John August's Cool Office inside Kaiser's HQ

John August's office... inside Kaiser's HQ

Check out a nifty website prepared by Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. The site -- www.bargaining2012.org -- offers all kinds of helpful information about the contract negotiations that begin Tuesday March 6.

Here are some of Tasty’s favorite web-pages:

On this page, Kaiser workers can see how Dave Regan and John August have already laid workers' health, pension and retiree health benefits in the middle of the bargaining table so Kaiser execs can slice and dice them into smithereens. Here’s what the page says (click on the image to enlarge it):

Of course, these are the same exact areas of benefit cuts that have provoked multiple strikes by members of NUHW, the California Nurses Association and the Operating Engineers… even as SEIU worked hand-in-hand with Kaiser to undermine the strikes.

On this page, we learn that Kaiser and its labor partners will reach a settlement after only 15 days of bargaining! That’s right --- the deal will be done on May 10th.

And Tasty likes this statement about local bargaining:

Local agreements? Who needs ‘em! After all, they only address trivial matters like pay equity between geographic regions, seniority, workload, wage adjustments for various job classifications, career ladders, safety standards for health workers, etc. Tasty hears that Regan simply isn't interested in work standards and contract enforcement. In fact, in 2010, Regan was supposed to negotiate a new local agreement for SEIU-UHW’s members, but… err… it never happened.

And this little gem is super defensive:

Now... Tasty would never, ever suggest that John August and Dave Regan have already cut a deal "outside the scheduled bargaining session!" After all, it’s totally reasonable that the partnership unions will agree to slash the hard-earned benefits of their 92,000 members after just “the third session of national bargaining."

Tasty must admit, however, that he got a tad bit suspicious when he learned that John August, the chief negotiator for the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, actually has an office INSIDE Kaiser’s 28-story national headquarters at the Ordway Building in Oakland, CA (see the picture at the top). And that's the SAME building where Kaiser’s chief negotiator -- Chuck Columbus -- also happens to have an office... along with CEO George Halvorson and all of Kaiser’s top H.R. officials and executives.

But hey... there's simply no chance in hell that they occasionally grab lunch together… or spend days on end cutting backroom deals in the top-floor conference rooms of Kaiser’s HQ.