SEIU 1021 members at Alameda Health System (AHS) took the witness stand at a Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) hearing this past week. They were there to support the union’s unfair labor practice (ULP) prosecution against AHS for retaliating against a peaceful, union-led campaign last fall at AHS.

The campaign, held in response to the escalating violence in Gaza and the Israeli government’s targeting of hospitals there, put forward several demands for AHS. Those included demands to divest AHS funds from companies profiting from the Israeli government’s destruction of Palestinian healthcare infrastructure. 

Management responded to the campaign by threatening discipline up to and including termination if SEIU 1021 members continued to use the courtyard to oppose Israel’s disproportionate response to the attacks of October 7, 2023. This threat also reversed years of hospital policy that placed no restrictions on union activity in the AHS courtyard. 

AHS workers have played a vital role in SEIU 1021’s calls for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine. They were also instrumental in Alameda County’s decision to divest from a company supplying bulldozers to the Israeli military. Their demonstration at AHS was part of their own and SEIU 1021’s positions on Israel/Palestine, which are based on the union’s commitment to global solidarity.

The recent PERB hearing brought powerful testimony from workers who participated in the campaign. Among them was longtime nurse and SEIU 1021 shop steward Felix Thomson, whose public comments at the AHS Board of Trustees meeting from November 29, 2023, were entered into evidence at PERB. A day after being threatened with termination, Thomson told the AHS Board that her commitment to the campaign and to the AHS is driven by the Jewish principle of tikkun olam, which is a call to repair the world.

Thomson told the Board that this principle should compel the Board to adopt a sister hospital in Palestine to facilitate professional and technical exchanges between medical professionals that serve marginalized populations wracked by gun violence and a financially strained public health system. For Thomson, this program would directly mitigate the suffering being experienced in Palestine today and “[let us] do what we do best, which is strengthening the healthcare infrastructure for people in need.”  

SEIU CIR member Raghav Goyal, a third-year emergency medicine resident at Highland Hospital, also testified about his participation in the campaign. His comments to the Board echoed Thomson’s:  “It is our duty as healthcare workers to name the intentional erasure of an entire healthcare architecture, to call attention to the vast horizons of trauma that stretch out ahead of the Palestinian people, and the horizon of displacement and pain that brought them here today.”

At a time when workers across the country face discipline for political speech and moral expression in the workplace, SEIU 1021 remains committed to defending workers’ rights. 

We will continue to provide updates on developments in this critical case.