The amazing shrinking case against NUHW

First it was a $25 million claim for damages, then $4.18 million now a piddly $225,000?! When will the Zombies throw in the towel and slink back to Washington, DC?

Also, the best estimate for the SEIU legal bill is $10 million dollars. And that's for 2 weeks worth of work, sound familiar?

Despite being $20 billion in the hole, Governor finds way to harrass IHSS consumers

I guess it isn't enough that the Governor has had IHSS providers (workers) in his crosshairs since the day he took office. Apparently our (both providers and consumers (clients)) mere existence is unacceptable. Always looking for a new and devastating way to burn his fellow Californians, he's going after IHSS consumers (clients). You know, the low income elderly and disabled not to mention usually frail neighbors and family we care for that are our neighbors, friends and family. My friend's who cares for his father with dementia, my wife with Cerebral Palsy, my friend who cares for her child with Spina Bifida these are the latest group he's added to his list of usual suspects. This man has no conscious: he'll attack the poor and weak to perpetuate the illusion his efforts are saving money. But as I've written before the pennies he's saving are far outweighed by the dollars he's spending. Take, for example, the $3.5 million spent in Sacramento County to find fraud. Nineteen cases of fraud were detected for their efforts. That is a monumental waste of our, the taxpayers, money and an affront to 99% of honest IHSS providers. Now his administration is mulling over the purchase several hundred of these "MorphoTrak 'mobile biometric identification' device[s]". I checked out their website and found 2 devices that seem to fit the description in the Sacramento Bee article. Clearly this is speculative, but these devices seem overpriced and are more like mobile homecare terrorizing devices. Take your pick. What's next: a 1984-esque television that watches back?

See, if the guy gathering your information just smiles at you  it's make the criminalization of your job/disability so much easier to swallow! Seriously what a condescending smirk!

Or how about this one. Why not just go for broke and bring a lie detector to every consumer's house?

I see a few problems with the devices and their use. Here in Sonoma county, and I presume other organized counties, the contract between the county and the union reaffirms the long standing (e.g. before unionization) consumer right to "[d]etermine in advance and under all circumstances who may and may not enter their home." This is from section 3.1 (A) (3) of all contracts since we became organized in Sonoma county. What if a consumer can't come to the door? Hmmmmm. This privacy clause applies to unannounced house visits, but the Zombies are too busy hiring an army of lawyers from 4 law firms to fight NUHW in court next week to care about what really matters.

Second is the cost of these devices. These devices appear to be functionally equivalent to what I've listed below, at a price well below the 5 grand estimated cost of these mobile terrorizing units. Is this the best the Governator can come up with to fight fraud and save money? He can have both without spending a fortune of taxpayers money (which is not his money).

Finger print scanner: $39-$64
Digital camera: $29 & up
Netbook (a stripped down notebook computer): $250 & up (or better yet this one)

Add them up and what do you get, outside of a vendor who found a pot of gold hiding in the state budget?

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$318 (just under $350 with tax)

The software to operate the fingerprint reader is included with the reader itself and any computer from 2001 forward can retrieve pictures from a digital camera with any additional software.

Finally, as stated in the article the new legislation does not mention photographing consumers. Sounds like the State is getting in on the harassment of consumers normally performed by fraudsters.

So it appears that yet again the Governator's plans to destroy homecare will cost far money than it can ever hope to save. I'm so happy he's terming out of office next year.

Desperate for attention, Zombies inform Candians about UHW trials

You know nobody cares about your cause when a majorly trumped up trial against former employees can't garner any free media attention. Shown below are the identically worded and the only press coverage about the upcoming trial. Both are from pay-to-play PR websites featuring the same tired arguments trotted out against the former leaders. This is evidence of yet another basic principle of interpersonal relations lost on the Zombies: if you have to pay someone to publicize your point of view then this should be a pretty good sign about the world's view of your argument. Put another way: Listen here Zombies, no one cares about your bogus trial. This is clearly an attempt to discredit NUHW, squander ever more dues paying members money on a futile effort and run NUHW out of town. In a year since the disastrous trusteeship can the Zombies point to one legitimate victory for their members? Zombies, feel free to chime in. I check my email frequently!

From what I've heard the trial will be 2 weeks long and the hearing officer is tightly limiting the focus, so much so that there is only 18 hours of testimony (per side) divided among the 26-ish former employees being questioned. At best this is just over 40 minutes per witness ! Is that worth the Zombies time and money? Of course not, but the Zombies are hell-bent on making an example of NUHW, and I suspect they will end up shooting themselves in the foot. Also, the judge has barred the Zombies from seeking damages for the Memorial and Fresno elections.

