"Noooooooo It's like they Joined Red Cross"

MISSISSAUGA-BRAMPTON - 160 employees at Victorian Order of Nurses join SEIU
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Ontario’s top home care union continued to grow after 160 VON workers in Mississauga/Brampton joined SEIU on April 21, 2009. SEIU Local 1 Canada, representing nearly 6,000 home care workers, is the largest home care union in Ontario.
“SEIU won the certification vote by 83 percent,” said Ken Evett, lead organizer for the campaign. “VON workers overwhelmingly supported SEIU because of our union’s excellent reputation in the home care sector.”
Ken also stated that many workers at VON were not happy with the lackluster support home care receives from the provincial government. Lack of funding hinders their ability to provide quality health care their clients depend on.
The VON workers were excited to join the fight to improve home care in Ontario.
SEIU Local 1 Canada is an Organizing Union that represents more than 46,000 health care and community services workers in Ontario. Its members work in hospitals, home care, nursing and retirement homes and community services.

Taken from SEIU Loucal 1. Web page.


NOOOOOOO, it more like they joined Red Cross:

That’s too bad: Workers at Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) are in for a surprise: It is almost four months since they are members of SEIU and they may still be waiting for another eight months before the get close to a collective agreement they can ratify. Trust me if it happens before the twelve months that means some sweet deals will have to be made to complete the process of getting a signed, sealed and deliver agreement on SEIU’s part.

Let’s make note of life before SEIU. VON community homecare workers have or had one of the best working conditions known in community homecare. Their pay, well, everyone always wants more, but the truth is they were paid better than Red Cross workers. They had a pension, benefits (not Global), they had full time, part time and casual positions to choose from, paid travel they had what we once did (before SEIU), now that will all change. The only known and mutual issue the workers had with VON management was Respect and Recognition and Favoritisms. Which are tangible issues and one should be able to get by with their day-to-day work a union can’t settle tangible issues not when you don’t even work with your employer in the community. SEIU should have been able to let them know this…. UNLESS…SEIU truly believe that they can get them more….more than what they got us over the course of how many years now? They will lose everything to be re-negotiated at the bargaining table. Ooops there goes pension! And Ooops Global’s in like a dirty shirt! SEIU will take that over to benefit Global who can’t seem too offer anything good to community workers. That’s one reason why Red Cross is smiling form ear to ear and won’t even answer any question to do with benefit (see your “stewards” as I have been told who, have no real info to share from SEIU and Global). When it comes to recognition and respect SEIU could tell you a thing or two about those issues they are the best in the business in showing favoritisms and no respect when it comes to their own employees. It’s too bad no one thought about asking the organizers about their treatment with SEIU. Let’s not forget that SEIU had not settled their contract with the Representative’s (Rep’s), Organizers and other workers employed by them, it’s been some months now they have been working without a contract…How hypocritical is that my sisters and brothers a union fighting a union (Teamsters vs. SEIU).

I would be very interested in what was the skit the organizers said and promised while they went door knocking. They should have told them to hang on to what you got baby these are tough times to take a chance to lose anything that you got…..and a good chance you have to start all over again.

Let us pray for our now new sisters and brothers. …That the twelve months runs out and they can continue with what they have and let SEIU organize the workers that really need help with their employer. Such as, workers working 7 days a week 12 hrs. per day shifts with no over time pay, paid minimum wage and need a sounding board where health and safety standards are not even known. There right under their noses in Ontario that’s whom they should be fighting for. The union movement is more than just collecting dues SEIU!! ---“Any way’s that’s my take on it”.

