Hi, I’m Mary a homecare worker in Contra Costa County. The civil trail against our old leadership will begin on Monday March 22. I’m proud to be one of the trial reporters.
I am looking forward to letting SEIU-UHW members and the public know what is happening in the court room. As a home care worker we have had to fight not only the old leadership but at the county and state level. Let’s learn what they will have to say about destroying property that belonged to OUR UNION, taking our personal information. It should be a very interesting time. So be sure to check the blog and give us your feed back. Talk to you soon…..
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Hello Mary! Welcome to the wonderful and time-consuming world of blogging. It's good to see someone reporting on the SEIU perspective of this dispute. On a separate note I wonder if SEIU had bargained a new contract for Contra Costa IHSS workers that offered as many give-aways as they did for the Sonoma IHSS contract. Will SEIU force members into voting for a contract they weren't allowed to see?
ReplyDeletemarymagdaleneforpresident here
ReplyDeleteI was on the bargaining committee for the Sonoma County contract between IHSS Public Authority and SEIU-UHW West.
1. We maintained our pay for the next two years in a county that is broke and a general US economy that is broke.
2. We have the option to open up bargaining before the 2-year contract is up. If the economy recovers, we can get a raise.
3. We maintained health care for our members with an the ability to leave Kaiser if we want for a more affordable plan. Kaiser now wants to talk things over with us. US SEIU-UHW WEST.
Contracts are NEVER given to members to read until they are a done deal, signed by committee, IHSS/PA and the Supervisors.
Now let me tell you what NUHW members here in Sonoma County did.
1. They went to the Supervisors and asked them to not sign the contract by the 9/29 deadline - to leave it open.
2. Then they made robo calls telling members that their pay was being cut to $9.50 because of the contract being bargained.
3. If the Sups. had played ball with NUHW and left an open contract, the Sups. could have reduced our pay to $9.50 because THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO PROTECTION from a closed contract. A closed contract that SEIU UHW bargained to protect our members. And NUHW could have used this as proof that we bargained a bad contract. That's called double crossing.
4. The morning of 9/29 the same NUHW members again went to the Sups. to ask them to not accept the contract.
The contract was accepted.
As for you - pull your head out of where the sun doesn't shine or put in a light bulb. Spreading lies will only make your nose grow to your knees.
Gossip mongering belongs to the least intelligent class of man. Congratulations on your achievement!
Now let's focus on your on trial leadership that has trained you well to be the person you have become.
I was elected to the bargaining team as was everyone else on the team. We are still bargaining our contract and when we do reach an agreement it will be because the bargaining team agreed not that the staff say we have to. The bargaining team will then take it to the members of Contra Costa for a ratification.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteKaren Timmons a/k/a marymagdaleneforpresident is flat wrong when it comes to contract availability to the membership before ratification. As a member of the first bargaining team in Sonoma county, we mailed the tentative agreement to future members before ratification. Only since the trusteeship has UHW sought to hide tentative agreements before ratification. To see why this was done in Sonoma county all one has to do is read the contract itself (http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4rKk772k-fOYTI5YTllM2ItZGRkZS00NWJlLTk2NTUtZDg5NGM5NWE5YzZl&hl=en), or its summary here (http://sonomaredrevolt.blogspot.com/2009/10/former-and-current-contracts-time-to.html) and here (http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://www.nuhw.org/storage/docs/sonoma-takeaways.pdf).
ReplyDeleteAlso our wages would not have dropped at all if our contract expired. This is Federal law.
Sorry about the deleted comment (at 10:18 AM today), I had to tighten up my writing a bit. For those who are interested here is the federal law I spoke of at 10:26 AM, you can read a very brief summary for yourself. (http://www.nuhw.org/storage/toolkit/keep-contract-switch.pdf) NO one, can spin this for anything but what it really is, not SEIU, not NUHW, not Karen or me.
ReplyDeleteMembers were able and encouraged to see changes from the old contract to the new. Members were also encouraged to discuss such changes and were given printed copies of the changes.
ReplyDeleteThe bargaining committee rewrote the contract. Not the staff. No matter how you try to spin this it still comes out: 1. Members wrote the new contract. 2. Members bargained the new contract. 3. Members saw the changes in writing and discussed the changes with members.
No matter how you try to justify your position, NUHW acted in a most inappropriate way.
Karen you are contradicting yourself. Yesterday, at 9:02 PM you said: "Contracts are NEVER given to members to read until they are a done deal, signed by committee, IHSS/PA and the Supervisors." How does this represent an open and democratic bargaining process?
ReplyDeleteWhen you say "members" do you mean members of the 8 SEIU-picked bargaining team members or the rest of us?
You told me yourself at the Carpenters Labor Center on Labor Day 2009 the tentative agreement was only allowed to be viewed by the 8 bargaining team members and no one had copies to share with the rest of 3700 us who are subject to your secret bargaining.