Optical workers at Kaiser Permanente in the North Bay and elsewhere in Northern California voted to remain with the National Union of Healthcare Workers-California Nurses Association over its rival, the Service Employees International Union.
The vote yesterday was 214 for NUHW and 103 for SEIU, according to Oakland-based NUHW.
It "was a clear affirmation that optical workers at Kaiser continue to support standing up to Kaiser's cuts and reject SEIU's culture of conciliation and collusion with management," NUHW said in a statement.
The National Labor Relations Board tallied the votes, which included 43 optical workers in Marin, Sonoma and Solano counties, with the highest concentration in Santa Rosa, according to NUHW spokesman Leighton Woodhouse. There were 22 challenged votes and three for neither union, according to NUHW.
SEIU filed a petition with the NLRB to decertify the optical unit three months ago, during the larger election. But Kaiser optical workers have remained with NUHW.
The win for NUHW comes shortly after SEIU-UHW claimed victory in the high-stakes, high-profile election to represent some 45,000 statewide Kaiser workers, a pitched battle that transpired over two years. In 2010, SEIU-UHW defeated NUHW by a margin of nearly 60 percent; in May, more than two years after NUHW contested the original results, SEIU won again by a slimmer margin.