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For my readers who want to support NUHW the trial is in San Francisco starting Monday, March 22. I've been told since the Zombies are likely to make a circus of the trial supporters of NUHW are encouraged to take the high road and just wear NUHW button to show support. The hours and address of the trial are shown just above the Like Minded Folks sidebar.

Here's the same bit published in Canada. Canada! Do you think anyone in Canada cares about what is going on in California? Or is this just a sign of how desperate the Zombies are to get their point of view across

Will they succeed in their goals? No, but I'm sure it will backfire on them horribly, and we'll all be having a good gut laugh once this charade is through. More as it comes: the saga of David v. Goliath is only going to get better!

Zombies offer bribe to vote UHW...

...in cake form. Can you believe this nonsense and desperation? Ugh, more of my dues money misspent chasing a Zombie dream that will never be. NUHW staff and workers tell me that Memorial workers scrapped off the all but the NUHW, or threw the whole cake out. At 2 cakes per department, that's a lot of wasted food!

This cake, and several others like it, mysteriously slipped past Memorial security guards at the hospital. If this cake and several known Zombie staffers made it into the hospital unscathed how else might Zombie staff be terrorizing workers around the hospital? Seems like the Zombies snuck a written message past the Sergeant Schultz style security guards, which is a violation of the hospitals own selectively enforced and possibly unwritten security policy. Lax security or sympathetic-to-the-Zombies employer? You make the call.

50-minute rally spawns a really weak mailer

Yesterday, SEIU did what it does best: makes a lot of noise but doesn't say anything of substance. At their rally, the chants were the very popular "We are the union/The mighty, mighty union" and "Hey-hey, ho-ho/NUHW has got to go". To those familiar with union chants the second one is popular because of it's flexibility: replace NUHW with whatever entity is the subject of the chanting and you have an easy-to-pickup rhyme. Even people completely unfamiliar with the situation can fit right in, which is especially useful when none of the people who got off of 2 huge buses rented by the Zombie was employed by Memorial. Among them was a handful of Sonoma county IHSS (homecare) workers, including the Zombie UHW Chicken Lady Maire Melchor, and human-megaphone Mark Nelson, both shown below.

Photo credits: Marie's image is from a frame I pulled out of the Shine a Light video; Mark is on Flikr. Both the video of her and the photo of him were submitted by the Zombies.

It angers me to no end that the Zombies are wasting the dues money of my fellow members and this rally is the latest showcasing of their arrogance and endless spending spree. Two sizable charter buses, 100 + anybody-but-Memorial-employees in attendance, an unknown number of hotel rooms, staff wages, food, gas, whatever bribes were offered and so on for a 50 minute "look at me" rally. Our very own Reefah Joseph was there, looking lost as usual. This really is a mini-Fresno battle.

UPDATE: I asked the folks at Coach 21 (the charter bus company) how many people can fit on a bus: 56. Hmmm so let's do a little math 56 x 2 = 112, but the Zombies claim over 250, which leaves at least 138 or another 2 full buses plus change. Where did they come from? I was there and I saw the a bus unload and 2 buses load up the whole circus. I know at least one Zombie staffer, IHSS (homecare) field rep Reefah Joseph was there so I suspect a number of the circus clowns were SEIU staff who were required to attend.

I'm sure you see the irony, and desperation, of the Zombies using the number 250:  it's nostalgic, and more importantly it's purposely confusing. And what is this "before we vote", "help us win a first contract" and "protect our jobs" nonsense? Do the Zombies really think they have any traction with the workers? The man to the left of the "Don't Be Fooled" sign with the sunglasses holding a sign high above his head seems to be the only one clutching at this long dead belief. I'm sure the Zombies are only interested in protecting their own jobs.

Zombie UHW knows full well why no one is under contract nearly a year after forming. The NLRB used to be in their back pocket but as the NLRB tires of SEIU's abuse of the legal system and their blocking charges fall one by one, the Zombies will slink away to lick their wounds and ponder where they went wrong. If only they had the ability to look at themselves from the outside in.

Southwest Clinic expands, Memorial profits, workers still lose

It's always good to have another perspective on the fiasco at Memorial. Hats off to frequent commenter Don F. who tells me that Memorial has another revenue stream: the leasing of 2,500 square feet of office space to Southwest Community Health Center. Good for Southwest, good for Memorial, but still bad for workers. I can't believe the way management talks out both sides of it's mouth: we have plenty of money for things, but no money people. And without workers to care for patients all this material wealth is useless.