Sorry VON…should have done some homework talk to Red Cross workers and asked about our contract, the implications with CCAC and not answer your door. Also, don’t forget to ask the question of the 160 workers at VON how many came out to vote to make 83%. They are so funny!!! We will talk numbers later:

SEIU USA- "007 Secret Agent Sequel"

HUMMMMMM, Should we not be asking "What the H--- is our dues servicing if not servicing the membership in Canada....All we have been asking is Transparency, Transparency PLEASE"

Please read the website included in the doc. below for more info. on the article
"Redshadow"




Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 18:49
Email to friend < href=""> Printer-friendly
SEIU logo The ongoing battle between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and a major California health care workers affiliate for the last several months has been its special-ops phase. And the parent union, not happy over its sudden bad publicity, may owe a substantial sum to the security firm it hired to keep the peace. On May 1, the OSO Group, Ltd. sued the SEIU
and an allied security firm in San Francisco federal court , demanding back payment for surveillance and security services related to a trusteeship that the SEIU imposed upon the dissident Oakland-Calif.-based United Health Workers-West (UHW) in January. OSO has close ties to a union-busting company that broke a UHW strike four years ago.
What is OSO Group? Say this about it: It's not your average security firm. Based in San Francisco with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Ireland and several Asian countries, the company describes itself as "the first commercial counter-espionage group established in the private sector." With a leadership heavily represented by ex-Secret Service, FBI and CIA agents, OSO is positioned to engage in high-level private-sector spying. And spying is what Service Employees President Andrew Stern felt was needed to keep a lid on the UHW-West situation. For the last couple years he and UHW President Sal Rosselli have been locked in a feud over economic and internal governance issues. The battle culminated in late January when Stern replaced Rosselli with a trusteeship, alleging Rosselli and his people had misused local funds and refused to accept an SEIU reorganization plan. The next day, Rosselli, backed by more than 100 officers and board members, announced the 150,000-member UHW was disaffiliating from the two-million-member SEIU to lead a new nationwide entity, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
Stern already had set the wheels in motion to enforce the new regime. According to OSO's lawsuit, the company began its espionage on behalf of the Services Employees International Union on January 15. It deployed $110-an-hour off-duty and retired armed plainclothes agents to conduct 24/7 car surveillance of UHW offices. Spooks also photographed and videotaped UHW members and staff arriving at and leaving from work, and provided round-the-clock "protection services" to visiting SEIU executives and drivers involved in secret meetings with hospital CEOs, and California legislators and staff. It proved to be an expensive proposition. The suit states the SEIU's demand for security and drivers "continued to increase exponentially at business facilities, hotels and private residences." OSO operated out of a "command post" at an Oakland hotel to "coordinate the large amount of manpower, logistics and scheduling."
The Service Employees union also allegedly had OSO infiltrate UHW-West meetings. The lawsuit indicates that the SEIU directed OSO Group agents to conduct "a security and surveillance operation" targeting thousands of UHW members who attended five union meetings in schools and auditoriums across California on January 24. Union members at those meetings discussed the merits of the parent union's demand that UHW transfer its 65,000 long-term care members to a new union without a vote. The OSO Group reportedly prepared an advance written plan, "Security Operations Plan for SEIU," for SEIU's chief security consultant, Bullock & Associates, which is listed with SEIU as a defendant.
SEIU's choice of OSO Group to do its dirty work makes a certain sense. A top OSO executive, Garnett Williams, an ex-Secret Service agent, is a former official of the Steele Foundation, a San Francisco-based consultant hired by Sutter Health to break a two-month strike by hundreds of UHW members in 2005. At one point during the strike, security guards reportedly kicked and punched workers, mostly women, on the picket line. One striker, Lorena Hernandez, was hospitalized after a guard knocked her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly in the abdomen. The lawsuit claims that SEIU officials contacted Williams on January 14, 2009 through a former Secret Service agent to request OSO's assistance in putting UHW under trusteeship. Less than two seeks later, trusteeship hearing officer Ray Marshall, a former Labor Secretary (under Carter), presented the findings of his investigation to the SEIU executive board. Coincidence or not, call it good timing.
If the SEIU and OSO Group had a close relationship, it didn't last long. The international union either couldn't - or wouldn't - pay its bills for services rendered. OSO in turn is demanding payment of $924,434.13 plus fees, cost and interest; the union already has paid for another roughly $1.25 million in services. It's claiming breach of contract, fraud and negligent representation by SEIU and Bullock. Andrew Stern is bent on consolidating power in the service of a long-range goal of expanding organized labor's ranks. Whether or not he and loyalists have committed civil wrongdoing, the affair is indicative of something wrong in American unions. We're used to stories of companies spying on union employees. A union spying on its own appears to be something new. (U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, 5/1/09; indybay.com, 5/6/09).

