NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
April 6, 2018 | PAGE 9
...Kaiser Permanente union coalition splits in two
From Page 1
Oregon and Southwest Wash-
ington.
As a health maintenance or-
ganization (HMO), Kaiser Per-
manente combines features of
an insurance company and a
hospital system. It operates in
eight states — California, Col-
orado, Georgia, Hawaii, Ore-
gon, Washington, Maryland,
Virginia — and in Washington,
DC. It’s also the most heavily
unionized large health care em-
ployer in the nation — and the
site of a unique “partnership”
agreement in which unions and
employer commit to a collabo-
rative relationship.
The unions that are leaving
have good relationships with
Kaiser, and say they want to pre-
serve that partnership. They are
affiliates of seven international
unions — AFSCME, United
Food & Commercial Workers
(UFCW), United Steel Workers,
American Federation of Teach-
ers (AFT), Teamsters, Operating
Engineers, and International
Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) — plus an inde-
pendent union called Kaiser Per-
manente Nurse Anesthetists As-
sociation (KPNAA).
The unions that remain are af-
filiates of four international
unions: SEIU, Office and Pro-
fessional Employees Interna-
tional Union (OPEIU), UNITE
HERE, and International Feder-
ation of Professional & Techni-
cal Engineers (IFPTE).
Twenty years of labor unity
come to a close
The split is the first major rift
among participating unions
since the CKPU union coalition
formed in 1996. Back then,
Kaiser was in deep financial
trouble, and had a history of
conflict with its unions. All that
changed with the creation in
1997 of what all sides touted as
a historic “Labor Management
Partnership” between Kaiser
Clergy call for new contract
at Nabisco, and against
outsourcing jobs to Mexico
By Mark Gruenberg
Press Associates Inc.
Faith leaders from around the
country are urging Dirk Van der
Put, the new CEO of Mondelez
International, Nabisco’s parent
firm, to negotiate in good faith
and reach a new and fair con-
tract with Bakery, Confec-
and the CKPU. Now in its 21st
year, it’s the largest, longest-run-
ning and most comprehensive
labor-management partnership
in the United States. The part-
nership gives front-line employ-
ees a say in decisions that affect
them. Self-directed work teams
come up with ways to improve
performance and reduce waste.
And under the rules of the part-
nership, bargaining is supposed
to be “interest-based” and col-
laborative, not “position-based”
and adversarial.
But the unity of the labor side
of the partner-
ship began to
come undone in
recent months.
At a meeting
of CKPU unions
in August 2017
in Portland,
SEIU-UHW
pushed for a
change to the
CKPU’s bylaws
to give more de-
cision-making
weight to unions based on their
size. CKPU’s decision-making
process had always before been
based on consensus among its
constituent unions—even
though they varied in size from
dozens to tens of thousands of
members. CKPU had negotiated
five national collective bargain-
ing agreements with Kaiser us-
ing that process.
Though the discussion report-
edly devolved into a shouting
match at times, participating
unions agreed to a compromise
that gave somewhat greater
weight to larger unions.
Then, according to several
sources, SEIU-UHW asked
Kaiser to bargain with them as
the sole representative of the
Coalition. Kaiser refused.
In November, SEIU-UHW
filed a prospective ballot initia-
tive in California that would
have prohibited Kaiser from
raising its premiums until its
capital reserves drop below a
certain level. The initiative
made no distinction between
Kaiser and insurance compa-
nies: It counted Kaiser’s hospi-
tals and medical offices as capi-
tal reserves.
Kaiser management said for
SEIU-UHW to promote such a
measure violated the terms of its
partnership deal, and announced
that it would bar SEIU-UHW
from taking part in the 2018
Coalition bargaining.
On Feb. 6, 2018, SEIU-UHW
withdrew the initiative. It also
signed an agreement with
Kaiser and the
unions agree-
ing not to file
hostile legisla-
tion in the fu-
ture. And it
was on track to
once again
take part in
bargaining
once again.
From Feb-
ruary 14 to
early March 9,
in advance of the scheduled be-
ginning of CKPU’s national
contract bargaining, SEIU-
UHW held a series of 32 protest
demonstrations at Kaiser loca-
tions across California. The
message: Kaiser is thriving fi-
nancially, with net revenue of
$3.8 billion last year, yet still
plans to outsource some jobs
and cut wage rates for some new
hires.
The final straw was a March
19 meeting of the coalition
unions, at which SEIU UHW
brought up the decision-making
process again, threatening to
block agreement if it wasn’t re-
vised further.
