Why is the Obama Regime mobilizing and organizing for an unprovoked attack on Libya, for an expansion of its imperialist war in the Middle East?! In brief, the once unchallenged hegemonic imperialist power is now the biggest debtor country in the world. Its economic clout has been diminished at a rapid rate under the impetus of the U.S. economy-initiated world capitalist economic crisis of the past several years. So it has to keep China and its other creditors at bay. For now it still has the most powerful military machine on earth, with more annual military spending than the rest of the world combined, as well as its long standing global diplomatic, political and intelligence operations.
“And it continues to control the vast majority of the world oil supply and reserves, still the very lifeblood of the global capitalist economy. But the Arab masses are threatening to liberate their countries and seize control of the oil in their own national territory. This in turn would render U.S. imperialism a second or third rate power. Thus the need for U.S. imperialism to establish a military beachhead in Libya and a smokescreen behind which to increase its military protection for U.S. possession of the Middle East’s vast oil wealth....
“As Comrade Fidel Castro asserts: ‘The fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.’”
******
Let’s work together to:
Stop the Wall Street Republicrat Attack on Unions! –
Money for Jobs and Education Not War!
Support the Resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan!
U.S. Imperialism – Hands Off Libya!
No More Blood for Oil!
Victory to the Arab Revolution!
Shut Down All Nuclear Power
The ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan is not the product of a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
Nuclear power is promoted by the industry as a great source of “clean and safe energy.” The Obama administration has now embraced it with enthusiasm. New nuclear power plants are on the drawing board in the United States for the first time since the Three Mile Island major nuclear accident in Pennsylvania decades ago.
Nuclear energy, whether run by private or public utilities in a world dominated by global capitalism, is dirty and dangerous from start to finish. There is no safe way to deal with the millions of tons of highly dangerous radioactive left-over waste. Major accidents, such as at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima, have been catastrophic. Their deadly consequences include increased cancer and other human health problems and environmental destruction to the air, soil, water, plant and animal life.
The nuclear power plant complex in Japan was manufactured by none other than General Electric, the largest U.S. company, and a major producer of nuclear power reactors.* It was built on an earthquake fault, had many safety problems covered up over the years, and faced lax government enforcement, featuring a cozy relationship between Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) corporate management and the Japanese government nuclear regulatory agencies.
*NOTE: [See earlier article in this Newsletter on GE Profits.]
When the massive earthquake and Tsunami hit with its terrible death and destruction, the nuclear power plant was severely damaged. The Wall Street Journal admitted, “Crucial efforts to tame Japan’s crippled plant were delayed by concerns over damaging valuable power assets and by initial passivity on the part of the government. ... Tepco was reluctant to use seawater because it worried about hurting its long term investment in the complex ... Seawater, which can render a nuclear reactor permanently inoperable, now is at the center of efforts to keep the plant under control.” (“Bid to ‘Protect Assets’ Slowed Reactor Fight,” Wall Street Journal, 3/19/11)* In other words, instead of immediately shutting down the plant and pouring in salt water to avoid a meltdown of the reactors, the owners chose to protect their private assets, their profits.
*NOTE: [This subordination of the Japanese government to its corporate masters is reminiscent of the subordination of the U.S. government to British Petroleum in the midst of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year. At that time, the Obama regime left BP in charge of the stopping of the oil spill, establishing the extent of the spill and leading the effort to clean it up.]
What followed were explosions, meltdown of reactors and the massive release of radioactive poisons. Hundreds of square miles have become uninhabitable, food from the land and sea uneatable, water, the sustenance of life, toxic. The people of Japan and around the globe have been systematically lied to about the extent of the damage to the nuclear plant and of radiation poisoning. Nuclear accidents know no borders. Chernobyl (built and run long after socialism had been overthrown in the former Soviet Union) poisoned large parts of Europe. Radiation increases from the current nuclear accident in Japan have found their way into milk and water in the United States, on the other side of the world. Damage to human health is long term.
The United States produces more nuclear power than any other country. The USA is responsible for some 30% of all nuclear power in the world with 104 reactors in service at 64 sites. A number of them sit on major earthquake faults. Some are close to major metropolitan areas with millions of inhabitants. (For example, the Indian Point Nuclear power plant is 38 miles from New York City and according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the highest risk of earthquake damage of any nuclear power plant in the country!) Many have had unreported serious accidents over the years. Worldwide there are 442 nuclear plants, with 65 new reactors under construction and 344 more in the planning stages. All are catastrophic accidents waiting to happen.
Let’s shut them all down! Let’s protect life and protect the environment. Let’s fight for clean and renewable energy. Most importantly, let’s fight for workers’ power and socialism, the only system that can and will put people before profit!
– Mike S., Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
******
“For the proletariat needs the truth
and there is nothing so harmful to
its cause as plausible, respectable
petty-bourgeois lies.”
—V.I. Lenin,
Selected Works, Vol. X, p. 41
* * * * *
Additional materials are available from the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA (formerly the Ray O. Light Group) at the address below — including Newsletters, pamphlets, bulk materials, a publication list and books. These include materials exposing the global capitalist economic crisis, rallying the world’s workers and oppressed to resist monopoly capitalist and imperialist exploitation and oppression, and opposing the U.S. imperialist-led war of terror on the world’s peoples. Please direct requests for such materials, as well as all correspondence, comments, etc. to:
Boxholder
607 Boylston St.
Lower Level Box 464
Boston, MA 02116
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