On the heels of several historic election victories at hospitals throughout the Greater Boston area, workers at Norwood Hospital in Norwood, Massachusetts announced this evening that they have voted overwhelmingly (74% YES) to join 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

The vote at the 264-bed acute care facility means nearly 600 hospital workers at Norwood will now join with thousands of other workers across Caritas Christi Healthcare as a part of the state's largest healthcare union.

When security guard Richard Ruiz expressed frustration over he and his coworkers' unsuccessful efforts to form a union in their workplace to Miami New Times' blog Riptide, he was simply trying to give a voice to their struggle.

In January, about seventy-five percent of the Security Alliance guards signed cards to form a union with SEIU--but since that time, he and the 50 or so security guards employed by Security Alliance of Florida in the Miami Beach area had been experiencing intimidation, scare tactics and harassment at the hands of their employer for exercising their rights to organize. Ruiz was the only one out of his coworkers who was willing to speak about their efforts to form a union on the record.

His reward for having the courage to speak out for what he believes in? Losing his job. "We are trying to make this city safer for everybody, but I was fired when they found out I was speaking out and wanted a union," said Richard Ruiz, who was terminated after working for more than two years for Security Alliance. "Employers shouldn't stop decent people from trying to have a better life."

It's not often we get to bring you news of workers organizing to have a voice at work on such a large scale -- but today is one of those days! 13,00 home care attendants in Missouri's consumer directed home care program have voted to join the Missouri Home Care Union, a statewide union of home care attendants that's a joint local of AFSCME and SEIU.

The vote passed by a landslide margin of 85% "Yes" to 15% "No," and the election was conducted by the state Board of Mediation and was the largest of its kind in Missouri history.

In spite of the fact that home-based care is more cost-effective than institutional or nursing home care, many of the consumers in the state struggle to keep caregivers on the job--40-60% of attendants leave their positions every year. The central reason for this is that many home care attendants simply can't afford to stay at their jobs and take care of their families because they don't have health insurance benefits, sick days or vacation time.

With the number of elderly Missourians expected to rise more than 70 percent in the next twenty years, the demand for home care services will skyrocket. Which makes investing in the creation of good home care jobs to help build a stable workforce that will be able to ensure older Missourians can remain in the setting they prefer, their homes, is more important than ever.

"The next step is to join forces with consumers to make home care better and available to more Missourians," said Salem attendant Theresa Bach. Read more here.

The votes were counted last week in an important union election among 10,000 home care workers in Fresno County, California. Now that the dust is settled, here is more detail about what the Fresno home care election victory signifies--and what it means going forward.

Friends and allies of SEIU are celebrating Pride month in a special way this year: Joining with home care workers in Fresno to protect their union and to keep their union voice strong in SEIU UHW.

The volunteer effort by SEIU allies for SEIU UHW caregivers follows outspoken support by the union for the rights and freedoms of LGBT people, including marriage equality. SEIU locals throughout California opposed Proposition 8, a statewide measure attacking marriage equality, and denounced a state court ruling last week upholding the measure.

Bao Thao drove from San Diego to volunteer time and meet with SEIU UHW home care members in Fresno. "Unions must keep supporting all people so we avoid such discrimination as Prop 8," she said. "SEIU has provided that support, and so I'm here to support these members."

Kevin Xiong, executive director of SOY (Shades of Yellow), a nonprofit LGBT organization in Minnesota, also volunteered his time to knock on doors in Fresno and support SEIU UHW members. "By going door to door, we are seeking to correct deliberate efforts to set the union off course and sap its strength to meet the struggles that only a large, experienced union like SEIU UHW can win. Home care workers in Fresno are passionate about their union and understand the need to stick together," he said.

Xiong joined many Californians in criticizing the negative signal he saw in the state ruling on Prop 8. "This is a civil rights issue," he said, "dividing people in two classes, those who can marry with benefits and those who cannot." He described the ruling as undercutting the rights of same-sex couples who hoped to marry in the future by denying their committed unions equal recognition under state law. "SEIU UHW continues to fight this upcoming vote to weaken its union," said Xiong.

The theme of legal recognition for families is at the heart of SEIU's support for legislation crucial to many LGBT couples, the Reuniting Families Act. The House bill, introduced yesterday by California Congressman Mike Honda, includes same-sex partners in its scope.

