On Sept. 6, over 4,000 members of the Service Employees International Union United (SEIU) Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) marched through downtown San Jose to oppose a planned takeover by national union officials.
National SEIU President Andy Stern and Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger announced their intentions to put UHW into trusteeship last month. The move would replace elected rank-and-file leaders with appointees handpicked by Stern and Burger.
Cal Winslow, labor historian at the University of California, Berkeley, read a letter from leading labor scholars that said the UHW takeover would be “a disaster for the California labor movement and for SEIU nationally.”
“In UHW, members elect our leaders and they are accountable to us,” said Maria Martinez, an elected shop steward at Fifth Avenue Healthcare Center in San Rafael.
UHW members include health care workers employed in hospitals, nursing homes and private homes.
