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California nurses
victory points new
direction for labor

Oakland, Ca. (3/26/98)--

       "We took on a multibillion-dollar corporation and we won!"
This was the sentiment of most of Kaiser-Permanente 's 7500
RN's and their supporters when on Wednesday, March 25 on the
eve of their seventh strike against the giant northern California
HMO, the California Nurses Association (CNA) announced a
tentative agreement.  The nurses were working without a
contract since January 1997 when Kaiser demanded a six year
wage freeze for some nurses, a 12% wage cut for others, and
many other take-aways.

      Instead the nurses won a 12% wage increase over the next
four years, with no benefits or seniority take-aways. More
importantly, a committee of 18 RN's, chosen by CNA and
confirmed by Kaiser, will spend half their time investigating
patient care issues. The nurses who are fighting a daily war on
the wards and in the clinics over staffing  levels  were
unwavering  in  their determination to have some control over the
quality of their own work. The nurses have shown the way and
reawakened the power of labor to break new ground against
capital's drive for  permanent restructuring.

A Victory Despite Powerful Obstacles--

        After a strike last April when over 90% of all union workers
came out in massive show of solidarity with the nurses, came a
top down leadership initiated "strategic partnership" with Kaiser
from AFL-CIO President Sweeney.  But many workers in other
Kaiser unions, community members, the UAW, the United Mine
Workers, and the Teamsters who had won a victory at UPS,
stuck with the nurses. Before the partnership, workers in
belonging to SEIU-Local 250 were hoping the nurses would hold
out until our own contracts came up in November. Then we
would have bargaining leverage even if our own union leaders no
longer actively supported the nurses picket lines.

Kaiser Service-Workers Side with Striking Nurses-
Not AFL-CIO Compromises to Labor-Management
Partnership:

       Only days before the landmark settlement with the nurses,
containing unprecedented  quality-care language, the California
Nurses Association announced that their seventh strike against
Kaiser HMO facilities in northern California will happen on
March 25. However, on March 17, as the nurses were
announcing their seventh strike action, Kaiser and Local 250
SEIU, true to their newfound Partnership,  announced a new
three year contract that doesn't even come up for renewal until
November. The contract was purely an economic package of
raises of 3% per year for the next  three years.  The contract was
reached after only an unprecedented  two negotiating  sessions.
A bargaining member said she was shocked that Kaiser came
back with such a "good" offer  when management has
stone-walled the nurses for over 14 months.. Local 250 president
Sal Rosselli embraced it exclaiming that this proves the "Kaiser
partnership, though in its infancy, is effective."  What motivated
both parties to so easily put this Local-250 contract to bed so
quickly, eight whole months before the expiration date?  Why
was every other issues like benefits, job-security,
work-conditions, seniority, and quality-of-care banished from the
bargaining table exclusively in favor of a singular wage-increase
proposal held in front of us like carrot-on-a-stick?

       In this case the truth was told by Kaiser management
spokesperson Lila Peterson who said, �we wanted to get through
the wages issues and not have an acrimonious situation like with
CNA." Kaiser management, now feeling the heat,  had been
making every attempt, over the last 18 months, to avoid letting
healthcare-workers bargain over quality-of-care at all cost. The
nurses  and their allies in other unions have been
uncompromising in their fight for quality-care standards.  At this
stage,  Kaiser management welcomed the opportunity to settle
with Local 250's  15,000 Kaiser workers on purely economic
issues.  Unlike the hierarchical AFL-CIO,  the CNA has recently
demonstrated itself to be an autonomous fighting union that is
more in touch with the daily struggle over staffing in today's
health care workplace.  We service workers know that it was  the
series of strike actions sponsored by the nurses union, which
brought management under increasing pressure, that brought
about this supposed Kaiser largesse. Why else would they have
been so eager to settle our contract  after only two days and
eight whole months before expiration.

        We welcome the extra money, especially after the
pay-freeze which has held us hostage for the last 3 years,but our
union officials insult  our intelligence when they think we can't
see any further than the extra  money in our paycheck.  In the
past they expressed much passion and concern over  Kaiser's
decline in quality care. Now all the enthusiasm is limited to this
economic package. Their rhetoric turned on a dime with
Sweeney's "strategic partnership."   Before the partnership,
Owen Marron of the Alameda Central Labor Council was one of
the loudest exposing Kaiser's declining quality. After the
partnership, when the line became "Kaiser is a quality care
provider," he started lecturing the nurses that quality care is not a
winnable issue.

