National Union of Healthcare Workers

NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE WORKERS. Within a decade of its founding, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) represented thousands of hospital, clinic, and nursing home workers in California at worksites from San Diego in the south to Eureka in the far north.

Organized in San Francisco in 2009, in the wake of SEIU’s trusteeship of its largest California local, NUHW grew to more than 15,000 members, overwhelmingly service, technical workers and nursing assistants, but also nurses and other professionals in about fifty bargaining units. The only healthcare union showing such growth, NUHW operated independently of any national labor organization, but affiliated with the San Francisco, North Bay, Monterey, Orange, San Diego and Inland Empire AFL-CIO Labor Councils. The union became widely known for its militant contract campaigns, as well as its involvement in progressive causes such as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, the on-going fight for Medicare-for-All, immigrant rights on the border, and mental healthcare parity.

NUHW aimed to establish unions throughout an industry dominated by giant corporations, bottom-line-driven Behemoth’s even when branded “not-for-profit.” Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente had more than 200,000 employees and $80 billion in reserves in 2018. Providence, the Seattle based chain reported $12 billion in cash reserves in 2019. Its CEO received a salary of more than $10 million, typical of the industry’s profit-maximizing executives. Nursing homes were no different. Seventy-five percent were in for-profit chains. One, the Brius chain, owned eighty facilities, that is, one in fourteen beds in California nursing homes.

NUHW’s organizing model was based in union democracy. In 2014, at its leadership conference in Oakland, the members passed this resolution: “WHEREAS, The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) was founded to ensure that workers are empowered in a member-led, democratic union that stands up both for workers and patients.”

The NUHW’s long-term goal was to create an industrial union, a single union representing all health care workers regardless of position or skill level. NUHW bargaining was open, agreements needing membership approval. The union developed leaders through training, mentorship and outreach, striving to win strong contracts with high standards for workers and patients while continuing to strategically organize non-union healthcare workers and other workers already organized by ineffective, undemocratic unions. Assorted campaigns, from that of parity for mental health to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, were undertaken only after thorough discussion by all concerned members.

Striving to be a model union, NUHW built upon a long tradition of labor unionism in the San Francisco Bay Area, one that goes back to the nation’s very first hospital union. San Francisco General was organized in the 1930s in the heyday of the industrial union movement. In an echo of that and building from the inside, a handful of NUHW members organized Children’s Hospital in Oakland. In 2020 NUHW claimed 1,200 members.

NUHW members pledged to “expose healthcare corporations for putting profits ahead of providing appropriate care for their patients,” to “dedicate ourselves to a watchdog role,” at a time when employers were likely to demand loyalty oaths. They further pledged to work to improve patient care, benefitting workers and patients alike in increased staffing, improved access, higher quality patient care, and expanding influence by developing the political action program.

No other healthcare union came close to NUHW in the number of strikes conducted, strikes that ranged from one-day demonstrations to open-ended strikes. There have been thirty-five since the union’s founding, including the 2011 strike at Kaiser, backed by the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Operating Engineers, that brought out 22,000 workers. In NUHW’s fight with Kaiser for parity in mental healthcare, the union’s 4,000 mental health clinicians –psychologists, therapists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses-- waged a successful five-year battle, including a half-dozen strikes to hold California’s largest HMO accountable to its patients. The strike resulted in Kaiser agreeing to hire 500 additional clinicians and an unprecedented appointment ratio. When later Kaiser reneged, an open-ended strike at Kaiser, planned for summer, 2020, was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The union shifted its efforts into the fight to protect the health and safety of patients and workers.

NUHW supported the Black Lives Matter movement because its own membership predominantly comprised people of color, immigrants and women. Finally, NUHW from its inception opposed US wars in the Middle East. It supported LBGTQ rights and campaigned for Medicare for All. For NUWH, “health care is a human right.”

Early, Steve. The Civil Wars in US Labor. Chicago: Haymarket, 2011.

Winslow, Cal. Labor’s Civil War in California: The NUHW Healthcare Workers’ Rebellion. Oakland: PM Press, 2010.