Sutter Health’s physician organizations, hospitals, home health and other services have nearly 60 locally-negotiated collective bargaining agreements with 17 different labor unions. In total, approximately 12,600 employees have elected to work under labor union contracts. Sutter Health and its affiliates employ a total of about 40,000 people.

Our affiliates and employees take pride in the fact that the vast majority of labor relationships within our network are positive and constructive, with management and labor representatives sharing a commitment to working together in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect.

SEIU United Healthcare Workers West
Unfortunately, leaders of one labor union – the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West – are undertaking an unusually adversarial and high-profile approach in their dealings with us.

For the past several years, SEIU has been conducting an aggressive negative misinformation campaign against the provider organizations that comprise Sutter Health.

These pages will provide more detailed information:

• Learn more about SEIU's misinformation campaign
• Learn the truth about SEIU’s specific allegations
• Q & A about SEIU's campaign
• SEIU – actions against patients and caregivers

What others have to say

The real and deceitful motives behind SEIU’s corporate campaign strategy were further exposed and criticized in an April 21, 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal described how SEIU’s President Andy Stern championed legislation that would have cut off important sources of capital to the Manor Care nursing home chain, whose employees the union is trying to organize. Although the Assembly bill's "ostensible purpose was to target sovereign wealth funds in countries with spotty human rights records. . . the real impetus for the bill was to help the SEIU organize employees of ManorCare,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Interestingly, the SEIU’s selective list of human rights violators did not include China because that country’s sovereign wealth fund invests with a private equity firm friendly to the union. According to the editorial, “Mr. Stern’s campaign is typically expressed in moral terms on behalf of ‘working families,’ but in Mr. Stern’s moral universe all is forgiven if you play ball with his union.”

The Journal went on to note that “Ever since the SEIU broke from the AFL-CIO, its ability to prosper has depended on growing the union. Sometimes the union’s efforts to expand have even led it afoul of the law.”

Related New Article

From the San Francisco Weekly

SEIU Local 250, which once waged a bitter corporate campaign against nursing homes, has achieved a controversial "alliance" with the industry.
Read the SF Weekly article here.