Labor-Management Partnership forsakes Rank & File
Activism:
        Bargaining committee members say that Sweeney's
partnership was voted on by the membership. They blame
membership apathy for the fact that so few voted. But where was
the "apathy" when the nurses first went out on strike last April
16, before the partnership, and over 90% of union workers
stayed out in solidarity?
        Our leadership has become so accomodating to Kaiser�s
intransigence that they failed to include at the bargaining table
job-security and seniority issues, benefit issues and other
take-aways imposed by the last contract . Today some union
officials express exuberance over  winning a �generous� wage
increase in this supposed climate of take-aways and perceived
worker �apathy�. Yet they fail to remember that it was precisely
under this "climate" that workers came out en masse to fight
against Kaiser restructuring and decline in quality-care:

*   In 1986, service workers went out for eight weeks against
Kaiser's two-tier wage restructuring.

*      In 1995, health care workers came from all over the country
to march across the Golden Gate bridge to protest the decline in
health care.

*   Service workers and nurses have been staging a two year
corporate campaign against Kaiser's race to the bottom.

*      In the latest series of actions, to date, totaling six strikes
where, starting in April of 1997, before the �partnership', when
over 90% of all union employees walked off the job.

*       Finally, the current climate now brings unions belonging to
the United Auto-Workers, United-Mine-Workers, the Teamsters
and International Longshore Workers Union to join Kaiser
workers in supporting the fight for Quality-Care.

Rank & File Solidarity-- Past & Future

      To some union officials all our past labor actions may have
been no more than bargaining chips to trade away for economic
gains at the table.

      With the current nurses contract victory, a federal mediator
said the key to getting  Kaiser to move was the �nurses rock solid
unity which didn't diminish in their ongoing strikes.� The nurses
strikes represented the continuation of a fighting spirit which
began with the same kind of courage and defiance demonstrated
by service workers in the 1986 SEIU-250 strike against two-tier
wage structures at Kaiser.

     That is why, many of us rank and file service-workers
recognize that it is precisely this fighting spirit and continuity in
struggle which won our current wage increases-- Not the Kaiser
�Partnership�.  It is this same spirit and continuity which
provided the only hope in overcoming Kaiser�s systemwide
campaign to permanently establish 2-tier wage restructuring to
all its employees, and the continued downsizing of its workforce.
Only this fighting spirit and willingness to continue the struggle
weighs against managed-care�s drive to dismantle patient-care
standards and win enforceable quality-assurance protections
which we all strive for.
     If the nurses rock solid unity demonstrated  real labor power
through action, not partnerships with management, the real test
for the future is whether this new-found power of labor through
unity can be extended to cross all boundaries of professionalism
and turf battles among unions at Kaiser. To break those
boundaries, rank-and-file workers have to continue to speak to
each other and determine the agendas of their unions, not just
their leadership, whose agendas are shortsighted and territorial.
But we also need a vision of what is possible that goes beyond
the logic of restructuring.

Kaiser HMO Still has Ace Under Sleeve:

      Kaiser is still planning to contract out health care as they
continue massive shutdowns of their facilities. Right on the heels
of the CNA and Local 250 tentative agreements, management
announced a major corporate alliance agreement with Summit
hospital to take over all ICU and inpatient medical/surgical
admissions. This is a move towards moth-balling Kaiser's 50
year old flagship hospital in Oakland. This is precisely the kind of
red-lining of health care, determined by managed-care
cost-cutting strategies, that we health-care workers have been
fighting throughout the country for the past two years.

Ongoing Test for Future Labor Struggles

       You can judge how much the labor movement has lost in its
principles and its contact with the real world of the ordinary
worker by how so little satisfies today's labor official. Those of
us in the work-a-day world know that the problems in this
permanent restructuring are a lot deeper than money only. What
is fundamental in society is how it values the health of its average
working person. Also fundamental is  how the current
bureaucratic-climate to enter into labor-management
�partnerships� will have long-lasting deleterious consequences
for the labor-movement. That is why the continuing
healthcare-workers� struggle-- against corporate bottom-line
determination to downsize, to red-line health care by eliminating
jobs and facilities, and to withhold care by eroding
care-standards in order to generate  more revenues--  demands
our  firmest resolve.  To do that, we must first challenge the
mental boundaries presented by the logic of restructuring
imposed under managed-care.  Hopefully the California nurses'
victory will open up our thinking about what is possible in this
fight  against  permanent  restructuring throughout the economy.
Because this victory belongs to all of us.

                                                             --Kaiser service
worker
_






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