Sham Election Denounced by Fresno Elected Officials

What s wrong with SEIU s advisory vote?

SEIU is conducting an election to determine the fate of 350,000 SEIU members California. Either option on the ballot would dismantle United Healthcare Workers, silencing caregivers’ criticism of national SEIU officials backroom deals with employers that hurt healtheare workers and our patients.

UHW members are boycotting the election because SEIU’s rigged process has given them no other way to register their opinions about SEIU’s proposed dramatic reorganization of UHW and two other SEIU locals. UHW members also have filcd a legal challenge against the election. Here’s how SElL officials stacked the deck to guarantee the outcome they want:

• No real choice—The ballot offers two options, with no way to reject both. Under the first option, 65,000 UHW members would be forced into another union. Under the second, UHW’s charter would he revoked and all 150,000 UHW members would he forced into another union Either outcome would remove healthcare workers from elected leadership positions and replace them with Washington appointees.

• Unequal notice to local unions — SEIU leaders gave a head start to locals whose appointed leaders and trustees are allied with SEIU’s top leaders. This allowed Local 6434 to begin a phone campaign to persuade members to vote for the merger days before SEIU even informed UHW that the election would take place.

• Unequal access to information — SEIU has mailed information to eligible voters that misrepresents UHW members’ position on the vote, while refusing to allow UHW to use the same mailing list. That denies UHW members the right to participate equally in campaigning.

• “Pooled” ballot count — Rather than allow members of each local union to decide separately whether they want to merge, ballots cast by the 350,000 members of all three local unions (UHW, Local 6434 and Local 52 1) will be counted together. Pooled voting means that even if every member of one union voted against a proposal, they could still be outvoted by members of other unioiis.

• Misrepresenting UHW’s position - The voter guide falsely implies that the second ballot option reflects UHW’s suggestions. UHW asked that members he given a choice of joining UHW, not a new healthcare workers union with unelected leadership. SEIU did not allow UHW to review the voter guide before it was mailed to 350,000 voters.

• False statements about effect of merger — SElU campaign material falsely states that a merger would not affect current collective bargaining agreements. In fact, in a pooled vote on a 2006 merger, several thousand healthcare workers in California lost their collective bargaining rights when employers successfully challenged the legality of the vote.

• Election misconduct — SEIU’s election officer changed the rules of the process after voting had already begun, in a transparent effort to allow staff to interfere with balloting and artificially increase the sham election’s paltry turnout. We have also heard reports that representatives from other SEIU local unions have asked workers who already voted once to request a new ballot so they can vote again, in obvious violation of democratic principles.

For more information about the struggle between SEIU-UHW and the International, see: http://www.seiuvoice.org/

Also, see:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/27/18541588.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/01/18531777.php