More than 800 healthcare workers at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, the largest medical center in the Caritas Christi Health Care chain, voted last Thursday to unite together with thousands of healthcare workers in 1199SEIU.

"This is a time of great challenges and unprecedented opportunities," said 1199SEIU President George Gresham. "Now that St. Elizabeth's workers have a union voice, we can all work together to defend healthcare funding, expand access, and make life better for the caregivers at St Elizabeth's and their families."

Over the past 35 years, workers have attempted to form a union at St. Elizabeth's at least three different times, to no avail. Under new leadership, Caritas Christi Health Care reached an historic accord in January 2009 with 1199SEIU and the Area Trades Council, which established a code of conduct under which workers would be free to make their own decisions on whether to join together as a union under fair secret ballot voting conditions.

"We are overjoyed and thrilled. People were crying with joy in the halls Wednesday night," said St. Elizabeth's PCA Sonia Marshall, "We believe in the mission of St. Elizabeth's, and we're excited about working together to make our hospital the best that it can be for our patients and also for hospital workers and our families. We look forward to the day when all of our sisters and brothers across Boston are able to have free and fair union elections." Workers at St. Elizabeth's have pledged to help organize healthcare workers at other Massachusetts hospitals, including other Caritas Christi facilities, where union election campaigns are expected to launch in the near future.

Read more at www.StElizabethsWorkersTogether.org

Last night, SEIU's Stephen Lerner was on MSNBC's Hardball and had a really great exchange that explains our case for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Lerner delves into the hypocrisy of business groups' new "campaign" of allegedly standing up for workers' rights:

"The Chamber of Commerce...who opposed raising the minimum wage, who opposed health insurance for kids, who opposed almost everything that would help workers--is now saying their interest is to protect the rights of workers. It's silly. They like the status quo...for 30 years wages remained stagnant, while productivity went up, wages went down. The middle class was destroyed. They got million dollar bonuses; they did great. We're just trying to level the playing field."

No one said this fight would be easy, but it's nothing compared to what workers face every day in the battle to bargain collectively with their employers for better wages and health care. Today, 51% of employers illegally threaten to close down a worksite when workers try to join together to form a union. Thirty percent unlawfully fire workers who support forming a union. And workers who ask for a union election don't get a chance to vote in 4 out of 10 cases. As Chris Matthews acknowledges in the clip below, "It's hard to form a union."

How does the Employee Free Choice Act solve this problem?

And here is what Stephen Lerner said in response to Chris Matthews' question about President Obama's support for the legislation:

If you support the Employee Free Choice Act, please contact your Members of Congress and ask them to do the same.

When executives at Northern Berkshire Healthcare received word that the nursing home staff at Massachusetts Sweet Brook Care Centers petitioned to join 1199SEIU in January, they wasted no time before launching an anti-organizing campaign.

Their thinly veiled effort to strip caregivers of their voting rights didn't fool anyone--including the National Labor Relations Board. The Boston Regional Office of the NLRB issued a decision in favor of the long term care workers at Sweet Brook Nursing Home in Williamsburg, MA, on Monday, ruling that registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and lead certified nursing assistants will be eligible to vote in an upcoming union election.

In their 19-page decision reached after lengthy hearings, the NLRB rejected all arguments presented by executives at Sweet Brook and Northern Berkshire Healthcare (NBH) as part of an effort to exclude the caregivers from exercising a voice at work. NBH argued that registered nurses, LPNs and "lead" certified nursing assistants have supervisory authority that would prevent them from becoming union members.

"They were trying to say that we manage the other CNAs and have the power to change things," said Betty Higley, a lead certified nursing assistant in the dementia unit at Sweet Brook. "But you're just there to make sure the paperwork gets done. There was nothing that the hospital brought up that proved we were managers -- I still work weekends, I still work holidays. You can't dispute the truth."

Caregivers estimate that Northern Berkshire Healthcare has now wasted many tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer and patient care funds on executive junkets and a discretionary, totally meritless and unfounded legal battle against the voting rights of NBH employees at the Sweet Brook Nursing Home. Health system officials' defense is that they wanted to ensure the local's establishment was done correctly, and that the $500 an hour specialty lawyers were needed for last week's National Labor Relations Board hearings on union organizing at Sweet Brook that were held in Boston.

