Workers at 3 More CA Facilities Are Bolting SEIU-UHW

SEIU-UHW's Ruben Garcia

It looks like more SEIU-UHW members are abandoning Dave Regan's purple ship.

In recent weeks, workers at three healthcare facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area have requested NLRB elections so they can leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW. Regan has already thrown in the towel on the first election, which is scheduled for next week at Mission Neighborhood Health Clinic in San Francisco.


Apparently, Regan dispatched SEIU-UHW Field Rep Ruben Garcia to beg workers to give SEIU-UHW "just one more chance." Tasty hears that workers sent him packing! So, last week SEIU-UHW officially "disclaimed interest" in representing the workers because it was clear Regan and Co. were gonna get trounced in the election.   

Tasty hears that Garcia is one of the superstars on Regan's staff and is best known for hitting on women and failing spectacularly as a Field Rep and negotiator. Check out the following post about Garcia that was authored by an SEIU member. It describes Garcia's stellar work in 2009 at another Bay Area hospital, where Garcia "assisted management in firing union supporters," according to the worker. At the time, Garcia was a staff member at SEIU Local 1021. 

Here at Highland [Hospital], SEIU 1021 gave us Ruben Garcia to negotiate our contract, nice guy but not a reader or a writer for that matter. After spending a month frustrating and frightening the negotiating team and making love to his I Phone; the team broke into outright revolt and demanded that SEIU provide the team with a real negotiator. Now, one would think after that kind of performance that Mr. Garcia would be quietly re-assigned to a more appropriate environment like Club Med or a Tiki Bar but no Ruben was then put in charge of the “field campaign.” After another month of failure and embarrassment Mr. Garcia was re-assigned yet a third time, this time as a labor representative to work on work-site problems. Now, that’s what I call executive leadership, a single employee demoralized the negotiating team, the workers at large and is now assisting management in firing union supporters in specific departments. SEIU members may not be employed long enough for the PERB [Public Employment Relations Board] to deny them a vote, Ruben’s on the job.

Way to go Andy with people like Ruben working for you, you may succeed in convincing one of the most pro-union hospitals in the country that they would be better off without a union. That might be the only way to make Ruben go away.

Unfortunately for workers, Garcia ended up on Regan's staff instead of serving drinks at a Tiki Bar (although Ruben apparently enjoys his fair share of wine and cigars).

Tasty hears that Garcia's performance is par for the course at SEIU-UHW. Workers at Mission Neighborhood Health Center report that neither Regan nor Garcia have lifted a purple finger to help them re-negotiate their contract, which expired long, long ago.

The same is true at two more facilities where SEIU-UHW members have also filed for NLRB elections so they can join NUHW:  Piedmont Gardens and Grand Lake Gardens in Oakland. Sources tell Tasty that SEIU-UHW's Myriam Escamilla has failed to negotiate a contract for more than 2 1/2 years, and that workers can't get union staffers to return a simple phone call.