Imagine this scenario: You’re an SEIU-UHW member at Kaiser Permanente. You have a busy work schedule, lots of bills to pay, and
tons of family responsibilities that barely let you to breathe. Your
cholesterol level and blood pressure are a bit too high. Maybe you’re a bit
overweight. Maybe you smoke.
Not too unusual, right?
Well... imagine this next scenario: Your union --
instead of protecting your privacy and building solidarity among workers -- has secretly implemented a scheme to get your co-workers to
use peer pressure against you in order to force you to lose weight, lower your
blood pressure, etc.
Sounds pretty cynical, underhanded
and disgusting, right? Well… welcome to Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW!
A source has provided Tasty with an internal SEIU-UHW
planning document that offers a revealing glimpse at Regan’s plan to turn union
member against union member so he can boost Kaiser Permanente’s giant profits.
The internal memo -- which was produced by Steve Trossman’s
Communications Department at SEIU-UHW -- describes a series of communication
strategies and “messages” that are designed to “get people to peer pressure
their friends” in order to produce bigger profits for Kaiser. That's right. SEIU-UHW is using your own dues money
to turn your co-workers against you.
Here’s an excerpt from the SEIU-UHW memo (the full memo is
posted below):
So how does the scheme work?
Under Regan’s Wellness Program,
Kaiser will measure each worker’s body-mass index (BMI), cholesterol levels, blood
pressure and smoking rate once a year. A portion of workers’ future pay -- a bonus -- is tied to reducing these so-called “biometric risk indicators” by 5% over a four-year period AND saving Kaiser money on its health plan.
The bonus is tied to workers’ "group" performance. So... one
worker might begin running marathons. But if his co-worker keeps on eating BLTs for lunch, then everyone's bonus is in jeopardy.
That’s where Regan’s cynical system of peer pressure kicks in. Under
his plan, SEIU-UHW chooses certain employees to become SEIU-UHW “Wellness
Ambassadors.” These “Wellness Cops” are paid by Kaiser to go from one department
to the next in order to foment relentless waves of peer pressure that are targeted at “unhealthy”
workers.
Of course, Kaiser officials are willing partners in this purple scheme. Kaiser will be supplying “granular data” to SEIU-UHW about employees’ health
performance so the peer pressure can be more carefully targeted. In fact, Regan will even even use John August’s “Unit-Based Teams”
to help instigate the intensifying system of peer pressure.
Here’s the full SEIU-UHW memo with an arrow in the margin to indicate the discussion of "peer pressure." Tasty can only imagine the other planning documents circulating at SEIU-UHW and Kaiser.