Enghouse, the OFNHP presi-
dent, says it became apparent
then that the unions were not go-
ing to be a cohesive team. The
labor-management partnership
is complicated even when it’s
functioning, Enghouse said;
with unions at odds, it would
make no sense to begin.
Reacting to the announce-
ment that the 22 local unions are
leaving, SEIU Locals 49 in Port-
land and 105 in Colorado issued
statements faulting the exiting
unions for not giving members
a chance to vote on that deci-
sion. Local 49 also expressed
disappointment “in the lack of
solidarity from the other union
leaders in the Northwest.”
Though five SEIU locals re-
main in the partnership, the ran-
cor felt by the departing unions
toward SEIU-UHW doesn’t ap-
pear to extend to other SEIU lo-
cals, such as Local 49 in Oregon
and 1199 in Washington.
“Our members work side by
side and care about each other,”
Enghouse said. “We will always
stand by SEIU Local 49 in their
striving to get a good contract.”
Local 49 president Meg
Niemi expressed similar senti-
ments in a statement emailed to
the Labor Press: “We care about
all the union members of Kaiser
Permanente and we hope the
unions that left will reunite with
our coalition because we know
we’re stronger together. That
said, we want SEIU 49 mem-
bers to be clear that they voted
to join the coalition 20 years
ago, and the only way our union
will leave the coalition is that if
members vote to make that de-
cision.”
One other major Kaiser union
— California Nurses Associa-
tion (CNA) — was never a part
of the CKPU. CNA, now part of
the National Nurses United
union, just came to terms March
20 on a new five-year agree-
ment with Kaiser that provides
raises of 12 percent to 19,000
registered nurses and nurse
practitioners.
CKPU’s current national con-
tract, negotiated in 2015, expires
Sept. 30, 2018.
The new Alliance of Health
Care Unions is drafting a consti-
tution and expects to formalize
its structure within a few weeks.
—Don McIntosh
tionery, Tobacco and Grain
Millers union (BCTGM), which
represents 2,000 unionized
Nabisco workers at six plants in
the U.S., including one in Port-
land, Oregon represented by
Bakers Local 364. The union
has waged a publicity campaign
against Nabisco for shutting the
Oreo cookie line at its South Side
Chicago plant almost two years
ago and moving 600 jobs to
Mexico.
The clergy wrote a letter to
the CEO after a Mondelez exec-
utive forecast even more pro-
duction of their top snack and
cookie lines will take place at
their new plant a mile outside
Monterrey, Mexico. There,
workers toil behind a barbed
wire fence. They are bused to
and from a residential com-
pound, and earn a dollar a day,
according to a recent report by
Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ).
“Based on the social teach-
ings of our faith groups, we be-
lieve Mondelez has a moral re-
sponsibility to treat its workers
with dignity and respect,” the
clergy said in their public letter,
asking for further clerical sup-
port nationwide.
“We call on Mondelez to ne-
gotiate a new contract with
BCTGM that maintains health
care benefits and a pension plan
that would maintain retirement
Unions leaving
the Kaiser
coalition:
22 locals
37,102 members
AFSCME United Nurses Associations
of California/Union of Health
Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP)
Hawaii Government Employees
Association (AFSCME Local 152)
Teamsters Local 166
International Union of Operating
Engineers (IUOE): Local 501,
Local 1
United Steelworkers of America
(USW) Local 7600
United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW): Local 770,
Local 324, Local 135, Local 1428,
Local 1442, Local 1167, Local
555, Local 21, Local 27 , Local
1996, Local 7, and Local 400
Oregon Federation of Nurses and
Health Professionals (OFNHP),
AFT Healthcare Local 5017
International Longshore and
Warehouse Union Local 28
Kaiser Permanente Nurse
Anesthetists Association
(KPNAA)
Unions staying
in the Kaiser
coalition:
13 locals
70,700 members
International Federation of
Professional and Technical
Engineers Local 20
Office and Professional Employees
International Union (OPEIU):
Local 29, Local 30, Local 8, Local
2, and Local 50 (Hawaii Nurses
Association)
Service Employees International
Union (SEIU): United Healthcare
Workers West, Local 121RN,
Local 49, Local 1199NW, and
Local 105.
UNITE HERE Local 5
security for the workers. Fur-
thermore, jobs should not be
outsourced to Mexico as a way
to evade the promises made by
your company to workers in the
U.S.,” the letter concludes.
Ten faith leaders, including a
rabbi, an imam, and two who are
BCTGM members, including
Pastor Lamar Kennedy, who is a
member of Local 364 in Port-
land, signed the appeal to other
clergy.