* Andrew Stern

* Bullock & Associates
* Garnett Williams

* OSO Group Ltd.

* Sal Rosselli

* Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
* Union Corruption Update
* United Healthcare Workers (UHW)


* Carl Horowitz's blog

Notice: Red Cross Workers-Stat Holiday

You will be called in to the office individually and by seniority to identify your stat holidays that you want for this year 2009/2010, which this year is halfway done...and why do we need to be called in to the office to do this? Were not sure but, it only takes a few minutes and it's mandatory.. meaning that you must attend when called and claim when calling in your time also include your kilometers...don't for get.

The Stat holiday which they recognize are:
New Years Day Labour Day
Good Friday Thanksgiving
Victoria Day Christmas Day
Canada Day Boxing Day
Family Day

*see artical 17:0 page 28 of our collective agreement or The Road To Travel Time (more like the road to slavery) page 18*

Any questions call your "STEWARDS"

Email: Something Stinks At SEIU

**this email is a little long but, you should read this from "EMMA" This was sent during the hospital distrubance. Humber went to vote today (Hummmm).**

Brothers and Sisters,

There have not been any missives from Emma in a while. But I think it is high time that folks started talking about what's happening out there at SEIU Local1.Canada. As members and supporters of the labour movement, we need to know what's happening and we need to do what we can to support union democracy and build stronger unions.

Things at Local 1 are a complete shambles. From across the province, all we keep hearing are complaints:

It's taking months or years for grievances to get to arbitration; at downtown hospitals, it's not uncommon for it to take a year just to get to step 2.

Reps are either so overworked they don't have time to provide service to their units, or they're the handpicked "flunkies" of President Sharleen Stewart and don't bother doing much of anything

Sharleen and her cronies just keep on firing folks and our dues keep on paying for the secret settlements for their wrongful dismissals - in the last two years, the local has spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts to staff who have filed wrongful dismissal grievances; I can't tell you how many hundreds of thousands because Sharleen and company won't release that information - even to the Executive Board

Here's what we know for sure, though... she's terminated legal counsel, the chief negotiator on the staff union, half a dozen organizers, Ron Roscoe - who used to be president of 532 and was running the Hamilton office, a number of reps. They've all filed grievances or launched law suits and those that have been settled have been settled with cash payouts from Local 1 that come with gag orders. Here's my question, if those folks weren't fired unjustly then why is Sharleen Stewart wasting my dues paying out huge settlements. And just how much has she paid out? That money should be used to provide services to members.

Sharleen decided to close down the National organizing office, so she laid off all the organizers working there. Of course, her brother Ken Evett was hired by Local 1. So now, our dues pay out $75,000 in salary and benefits to Sharleen's brother and the same amount or more to her daughter Richelle. And that doesn't include per diems and "expense accounts" and gas money.

There are no opportunities for members to speak out about any of this because there are rarely meetings of the members any more. Nobody I know can remember when the last regional meeting was held. And unit meetings don't give us a chance to talk to folks we don't already know. The whole goal of the local is to keep members in the dark and keep us apart.

Even the committees we used to serve on are being turned into tiny little elitist groups. They've done away with the political action committee and invented something called MAP (the memebers' action program). Not only are they unwilling to pay members who are seconded from work to assist with campaigns, they are actually demanding that members who join this new committee pay an additional $60 in membership fees. This is shameful. How much more of our money do Sharleen Stewart and her cronies need to get their hands on?

The service we're getting at our units just keeps getting worse and worse, but our money is used for everything except supporting our members. Reps drop grievances and don't even bother to tell the stewards. They call meetings and don't bother to show up.

