Today, SEIU will take what could be a first step toward undemocratically transferring up to 65,000 members of United Healthcare Workers West into another SEIU local with lower standards and a less successful organizing record. It’s not a done deal, but if history is any indication, SEIU may try to deny union members a fair vote on this upcoming decision.

What’s happening today and tomorrow is a “fact-finding” hearing on the issue of “long-term care jurisdiction in California.” What this means is: which local union will nursing home and homecare workers be members of? UHW's nursing home and homecare members already know the answer; they voted overwhelmingly in March to stay united with hospital workers in UHW. However, SEIU is forging ahead with what appears to be a plan to dismantle UHW.

It’s an important issue, because combining local unions and coordinating across industry lines has been a key component of SEIU’s strategy in recent years. Locals 250 and 399 voted in 2004 to merge and form UHW—our members knew we were stronger as a single, statewide healthcare workers union, rather than two separate local unions. In other states, combining and realigning jurisdiction has also occurred.

However, the process must be democratic. Under SEIU’s current by-laws, there is no guarantee of a fair vote for members who could be moved from one local to another, or merged. When dozens of small SEIU locals in California were consolidated into four large locals in 2006, the votes of the members were pooled—meaning the members of a small local could have voted 100 percent against the merger and still been forced into a merger.

The process also shouldn't be politically motivated or structured to award political allies. In Illinois, SEIU just merged long term care and hospital locals into one mega local. But here in California, SEIU is insisting that long term care workers need to be in their own union, separate from hospital workers. When California's long term care union has achieved lower standards and not succeeded in organizing more workers, it's difficult to understand how SEIU could think UHW's nursing home and homecare members would be better served by moving into that union.

One of the constitutional amendments that we are bringing to the SEIU Convention in June will guarantee a fair election process for any future mergers, consolidations, or other jurisdictional moves. The amendment would require a majority of all votes together, and a majority in each affected local. That means a 100,000-member local could not simply swallow a 5,000-member local just because the bigger one wanted to.

We’ll be posting more on the jurisdictional issue and the hearing process later this week, including why it’s better for nursing home and homecare workers to be in the same union as hospital workers.