Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Zombies botch their own fake news!

To distract us from all the bad news, Zombie UHW put out a press release touting their fine negotiating skills, entitled "SEIU-UHW Members' Wage Increases Far Exceed the National Average."


The release contained this gem: "3% [negotiated increases] at John Muir Medical Centers in Brentwood, Concord, and Walnut Creek"


If you're going to pay money to distribute your own fake news item on the PRNewswire, you might as well try to get your fake news right: UHW does not represent the workers at John Muir Medical Center in Brentwood or in Walnut Creek. Only the Concord campus is in UHW.


This is a press release apparently written by someone in UHW who knows so stunningly little about the hospitals they're writing about (and the epic 10+ year campaign to attempt to organize the Walnut Creek and Brentwood campuses) that they probably just looked up "John Muir Medical Center" on the web to find the names of their campuses, and vapidly typed them into the press release.

What's worse, no one in the Zombie UHW among the many whom must have reviewed the release -- including Trustee Overlord Dave Regan, who was quoted in the release -- noticed the error... ...for they have not a clue in the world.

Not mentioned in the (disingenuous) paid self promotion piece (which no media outlet has seen fit to publish), is the fact that these "wage gains" ...

A. Are less than what had been achieved per year in UHW represented hospitals prior to the trusteeship, and

B. Came, in many cases, as the result of GIVE BACKS, which evidently didn't pass the SEIU Communications Department's focus group test for "evoking pride," and so, therefore, were not mentioned.


Example: They didn't mention that at Alameda Hospital, the wage increase was traded for health insurance give backs so major, that the employer crowed over their precedent setting victory in the press. They also failed to mention that Alameda Hospital is now asking UHW for a mid-contract 5% wage give-back.