On January 28, a group of California healthcare workers announced a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, after their 150,000-member local, United Healthcare Workers (UHW) West, was undemocratically taken into “trusteeship” by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern.

Members of the new union declared: “We are tired of SEIU’s hostile tactics, threatening phone calls, their collusions with employers, and the corruption of Andy Stern’s appointees.  We don’t trust them with our contracts and we don’t trust them with our dues, so we’re building something positive – a union that respects workers, one that will continue to fight for our high standards for healthcare workers and patients and one in which we have a real voice.”

Stern was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland rubbing shoulders with the capitalist elite when his hand-picked lieutenants seized UHW West’s offices.

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Ray Marshall was hired by SEIU to “investigate” alleged financial wrongdoing by UHW West to justify the trusteeship. Marshall’s report found the alleged financial transgressions “were merely symptoms of the basic underlying cause of the conflict between UHW and the International Union.”

The “underlying cause of the conflict” was UHW’s tradition of militant tactics, democratic decision-making, and member involvement versus Stern’s deals with employers and politicians over the heads of the membership. In January 2007, UHW’s President Sal Rosselli disagreed when Stern tried to sell UHW’s contractual rights at a nursing home chain’s California facilities in return for getting its Florida employees into SEIU under substandard terms and conditions. 

Rosselli was attacked by Stern appointees for “selfishly” holding onto the gains won by his members instead of thinking of the “greater good” – meaning increased membership rolls, but under depreciated terms of employment!

As explained in Justice #60 (6/08), Rosselli quit the SEIU’s International Executive Board to publicly challenge Stern’s methods. This trusteeship was widely predicted as Stern’s payback for that challenge.

In January, despite petitions and the mobilization of thousands of UHW members, SEIU’s International Executive Board ordered UHW to surrender 65,000 of its nursing home workers to SEIU Local 6434. Tyrone Freeman, the Stern-appointed president of Local 6434, is currently under criminal investigation for embezzling up to $1 million in union funds.

Even during the investigation, Freeman continues to get his $213,000 salary, as do his associate Rickman Jackson, who helped organize the thuggish SEIU attack on Labor Notes’ conference last year, and SEIU Executive Board member Annelle Grajeda, appointed by Stern to replace Rosselli as head of SEIU’s California State Council. Both are under investigation for double- or triple-dipping union salaries.

The labor laws were written by the ruling class to allow “labor statesmen” like Andy Stern to trump union members’ democratic rights. They were written in an era when U.S. corporations’ dominance in exploiting the entire world’s workers meant their U.S.-based employees could win some economic stability without challenging the capitalist system by building democratic unions and a working-class political party. Stern imagines he can “bring home the bacon” by cutting deals with big business to keep his members quiet, but he is mistaken.

The courageous stand of the ousted leadership of UHW West in launching a new union, which has already petitioned for 25,000 UHW members to leave SEIU and join them, shows how the times are changing.

To go beyond rescuing UHW members from the SEIU’s corporate business union model, the new union will need to campaign against cuts in State or Federal jobs or programs, for real universal healthcare, and for a huge jobs program paid for by taxes on the rich and the corporations. UHW will need to build on its tradition, which goes back to the 1930’s, of building a fighting and democratic labor movement and a broader movement of the wider working class.

For more news and information, or to join the new union, visit the National Union of Healthcare Workers at www.nuhw.org. We also recommend www.seiuvoice.org (set up by members of UHW West protesting against Stern’s policies and tactics) and SMART (SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today) at www.reformseiu.org.