Yesterday the Tech and Service workers at Allegheny General Hospital participated in an election for union representation. To describe it as anything less than a landslide would be an insult to hyperbole. Having just returned from a organizing committee meeting where I got to meet a couple of the AGH workers, and the added fact that I have to still set out the trash and recyclables tonight, means it has already been a long day and I intend to keep this short and sweet. Follow below the orange doodle for a few thoughts and links to local news stories about the election...
Those of you who have bothered to follow my meandering diaries may realize that I've been involved with the SEIU effort to unionize the service workers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for over three years. So how did the workers at AGH manage to beat us to the finish line of a vote on unionization? The simple answer is they didn't get into a boss fight that saw millions spent on union busting efforts and lawyers. Management said their peace, sent out a single mailing to employees, and allowed the SEIU organizers access to the workers in the hospital itself. You may ask how long did the organizers have to work to achieve this goal, and the answer to that is five weeks. Five weeks to get slightly over 80% of the service workers to vote for the union. Five weeks. I'm so jealous that they now get to organize themselves for contract negotiations and all of the other things that union members need to do to be effective. But I'm not bitter, but instead buoyed with the knowledge that these 1100+ workers will now join in the effort to bring the union to UPMC! So we now have the Hospital Workers Rising campaign to rally around. The momentum is building, UPMC has been faltering lately, hopefully our time will also come sooner rather than later.
The promised links -
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
WTOV Fox 9 Stuebenville, Wheeling
Lancaster Online (AP)
If I should find a link to the SEIU news conference held earlier today, I'll update the diary. The Make it Our UPMC campaign has woken the long slumbering union movement that was a giant in this city. Pittsburgh is still a union town, and the giant is on the move! Now I should deal with the much smaller task of moving garbage and recyclables to the curb.