Last month, there was a day of action to help influence the opening of hospital negotiations with OHA. Barely a handful of members showed up at most sites. More embarrassingly, the organizers and reps who were supposed to attend didn't show up either. So, folks were left standing on the sidewalks with no pickets, no pamphlets, and no idea of why they were wasting their lunch hours when Sharleen's hand-picked few didn't even bother to show up.

The organizing department at Local 1 spends a gigantic chunk of our dues and for what? They've barely managed to organize any new units in the last two years. And those they have organized, by and large, still don't have contracts.

Sharleen Stewart sends out press releases and tells us that she's sent a huge chunk of our dues south of the border to support SEIU's American presidential campaign, but she is so poorly respected here in Ontario that she can't even get the Ontario Hospital Association to sit down and negotiate with her.

This last little while, there has been a newly formed union - The Ontario Workers Union - trying to get members from the hospitals to change unions. I never thought I'd say this, but I think the time may have come. This new union has been formed by ex Board members, staff, members, and stewards of Local 1 and says they want to offer some positive democratic options for members. Well, I think it's about time.

Of course, Local 1 is doing what it always does in the face of any sort of democratic choice or option. What I'm hearing from my friends in the hospital units is that Sharleen has got dozens of organizers and staff out at the hospitals trying to discourage members from signing cards with this union. And how are they doing that? Well, they can't stand on their record and say what a great job they've done. If they'd done a great job, members wouldn't be so anxious to switch unions. So, instead they're telling lies and using scare tactics. They're telling folks that if they join a different union, they'll lose benefits, see wage cuts, layoffs, etc etc. Well, here's a news bulletin. Read the labour laws of this province. When workers choose to leave their union and join another during the open period, there's an absolute freeze in place. Everything stays the same until there's a new contract. It's basically a guarantee that workers will do better with their new union, because they're guaranteed an improvement on the status quo.

In addition to the lies, Sharleen is using her other favorite scare tactic - the huge lawsuit. She's slapped two of the founding officers of the new union with a $5 million lawsuit. Because she knows she can't afford to let members make an honest democratic choice. So, she'll waste our money suing folks who are trying to give us a choice and a chance to build something better.

The last time members of SEIU tried to break away and have a more democratic union, which means: broader members consultation on a regular basis, financial accountability more direct servicing and legal services and keeping our money in Canada, SEIU spent $10 million dollars (yes, you read that right, $10 million) scare- mongering members away from forming their own union. They also launched expensive lawsuits and called in staff from across the country and the US to help prevent members from exercising their democratic rights. Is that a responsible use of your dues money? She's spending our money to prevent us from having the chance to make our own choice.

Some of the organizers and staff that Sharleen has deployed to try to stop folks from joining the new union are telling members that they shouldn't join a union that doesn't even have business cards. Well, here's my thought.... I'd rather join a union that didn't waste money on fancy paint jobs on expensive vehicles for its executive and directors to ride around in, and bells and whistles, and mugs, and baubles. I'd rather join a union that put workers first and spent our money on us, instead of on luxury accommodations for them. By the way, the new union does have a website (www.ontarioworkersunion.com ), even if they don't have fancy letterhead.

Here's an idea. Take the tens of thousands of dollars (maybe more) that this lawsuit is costing and spend it on servicing the hospitals better. Then workers wouldn't be tempted to join a new union.

I'm not asking folks to jump unions. I'm suggesting that we all weigh our options carefully and hear what the new union has to say and judge Local 1.Canada (I wonder how much it cost to change the name of the union? That was probably tens of thousands of dollars of our dues money spent so Sharleen could have more bragging rights) by its past performance and its willingness to be open and honest. If there's nothing to hide, then there's no reason these questions shouldn't be answered.

So, I ask publicly once again for some short sweet answers from Sharleen Stewart:

How much is she paying herself as president of the local, as national president, in bonuses, in expenses, in per diems?

How much are the other executive officers making, including the new RPN division head?

How much is she paying the various directors and Manny Carvallho, her special assistant?