What were some of the many tactics Northern Berkshire Healthcare, led by CEO Richard Palmisano, employed while workers fought for the right to hold an election to have a voice at work?

1. Threatened service reductions and layoffs by hospital executives due to budgetary shortfalls at North Adams Regional Hospital.
   
2. An internal campaign of intimidation waged by the nursing home's own CEO, to guilt-trip employees by convincing them that forming a union would be equivalent to giving up their goals of improving resident care and jobs at the home.
   
3. One-on-one meetings with workers about their private voting choices, conducted by NBH executives.
   
4. Six days of NLRB hearings and testimony in Boston and Leominster, where testifying caregivers were kept away from their families and the nursing home residents for whom they care. During this hearing, NBH officials also tried to bar 35 nurses and certified nursing assistants from the election.

The answer: all of the above.

The overwhelming majority of eligible staff at Sweet Brook have already expressed, in writing, their support for forming a union at the nursing home. "Management at Sweet Brook has been doing everything in their power to prevent us from voting in a union election," said Betty Higley, a lead certified nursing assistant at Sweet Brook who attended the hearings, "They kept us away from home for almost a week. Enough is enough. Let us vote!"

Tremendous support from the workforce in question isn't stopping NBH, however--- Vice President of External Affairs Diane Cutillo said on Monday that the health-care system is appealing the decision to the National Labor Board in Washington, DC.

The corporate misinformation campaign is already running strong--spreading lies and distortions about the Employee Free Choice Act. One blatant mischaracterization suggests that this common sense proposal is somehow a "radical" change to federal labor law. In fact, the Employee Free Choice Act reflects long-standing American principles of balance, choice and fairness in the workplace and restores protections for workers that have been eroded over time.

Here's an update about the legislation (below), courtesy of Jon Youngdahl, SEIU Political Director, Change that Works Campaign.

P.S. Know someone else who should receive our updates on the Employee Free Choice Act? Tell your colleagues to sign up for these updates on this page: http://freechoice.seiu.org/page/s/freechoiceupdate

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Largest Union Election Victory in Illinois History Fuels National Movement of Child Care Workers

CHICAGO - More than 49,000 Illinois home child care providers have voted overwhelmingly to join Local 880 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The ballots were counted by the American Arbitration Association Thursday after a three-week vote-by-mail election.

The final vote total was 13,484 for SEIU and 359 for no union. Another union, AFSCME, which pulled out of the election after most of the votes had already been cast, received minimal support. Overall, SEIU outpolled AFSCME by a 5-to-1 margin, receiving 82 percent of the vote to 16 percent for AFSCME. Two percent of the votes were for no union.

"This is a big step toward winning improved rates and health coverage to make child care a stable job for adults so we can provide consistent care for children," said Angenita Tanner, a home child care worker in Chicago. "Working together we can improve services so the parents in our community can go to work and support their families knowing that their children are cared for, loved, and safe."

The home child care vote is the largest union election in Illinois history and one of the largest in U.S. history. In recent decades, only the vote by 74,000 home care workers in Los Angeles to join SEIU in 1999 saw more workers unite in a single union election.The Illinois victory is fueling a national movement by more than half a million child care providers to unite for improved services for children. Joining the Illinois providers at a news conference in Chicago Thursday were child care providers from eight other states who are now organizing to join SEIU.

"We expect this vote in Illinois will be the catalyst for more than half a million family child care providers across America uniting in our union, much the same way more than 300,000 home care workers have joined SEIU since the 1999 election in Los Angeles," said Anna Burger, SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer.

Thursday"s election capped a nearly decade-long effort by child care workers to unite in SEIU to improve child services in Illinois. The vote was conducted after Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an executive order in February that for the first time gave the providers the freedom to form a union.

The next step for the Illinois home child care providers is to elect a negotiating committee and begin bargaining with the state.

"Home child care workers will begin working with the Governor and legislature immediately to improve their reimbursement rates and achieve health insurance benefits," said Helen Miller, president of SEIU Local 880. "There is broad agreement that improving conditions for these providers will benefit the children of Illinois, and we will carry that message to Springfield until these workers get the improvements they and the children so desperately need."

The Illinois vote is also energizing efforts by family child care providers to join SEIU in a dozen other states - California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Family child care providers from seven of those states came to Chicago Thursday to plan strategy for uniting in SEIU and to help celebrate the victory in Illinois.