June 8, 2010

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) may gain another 380 Kaiser Permanente workers in Northern California. A majority of 380 optical workers signed and submitted a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for an election to change from their current union, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) to NUHW.

Last week NUHW got a majority of 1,300 Northern California Kaiser mental health workers to sign a petition to switch from SEIU-UHW to NUHW. Election dates have yet to be set by the NLRB.

NUHW anticipates that a majority of 44,000 Kaiser service technology and clerical workers statewide and 370 northern California medical social workers will also file to switch unions to NUHW by July 3.

Federal labor law gives employees the opportunity to switch unions at least once every three years, and for Kaiser workers this 30-day period is from June 3 to July 3 of this year.

Three groups of Southern California Kaiser workers, almost 3,000 of them, have already changed to NUHW from SEIU in January.