How much money has the organizing department spent in the last two years?

How many new members have they organized? I notice on the website, a big hullaballoo about some RNs that were organized at Fairview Nursing Home but it doesn't say how many. I'm guessing it's probably half a dozen. So, I ask at what cost?

How many members have we lost to de-certification?

How much money have we paid out in settlements to terminated staff?

How many times have we been sued or charged with Human Rights complaints?

How much are we blowing on legal fees to deal with Sharleen's firing rampages, or to try to silence people trying to exercise their democratic options?


There are many more questions than these that need answers. But getting this information would be a decent start.


In solidarity,

emma
Date: Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 1:16 AM

SEIU What A Conundrum (CRISIS)

For the past couple of weeks our union SEIU’s true colors have been exposed. Today, they are in the midst of loosing some dues…(a lot of dues) meaning that they are being challenged by their membership in the hospital sectors of the GTA. At the forefront Ontario Workers Union (I believe that’s the correct name) a new union created I believe to give health care workers under SEIU and other unions a choice, support, and educate the membership in unionisms and fairness. Humber North Finch hospital is going for a vote within a week’s time.

This type of action could result in a movement of Sharlene Steward in stepping down from president and her oval office along with overpaid do nothing, less than white-collar (wannabe’s) leadership who find it very comfortable in keeping the members as ourselves in the dark when it comes to “What has the Union done for us” cliché but, what they SHOULD be saying in public is “Its not what your union (SEIU) can do for you but, what you can do for your leadership”. Keeping them in high paying jobs from our dues, able to pick and choose whom they would like to work at SEIU not from the membership but from their friends and family and pay them well from dues while mocking those people (the membership) who make their high paying jobs possible with member hard working dues in these times of the economy.

But, ask what have they given back to the membership or any retiree from any unit and how consistent are they in doing so. No recognition to membership unless they are looking for more handouts for some cause where they have had a bright idea or SEIU-USA needs their support from our dues.

What support have they even given Stewards and Chief Stewards in helping them support flimsy contracts? They won’t even ensure that each and every worker had 1. a collective agreement booklet for their unit and 2. A copy of the constitution. I’m sure when they wanted to sell the MAP program (you don’t really want to know what they want to do with the monies collected-that’s another discussion and you should not be support this) and sent out letters to the membership that was important for them to begging for extra money from the membership but, as for copies of the constitution and collective agreements they cant afford the printing of and the stamp to send to our homes…is this not what our paying dues also include, without these there is no union; this is just another way keeping us under thumb.

Many of these workers at the GTA hospitals know nothing about SEIU as like we Red Cross workers in the community. Many didn’t even know that SEIU Local 1 president was even female to boot. Now these workers have a choice and I hope they use it well at time of voting. They have nothing to loose by changing unions and the labour board supports this as part of free choice. When your service is not working or not producing for the money your spending it’s time for a change or don’t spend at all. Look at the garbage around you that makes up any collective agreement where SEIU is involved this is just common sense- ya think!! Remember Red Cross Workers our contract is up again June 2010 are we ready to make that change…

Annual Canadian Red Cross Safety Stars Program

Did you know that there is an Annual Canadian Red Cross Safety Stars Program?
That recognizes staff that put safety first. The people are nominated for this award are individuals who personify CRC safety standards in their provision of service to clients, customers and each other. Their names should have been posted on the OHS Board as a nominee.

The HR department will then examine the nominations for a couple of weeks and them make a decision on the awards. Two awards are given. One to the CSW/Administrative Staff and one to Supervisors/Manager/Director. The names of these awards winners are then posted on the corporate awards board. In addition the branch will receive a plaque and the winner will also receive a plaque. Apparently the announcement was made in May 2009. But was not announced publicly and the only way to know who the winners were you would have to go into your branch to see what was posted on the board….

I think this should have been posted by voice mail. A request to our union rep. to acknowledge any CSW who may have won this award because it has to do with Safety in the workplace. Lets see if Management is up with that request….